What’s happening ladies and gentlemen,
this is Minh from Architecture Inspirations.
Today I’m going to show you how to use
Vray Render Elements in Photoshop
to make your Rendering look more Realistic.
Let’s get started
So this is an image I rendered from the model
that I did in the last video,
check that out if you haven’t yet.
Whenever an image is done rendering,
you can find all of its Vray Render Elements
in this drop down box here.
So what are render elements?
Vray Render Elements
(also known as Render Channels or Render Passes)
are a way to separate the different parts of a rendering
such as diffuse,
material ID,
reflection, etc.
These are very powerful images
that you can use to composite your rendering
in post production softwares like Photoshop.
To get render elements,
you would have to add them in
BEFORE you start the render.
In Vray 3.6 for Sketchup,
you can find them in the settings tab
click this arrow to see more options,
and expand the Render Elements rollout
and add whichever elements you want.
In this case, I added the denoiser to reduce noise,
the diffuse channel,
the extratex channel with a Dirt texture
to serve as an ambient occlusion pass.
I went over this in another video
so check that out for more details.
Next is Material ID, Raw Light, Raw Shadow,
Reflections, Refractions, and finally Z depth.
There we go
now after you render,
you will see all the render elements
in this drop down box here.
Of course you don’t have to render all of these,
I’m just doing it as an example.
Also keep in mind that
the more render elements you add,
the longer it will take to render.
Before I save them,
I’m going to make some adjustments
and add some effects.
If I click here on the force color clamping button,
it will show me the areas that are too bright.
To fix this,
I can open up the correction controls
and turn on Exposure,
click here to show its settings,
and turn down highlight burn
until I can’t see the clamped colors anymore.
Now to add some effects,
I’m going to click here
to open up the lens effects settings.
Here you can add different types of effects,
and in this case, I want to add a glare effect.
So I’m going to check this box,
and make some adjustments here.
Once that’s done,
I can save all the render elements with this button here.
Now that’s done,
I’m going to find my RGB channel
which is the one without any extra name at the end,
and open it up in Photoshop.
If you look closely,
our render has quite a bit of noise,
this is when the denoiser come in handy.
I’m going to import the Denoiser and compare the two.
As you can see,
the Denoiser did a great job
of reducing the noise in our rendering.
But let’s say I want to reduce the noise even more,
I can go to Filter - Noise - Reduce Noise.
Now I can set the strength here
But keep in mind that if it’s too strong
then you’ll start to lose details.
If so then just go back
and reduce the strength to a more appropriate setting
I think that’s pretty good.
Since the denoiser channel is our base render now,
I can turn off or delete the RGB channel.
Next I’m going to adjust the base render,
just click on the layer,
and go to Filter - Camera Raw Filter.
Here I’m going to increase the Exposure
to brighten up the image,
then I can pump up the contrast a little,
and also brighten up the shadows.
There we go, it’s already looking good.
Next I will bring in the effects channel to add glare.
You can see that it’s darker than our base render.
So I’m going to hold down Alt and Left click
then camera raw filter
to Copy the adjustments from base image
to the effects channel.
You can see that the glare
is affecting everything in our render.
But let’s say I don’t want that,
then I can just go down here,
and Alt+Left Click the layer mask
to put mask out everything.
Now I can paint white on parts
where I want the effects to show
which is where the lights are.
There we go.
So for the background of this picture,
I’m going to add an ocean.
Then just like the base render,
I’m going to apply a Camera Raw Filter
to adjust the image.
I just want the shadows of this image a little brighter
so I can increase the shadows like so.
I really like the mountain right here,
but not so much the water.
So I can press W for the magic wand tool
and use it select the part of this image that I don’t want,
I can change it to the quick selection tool as well.
Once I’m happy with my selection,
I’ll go down and Alt+Left click the layer mask
to mask that part out.
Now I can import another background image
of the ocean with the water that’s a little more blue.
And I’ll place it below the other background
then resize it and reposition to however I see fit.
To clean up the image, I can select the layer mask,
and use the brush tool
to paint white on the that I want to be more visible,
and paint black
on the parts that I want to be less visible.
With some quick work,
you can make it look pretty good!
Although the water is too blue
and it’s a little distracting,
so I’m going to use Camera Raw Filter
to adjust it a little bit like so.
There we go, that’s better.
For the next part,
I will bring in the Extratex render element,
which is also an Ambient Occlusion pass in this case.
Now I can put it on top
and set the blend mode to Multiply
and reduce the Opacity to 20%.
There we go, now it gives the render a little more depth.
As you can see, the floor looks a little too bright,
and it seems to have lost
some details of the wood flooring.
So I’m going to bring in the Diffuse render element.
And set it to Soft light,
you can see that the floor looks better,
but the other parts of the render looks terrible!
So we only want this render channel
to affect that part of the image.
We can do that by manually make a selection
with the lasso tool,
and then mask it out using layer mask.
But, there’s a better way to do it
so I’m going to delete the layer mask and show it to you.
First, we need to import the material ID channel.
This is a very useful image that you can use as a selection tool
to make it easier to select surfaces
with the same material in your rendering.
Let’s say I want to select
the wood material on these shelves,
then I go to the Material ID,
select it with the magic wand tool,
hold shift to add and hold alt to subtract selections.
Also, you can turn off Contiguous
to select all of the same color at once.
In this case, I’m not interested in selecting these shelves,
but rather this wood floor,
so I can go to the Material ID layer and select it
then turn that off, go to my diffuse layer,
and click this button here
to mask out the rest of the image.
As you can see, with the mask,
now the diffuse channel only affects the wood floor.
For the next part,
let’s import the RawLight render element.
Then I’ll set the blend mode as soft light
and drop the opacity down to 20%.
Next I’ll bring in RawShadow render element
Then I’ll set this as Soft light as well,
and bring the opacity down to 25%.
As you can see
these two images are good for adjusting the lighting
and shadows of your render
to give it a bit more contrast.
Now I want to add a reflection of the ocean water
on the refrigerator to make it look more realistic.
So to do that,
first I’m going to hold down Alt and Left click
then drag the ocean background layer
to duplicate it and bring it to the top.
Then I’ll set it as Linear Burn.
Next I’m going to use the Material ID
and select only the material of the refrigerator.
Now I can turn the Material ID Layer off
and select the ocean layer,
then click here
to create a layer mask base on our selection.
As you can see,
it’s starting to give us that reflection we want,
but it’s a little too much.
We can decrease the opacity
but the reflection still looks darker than it was.
So I’m going to import the Reflection render element
and set the blend mode as screen.
Next I’ll hold Alt and Left click
then drag the layer mask from the ocean background
to our Reflection channel.
There you go, that’s already looking better.
If the reflection is too bright,
you can turn down the opacity like so.
Now that looks good, but if you look closely,
the reflection of the ocean
is actually on top of the door frame as well,
and that’s not right.
So we can select the mask on our ocean image,
and use the brush tool to paint black
wherever the door frame is.
That way, the reflection of the ocean
is only visible wherever the glass is.
Now I can group these two layers
and compare the before and after.
The effect is very subtle, but it looks more realistic now!
Next we will add the Refraction channel,
and set the blend mode as screen.
Then turn down the opacity to 50%.
As you can see,
the refraction channel is really good
for adjusting the glass materials in your rendering.
Next I’m going to import the Z-depth render element
to create a depth of field effect in my rendering.
First, first I’m going to turn this layer off,
and select the top visible layer,
then press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E
to merge all of the visible layers into a new one.
Then I’m going to add a layer mask by clicking here.
To make the file more organized,
I’ll select all the layers below this
and press Ctrl+G to group them up,
then I'll turn them off for now
Now I can turn on the Z-depth channel,
select that layer, and press Ctrl+A
to select the whole image, then press Ctrl+C to copy.
I’ll turn the Z-depth channel off
and Alt+Left Click on this layer mask
and press Ctrl+V paste it there.
Now I can click here to go back to the main image.
As you can see, it’s looking a little odd,
but just hold on for a second.
With the layer selected,
we can go up to Filter - Blur - Lens Blur.
For the source of your depth map,
click the drop down box and select layer mask.
Now you can just click on a part of the image
that you want the camera to focus on.
There you go, pretty cool huh?
But if you notice the window,
there seems to be some kind of error
happening around this area.
So let’s cancel this and go back a few steps.
I’ll turn this off for now, and turn on the Z-depth.
As you can see, this area of my Z-depth is transparent,
that’s why it created those errors.
So what I’m going to do now i go down and click here,
then create a solid color layer, I’ll set that as black
and I’ll place it under my Z-depth layer.
Then I will select both of these layers,
and right click, merge the layers.
There we go, now I can Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C to copy this,
then turn this layer off, and turn the other layer back on,
Alt+Left Click here to go to the layer mask,
and press Ctrl+V to Paste the image here.
Now we can select the main image,
go to Filter - Blur - Lens Blur
you can see that there are no errors
at the glass area anymore.
Now we can press Okay.
But it still looks weird here, all we need to do
is just Shift and Left click the layer mask to turn it off.
There we go, now we can turn on the group
and compare the before and after.
For the last part, I’ll just add some glare to the image,
then stylize with Nik Collection,
make some final adjustments with Camera Raw Filter
and I'll use the Curves on here as well
and there we go, our image is finished!
And that’s how you can use render elements
to composite your rendering in Photoshop.
If you want this file along with my model,
remember to sign up on my Patreon
before the end of March to get it at a cheaper price.
After that it will be on Gumroad for $10.
I’d also like to thank my members on Patreon ,
you guys are amazing!
And that is all for today guys,
leave a like if you enjoyed the video.
Comment below if you have any questions.
Stay inspired guys,
and I will see you,
next time ^.^