12 tips for interior rendering from expert designers
Welcome to our article on interior render tips! Whether you're a professional interior designer or simply looking to spruce up your living space, creating a realistic and stunning interior render can take your design to the next level. In this article, we'll be sharing some expert tips and tricks to help you achieve the perfect interior render every time. So, sit back, relax, and let's dive into the world of interior design!
The rendering tool we use here is D5 Render, which is a free standalone real-time rendering software. You can give it a try, or use your own renderer.
Great composition can take a design from basic to breathtaking, making all the difference in the final product. In rendering, composition allows you to create a scene that is both visually appealing and realistic, drawing the viewer's eye towards the key elements of your design while maintaining a sense of balance and harmony.
Use the rule of thirds
Divide your frame into thirds and place your key elements along those lines, rather than directly in the center. The composition grid of D5 Render can do a favor. You can turn it on at Display > Option.
Pay attention to the field of view
The update of D5 Render 2.4 enables an automatic conversion between the field of view and the focal length. Put simply, the longer the focal length, the narrower the field of view, the less of the scene you can see.
It's better to avoid a wide field of view in interior rendering like 90 degrees, which could cause a distortion along the edge of view.
Artist: YYR | A wide FOV
Artist: YYR | A narrow FOV
Consider the focal point
Choose one element of your design to be the focal point and build your composition around that. A good point is to use the depth of field which could blur the part around the focal point. This is especially helpful when you want to display a specific area or object.
Go to Camera > Depth of Field in D5 to set the effect.
The quality of textures can greatly impact the overall look of your interior rendering. Low-quality materials can detract from the realism especially when you need a close shot of them.
We will offer some tips to create detailed textures with the user-friendly texturing system of D5 Render.
You can also choose from over 1,000 high-quality PBR materials in D5 Asset Library including wood, wallpaper, wall paint, ground surface and many other kinds, all of which are ready-for-use.
When you stretch the UV of a texture, its format will look denser. So, make sure to give it a proper scale according to the actual condition. You can also switch on 'Triplanar' to get a smooth and continuous texture UV on an irregular-shaped object.
Triplanar Mapping
Round Corner
The Round Corner option could bring an obvious rounding effect at the edge of the material, making it look more realistic.
Some dirt or scratches on the surface
You can import a dirt image to the Roughness column to simulate the imperfections on the furniture surface.
Dirt maps from Quixel
The dirt on the cabinet
Proper lighting
Realistic lighting underlies the quality of rendering. With the advanced global illumination solution of D5 Render, interior designers can get a stunning lighting effect within a very short time.
HDRI
1. Choose an HDRI for the scene when you want a particular vibe for the space.
2. To quickly create an atmospheric light and shadow, place some trees outside the window, so the sun will leave a nice projection.
Artificial lighting
1. Add a large rectangular light outside the window to cover the whole model, which can add more reflection details on the metal objects.
2. Add some strip lights in the dark corners, such as a cabinet, as accent lighting. This can make the space look more layered.
Ambient lighting
Accent lighting
Animation with dynamic models
Animation is an advanced tool for interior designers who wants to breathe life into their scenes. So, how to acquire vivid animation? We also have some recipes.
Use dynamic assets in the D5 Asset Library.
Use the keyframe feature to make an animation of turning on a light.
How to set realistic backround for render in 1 minute
For architectural visualization, environment setting is critical because it directly tells your audiences the story of the architecture. It includes sky, weather, surrounding landscape, backdrop context and many other elements. How they interact can greatly impact the realism and quality of the final render. For example, the glass facade usually reflects the surroundings. You don't need to spend hours placing buildings around to have such a beautiful reflection. All you need is a backdrop plane from D5 Asset Library.
Backdrop plane is like an entire context in one polygon. They can decorate the distant skyline, add nice glass reflections and adorn the view outside the window.
With D5 Render 2.4, new backdrop planes are updated for urban, mountainous, and wooded contexts. You can use them for architectural and interior design.
Drag and drop a backdrop plane from D5 Asset Library into the scene. With a few tweaks in a minute, you can get a stunning background for your render, which is very convenient.
Backdrop plane for architecture | Artist: Light
Backdrop plane for interior | Artist: Andrew
How to use it
After setting the foreground, go to D5 Model Library > Landscapes. Select the backdrop plane you need and import it into the scene. Scale it properly to cover the skyline. Done! That's all you need to do.
Render Showcase
Artist: Shawn
Camera setting tips must known for archviz
Architectural rendering is inextricably linked to architectural photography. Architects need to tell stories about architecture through the camera so that viewers can immersively interact with the building through imaginative. If you only display the building, without adding a human touch, the design will look cold and empty.
So, how to express your design in a warm and attractive way?
We get you some most commonly used tips for setting the camera in the rendering. It is important to note that the following tips are interrelated and can be used together to better express the language of the camera.
Here we use D5 Render, a free rendering tool, as an example.
- The eye-level camera view: It is the most common sight used in architectural rendering, which corresponds to a camera height of 1.5m-1.8m in a rendering tool like D5 Render. This height simulates the effect of an architecture as seen by the human eye, which helps the realism of the rendering. At the same time, because this camera view displays a limited area, it helps architects save a lot of work in the process of architectural visualization as well.
- The aerial view: It refers to the view of a building taken from the air. The corresponding camera height depends on the volume of the building you need to show. Generally speaking, the higher the camera, the more surroundings will appear in the sight.
Eye-level rendering by A R C H I T I S S with D5 Render
Aerial view
High aerial view / Low aerial view
2. Field of View (FOV) and Focal Length
FOV decides how much of the scene we're seeing.
Focal length refers to the distance between the center of a lens or curved mirror and its focus.
They are both interrelated, and closely relevant to lens in the real world.FOV is directly determined by the Focal Length. The larger the Focal Length, the farther you can see, but the smaller the FOV.
Think about the telephoto lens and the wide-angle lens. The former has a long focal length and a small field of view, while the later is opposite. So, when you change one of the parameter, don't forget the other one.
Here's a table that can help you understand the relationship between the FOV and the focal length.
Take this scene created with D5 Render 2.4 for example.
Evermotion x D5 Render 2.4 Interior Challenge | Yearly subscriptions are waiting for you!
The new version of D5 Render 2.4, which was released last week, comes with 35 updates, of which D5 Global Illumination (GI) is the most impressive one. The upgraded D5 GI not only ensures the speed of real-time rendering but also approaches the quality of offline rendering.
Lighting is made so easy for interior designers with D5 Render 2.4 because they can achieve a good lighting effect with natural light alone, without having to spend a lot of time adjusting artificial lights. With increased bounces of skylight, D5 GI brings sufficient lighting even deep inside an interior space.
Committed to helping designers effectively design high-quality projects, D5 teams up with Evermotion to hold this interior rendering challenge and sincerely invites you to experience the user-friendly workflow.
"Evermotion is a company specializing in 3D graphics and visualization. We create high-quality 3D models, textures, and visualizations for use in architectural and product design, animation, film and television, and video game development. Our products include collections of 3D models, textures, and shaders for 3D rendering and visualization. Evermotion is known for attention to detail and quality, and our products are used by professionals and hobbyists in the 3D industry worldwide."
Participants need to adapt and render the provided bare model which is contained in the challenge kit.
There are no requirements for the style and theme of the entries.
Participants should use and only use D5 Render for the rendering part.
Submit 3 rendered images and a rendered video no shorter than 15 seconds with a minimum resolution of 1080P.
*The model file of the .skp format is also provided. Competitors can alter the model but the house structure shouldn't be changed.
Submission
1. Upload your entry video to YouTube following the rules stated below:
Video title: [The title of your work]丨D5 Render 2.4 Interior Challenge
Please include “D5 Render 2.4 Interior Challenge x Evermotion” in the description box.
2. Post your entry images on one of the following platforms:
Facebook with the tag #d5render2.4
Instagram with the tag #d5render2.4
*The winner and runner-ups will be required to submit the YouTube and Facebook/Instagram links.
Judging Criteria
1. For the jury's choice, your work will be judged by the D5 Team and the Evermotion Team from the following aspects:
Quality of the scene/materials
Knowledge/Techniques of using D5 Render
Concept of the work in relation to the theme of this Challenge
Animation and editing performance
The jury from Evermotion:
Maciek Dawidowicz
For the past eighteen years I have been involved with 3D graphics. I ran my own company for seven of those years dealing exclusively with 3D graphics. I have built over 1k projects into my portfolio. These projects are viewed internationally. I am a problem solver and multitasker. I am proud to be recognized with my team at Evermotion Company.
2. For the community's choice, your work will be awarded based on your posts’ popularity on Facebook/Instagram.
The post which gets the most number of likes on each platform, i.e., Facebook and Instagram, will be awarded the Community’s Choice Prize.
Note
Participants must ensure the originality and integrity of their entries, and must not infringe any legal rights such as copyrights, patents, trademarks, portrait rights, and privacy rights of others.
Plagiarism and misappropriation of other people’s works are strictly prohibited. Entries must not violate relevant laws and regulations, and participants must guarantee that the copyright of entries is not transferred to others and that the entries are not commercialized or authorized for use by others.
By submitting your entry, you agree that D5 Render can share your works on the official website and other social media platforms.
Groundbreaking 3D Update: D5 Render 2.4 Release Note
D5 Render 2.4 Available Now: ultimate real-time rendering with a leap in effects and performance.
The latest version comes with 35 updates including the brand new D5 GI, subsurface scattering material, optimized emissive effect, path tool, and multiple frame rate options.
In this release, the D5 Asset Library is also updated with 582 new assets that include SSS models&materials, dynamic landscapes, holiday assets and backdrop planes. You can find them by searching "2.4" in D5 Asset Library.
We're proud to introduce the brand new D5 GI, the updated Global Illumination solution developed by D5 Team, which is a milestone in this release.
Applying advanced algorithms including ReSTIR and Surfel, the new D5 GI ensures your smooth and stable real-time rendering experience while providing a boost in the accuracy of lighting.
One of the biggest noticeable changes is increased bounces of skylight, which leads to sufficient lighting, even deep inside an interior space.
HDRI only: 2.3 vs. 2.4
Indirect lighting cache of high precision is supported to bring more realistic lighting transitions into the scene.
The new D5 GI retains more high-frequency details of the shadows, and tackles the problem of rendering a flat-looking scene caused by denoising.
The transmission effect of foliage is significantly improved, so that the leaves of vegetation assets will have a clearer look.
With the breakthroughs in real-time rendering effect and performance made by optimized D5 GI, the inconsistency between viewport preview and the final output is almost eliminated in this version.
Optimized emissive effect
Multiple bounces emitted from emissive materials supported, you are now able to generate precise global illumination with only emissive light sources. With the new algorithm, emissive lighting in D5 avoids completely dark corners in the scene like cornice while presenting a softer lighting effect.
Precise global illumination with only emissive light sources
The color emitted from emissive maps was previously in D5 a result of the average color of the maps. We've corrected it with the new algorithm to calculate the color of the maps with more precision, so the emissive materials give off lights accordingly. This comes in handy when applying emissive material to LED light signs or billboards.
Subsurface scattering materials, or SSS materials, are now supported to simulate translucent objects such as jade, wax and human skin.
You can use the "Subsurface scattering" material template to create real-time sss effect for the selected texture. Adjustable parameters include SubSurface Color and Scattering Intensity.
Z-Depth
Z Depth mode is now available in Effect > Style.
It works on a grayscale value range, and the colors of points range from black to white based on their distance from the camera, with black being closest to the camera, white in the background, and gray in between.
Z Depth is supported as a rendering effect for images or videos, and also as channel export. It's often used to add Depth of Field effect or to simulate fog.
Cull Distance
Cull Distance is added in Preference > Rendering. When you specify a cull distance value for preview and output respectively, the smaller models(mainly grass and other plants) beyond that distance will not be rendered in preview or final work, as you chose.
Grass Material Blend Amount
Blend amount setting is newly added to grass material to control the blending level of the base color maps for the ground model and grass material. The larger the value, the more influence the base color map of grass has on the overall color.
2 | Optimizations
Optimized Path tool
Path Tool is also optimized to make scene building more convenient with customizable path corner nodes: curve or linear.
You can set it to Linear to draw right angles and adjust the Smoothness parameter to customize the corner angles, which helps a lot when it comes to rendering an avenue or crossroads.
For vegetation paths, we supported setting fixed spacing distance between the vegetation assets. You can use it to generate a corresponding number of models according to the spacing distance value.
Random Offset is no longer related to the length of path, so there won't be the problem of a larger actual offset distance for a relatively small offset value caused by a longer path.
Higher Output Frame Rate Options
More frame rate options are supported to bring better visual experience and more freedom in editing. You can choose from 24, 25, 30, 60, or 120 FPS for output in video rendering settings.
Note that the default frame rate options are 30 and 60 FPS. You need to go to Menu > Preferences > Widget to enable more options.
Improved Two-point Perspective View
We fixed the unexpected tilting and perspective distortion by correcting the two-point perspective algorithm, and now the animation transitions between two-point perspective and perspective view in video mode will not produce flickering.
Another change is that you would need to press F8 or P to exit the two-point perspective view now.
Group Assets & Save to Local
D5 vegetation, characters, animals, vehicles and more models can now be added to your local library and exported as .d5a models. It is also supported to group any of these assets and add them to local, so you can easily grab and use the combo in other projects.
Optimized Scatter & Hedge assets
The algorithm of vegetation scatter tool has been optimized to fill a chosen material with vegetation and avoid leaving a gap, making a lush and dense hedge look.
Scatter models with "Single series" in their names from Nature > Hedge category, set the density parameter, and check "Align to Terrain" to quickly fill the block and create realistic hedges.
Drop Models on the Ground
For models in the object list, you can now right-click on it to choose "Drop vertically" so that it lands vertically on the nearest object surface.
Check "Drop along the terrain" so when the model falls on the nearest model, it also rotates itself according to the normal of the model surface.
Camera Focal Length
A Focal Length parameter is added under Field of View which can be used as the equivalent focal length of film in real life photography.
When matching a real camera and rendering camera setting, you can align the picture information by entering the corresponding focal length value in D5. This helps you get the same view in D5 as the reference photo.
Optimized Eraser Tool
Using the eraser or clear tool, you can apply it to only a selected surface by holding the shortcut key Shift.
Action Tips
To make D5 even easier to get started with, Action tips are added to the lower left corner of the viewport. You can turn it on in Menu > View to see corresponding tips and shortcuts while rendering.
Clear Auto-saved Backups/Imported Models
Clearing auto-saved backups/imported models is supported in Menu > File > Clear data, to delete the backup files automatically saved and imported models (except for those already placed in the current project). This helps reduce project file size, making file storage and management easier.
D5 AutoClose after Rendering
Another update to help you with resource management is the option in rendering queue to close D5 automatically when rendering is finished.
3 | New Assets in the D5 Asset Library
You can quickly find these new assets by searching "2.4" in the D5 Asset Library.
Vegetation Models
13 new Hedges, which have "single series" in their names, include Buxus megistophylla Levl., Camellia sasanqua Thunb., Ligustrum×vicaryi Rehder and Bambusa multiplex. You can use the scattering tool to quickly achieve a dense hedge effect.
37 new animated Macrophanerophytes include Yew, Metasequoia, Euphorbia, Cherry and other trees.
Backdrop Planes
New Backdrop planes in Landscape category to decorate the distant skyline for urban, mountainous, and wooded contexts
Animated Water Particles
New animated water particles under Particles > Fluid including fountains and water flow particles with scale, reflection and color parameters enabled.
New "Low resource consumption" option for fountain particles. Turn it on to reduce resource consumption in both preview and output.
Subsurface Scattering Assets
New SSS assets include silica gel, jade, wax materials and jade Buddha, candle, fruit models.
Character Models
30 slightly moving characters that have small movements, waving hands for example, that are close to their posed gestures.
78 posed Asian characters and more characters from different regions are coming.
Holiday Assets
New Holiday assets --- a special collection exclusive to D5 that includes firework particles, animated decorations, and holiday accessories.
Set off customizable 3D fireworks in D5 to light up the sky.
Animated vehicle Models
4 new animated vehicles include electric cars, subways and high speed rail.
Interior Parallax Color Temperature Control
New color temperature control for Interior Parallax models to suit different vibes of the scenes.
To learn more about D5 Render 2.4 updates, please visit D5 Forum.
6 tips you must know for archviz tested with real projects
With the development of computer graphics, architectural visualization is gradually shifted from 2D to 3D. 3D archviz is not only the display of models and materials, but also the expression of atmosphere and design concepts. Therefore, we summarize some techniques that are proven practical in real projects to help architects better deliver their ideas.
The following two projects were optimized with the techniques we will show, and you can see the change in the overall effect:
Set perspectives like in architectural photography
Architectural rendering has much to do with photography. A proper perspective can tell your audience a lot about the design and atmosphere you want to create.
There are several perspectives that you should learn how to use in archviz:
Eye-level view: This is the most common perspective that can simulate human eye sight. For rendering, you should set the camera at a height of 150-180cm.
Aerial view: This view usually displays the building as well as the surrounding context. With a proper use of this perspective, you can create stunning works.
Worm's view: a view as seen from below or from a humble position. It allows you to fit very tall subjects in the frame, such as skyscrapers.
Nowadays, glass facade is widely used in architectural design as it provides both functional and aesthetic benefits. However, in archviz projects, many people ignore the surrounding environment resulting in a very messy reflection of the glass, thus destroying the overall aesthetic.
Before
After
In this project, the original glass facade reflected buildings around, and revealed harsh lighting inside the architecture. We placed a panel with a sky image on it on the opposite side, thus giving the glass a clear reflection of the sky.
Then we adjusted the transparency and roughness of the glass to a matte frosted effect. The overall vision becomes clean and fresh.
You can also use backdrop planes from the D5 Asset Library to quickly get a beautiful context.
Notice the contrast of warm and cold tones
Maintaining tonal balance is an important aspect of architectural rendering. Too cold or too warm tones can lead to visual imbalance and a flat, monotonous image.
If the overall environment seems cool, then adding some warm lighting is an ideal choice.
Surround your building with plants
Greenery is an integral part of architectural design. It not only softens the lines of the building, but also relaxes people's mood. In architectural visualization projects, we can follow the following principles to place plants:
Greenery close to the camera: shrubs and broad-leaved trees. You can increase the brightness of leaves a bit.
Greenery in between the buildings: tall trees like arbors.
Greenery far away: smaller trees with low crowns.
In this way, the greenery will form foreground, middle-ground and background for the image.
Another tip is to place warm lights under the trees to make them look soft and vivid.
How to place plants
Lights under the trees
Decorate the building's interior
In archviz projects, many will neglect the refinement of building interiors, resulting in a hollow, dissonant look, which is especially evident in large architectural projects. Here we provide two tips for quickly enriching building interiors:
Add lights to illuminate the building inside
Use Interior Parallaxes to decor the building windows with one click (Interior Parallax is a faux window display of decorated interior scenes)
Breathe life into your scene with animated models and particles
Nowadays, animation has become a hot trend on social media platforms. Architects are following this trend to attract more audiences. To make full use of this feature, you will need animated assets to work with it.
Yet it might be a bit difficult for individual designers or small businesses to make animation, because it's expensive to acquire both animation rendering tools and dynamic assets.
Here we recommend the rendering software D5 Render, which is free to use and has its own asset library with animated characters/plants/vehicles/particles.
AI-Powered Architecture Design | How to use AI with 3d rendering software D5 Render
1 Introduction
At the beginning of the 20th century, Industrial Revolution profoundly influenced the whole world, changing the way humans had long been accustomed to living and building.
The great master Corbusier, along with other artists, pointed out that the traditional design industry also needed a revolution. Modernism thus began.
Mankind has been moving “Towards a New Architecture (Vers Une Architecture)” ever since.
Vers Une Architecture by Le Corbusier
Today, in the 21st century, we are facing another big change in the design industry: the rise of Artificial Intelligence. How to judge this new tech? Can designers find a way to work with AI? The answers are still in the air. There is no doubt that we are standing at a crossroad.
Luckily, we received an "AI-powered" architectural project created with D5 Render by the Studio of Urban Studies (hereinafter referred to as SUS), which has been approved by the client and professional architects. This project may offer some insights into the relationship between AI and designers.
2 Behind the project
Studio of Urban Studies focuses on urban design. They hope to solve real issues with creative and inspiring designs.
Unlike traditional arch studios, SUS embraces new technologies to improve the efficiency and quality of their work.
The recent big-hit, design for Rain Moment Street, is a project of SUS, which aims to build a small commercial complex that is cozy to live and work in.
Rain Moment Street is like the courtyard in our memories. After a day of work, you can go downstairs and take a breath.
That's why we wanted to attenuate the sense of building volume. Rain Moment Street should break the boundary between the office building and the leisure area. Residents can see one area extend into another.
Based on this conception, we had multiple choices to create the facade. After rounds of discussion, we finally used Stable Diffusion.
3 AI + D5: the productivity tool kit of the new era
SUS integrated AI into their workflow by first producing 2D images with AI, then modeling and rendering accordingly.
Sketch production | Why AI
Usually, there were no clear objectives at the beginning of the project. Thus, after generating a large number of sketches, SUS made constant adjustments to see if there would be more possible design plans.
During this process, an architect first drew a rough sketch and then gave AI some prompts to create many similar works.
Yet not all of them were practicable. So the architect had to choose some feasible sketches and gave AI more prompts to optimize their light and shadow. Meanwhile, tags of master architects will be added as a reference for the architectural style.
There was trial and error at this stage before the designer could confirm the architectural volume including concave or convex, curved or straight lines, and so on.
Adjustment of the light and shadow
Architecture styles of Zaha, Foster and Gehry
Move on to fine-tune the prompt and try different CFG Scale* and Denoising Strength*. This would produce images of various design styles. The architect chose an appropriate one from them and made inpainting on some important or unsatisfactory details.
For example, the roof of Rain Moment Street was inpainted to have a look of a hollow net-like form resembling dragon scales.
The CFG scale adjusts how much the image looks closer to the prompt and/ or input image.
Denoising strength controls how many changes it will make compared with the original image.
At this point, the design had taken shape, but the image was limited to a size of 512 x 512. SUS extended it to supplement the rest part.
Modeling and visualizing | Why D5
Now it came the time to turn the AI-generated sketch into 3d models. Since the sketch was complete and concrete, it didn't take much time to build the models. Architects could add more details as well.
For the part of visualization, SUS chose D5 Render as the ultimate tool.
At first, they had other selections. But after the further experience, D5 became their go-to tool for some special reasons.
Visualization:
The ray-tracing technology used by D5 is especially helpful when SUS wants to quickly build an atmospheric environment for the building.
Efficiency:
For one thing, D5 Render adopts PBR texturing system, which is also used by the mainstream DCC software. The one-click material sync feature builds a streamlined workflow for architects and designers. For another, designers can import assets from Bridge into D5, which helps them conveniently enrich the surrounding context.
The models built by SUS are often full of details, such as curtain wall frames, expansion joints, and openings, which resemble their look in the real world. So, the large file is usually split for several architects to model at the same time.
Yet the split parts have to be merged in the rendering software, leading to many times of model sync. It is troublesome in other software, yet not the case in D5 Render. D5's one-click sync feature allows each model sync to save ten seconds or more. Think about thousands of times of sync in a project and you'll see how much time D5 has saved for SUS.
4 Visualization
Rain Moment Street becomes a big hit not only because of the involvement of Artificial Intelligence but also because its animation render is superb.
SUS talked about how they viewed archviz in the interview:
We hope to produce an architecture design, not only the archviz but also the real building, that audiences can experience as immersively as in a movie.
There is another stronger connection between AI and archviz:
SUS will select the form of visualization based on the image atmosphere generated by AI.
"AI created some art-like images with a settled color tone, vibe, and composition. Yet the process to find these styles requires manual operation. So, there should be a tool that comes in handy to solve this issue."
This might be the first time D5 met AI, but not the last time.
5 The future
Just as the pioneers of modernism faced changes at that time, we stand at the crossroads of a new revolution in science and technology.
Designers have lived through the days of drawing with pencil and ruler, the era of CAD replacing tablets, and are now experiencing a shift from 2D to 3D, and the gradual involvement of AI in the project.
Although each technological innovation brings about a debate about the "survival" and "extinction" of designers, in retrospect, there are always people who embrace changes, master new tools and improve productivity.
SUS and D5 believe that AI is only a tool, and designers are the masters. SUS also mentioned an interesting phenomenon:
Some designers call Prompt 'a spell'. Technology, just like magic, needs humans to decide how it's applied. AI will make design itself more demanding, so we have to keep up with that demand.
As for how to follow the trend of AI, SUS also has some suggestions:
Architects should be familiar with the whole workflow including planning principles, codes, construction, and other knowledge. Without enough experience, you can't master AI and make the right choice of solutions. In this case, the design will be empty and boring. Don't turn your design into a black box driven by AI. Don't be lazy. Otherwise, you'll suffer the consequences.
D5 Render, together with SUS, will explore more opportunities with AI, helping designers move "Towards a New Architecture".
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C4D to D5 | Real-Time Rendering Software D5 Render Now Compatible with Cinema 4D Workflow
Fueled by the rapid development taking place in the hardware market and computer graphics field, real-time rendering is making its way on the architectural visualization business.
Real-time rendering is a process in which GPU produces images while calculating huge amounts of data, so you can have a preview of the results while adjusting in the interface. It enables you to see the changes as soon as they are made, and your operations are usually conducted with a minimum frame rate of 30.
For C4D users, for a long time they could only turn to offline renderer because there wasn't much choice. While now equipped with RTX technology for acceleration, rendering engines like Octane and Redshift still have a hard time offering a smooth rendering experience because of the low FPS that hinders the process.
Now with D5 Render's integration with Cinema 4D, it's obviously a great oppurtunity for C4D users to enter the real-time rendering world.
Earlier this year, D5 Render released its plugin built for Cinema 4D: D5 Converter - C4D, announcing its integration into C4D workflow. D5 Render as a standalone renderer offers multiple plugins(D5 Converters) to work with most of the mainstream modeling software without any additional cost for each integration. That is to say, a real-time workflow for C4D users that is free of charge is now available. It is time to SWITCH!
Compared with traditional renderer used to work C4D, D5 Render is such an "intuitive" tool.
Material
Forget about the complex material nodes, nerve-wrecking lighting settings, and the frustrating trial and error you have to go through in those renderer. In D5, with fewer parameters, fewer adjustments, you get to achieve results of similar or even better quality within a shorter time.
Material panel in C4D
Material panel in D5 Render
D5 Render adopts the mainstream PBR material system. It simplifies the process of editing materials as much as possible through preset parameters for various material templates. You can find over 1,500 preset materials in D5's built-in Asset Library and directly apply them to the models in your scene with just one click.
Synchronization of materials from C4D, Octane, Corona and Redshift is supported in D5, yet you'll still find it easy and fun to edit materials in D5 yourself. Even for normals and reflections that are usually resource-consuming on computations, results can be shown immediately on the model's surface as you adjust parameters.
Judging from the works posted by D5 users, you can tell that D5 Render's equipped with a production-class material system with amazing performance in output.
Speed
In offline rendering software, all those effects, reflection, transparencies and complex lighting often come with a price, which is multiplied rendering time.
That is not the case in D5: Ray tracing technology is a fundamental part of D5 Render that enables GPU to render complex models and scenes with physically accurate shadows and reflections. Normally the most basic one can also handle D5 well and surprise you with its amazing rendering speed.
Even for scenes heavy on reflection(image above), it takes only 36.8 seconds to render an image in 2K resolution, and 15 minutes for an 8-second video.
The ongoing evolution in technologies is going to continue, and it would definitely speed up your workflow if you're better equipped. For anyone that owns a graphics card supporting ray tracing, such as Nvidia RTX series, AMD RX 6400 and above, or the coming Intel ray tracing GPU, D5 Render is bound to be your best choice.
Free
D5 Render releases a new version every three months to meet the needs of its users from all walks of life. With previous updates, D5 Render has become a fully functional, stable and reliable real-time rendering software. On top of that, D5 is also free to download with 90% of all its features accessible to everyone. In today's design and art market, it's not always easy to find a tool that offers a free version for commercial projects like Blender. Luckily enough, D5 is here to help. If you are using C4D, and would like to switch to another rendering software, don't hesitate to give D5 a try. Free Download: https://www.d5render.com/download
Guide on How D5 Render works with C4D
Download and installation
Go to D5 Render official website > Download and find the converter for Cinema 4D.
Or you can also go to Welcome Page > Workflow to download.
UI and Features
After installing, open your C4D and you'll find D5 Render Converter. Click on it, and a panel for D5 will pop up with 7 icons:
1. Start/Stop D5
Click on it to start/stop D5 Render in your C4D.
Select "OK" to open a new project in D5 and the C4D model will be imported into D5.
If you've applied materials to your model in C4D, then you'll find the model comes with materials because D5 can map those materials. Apart from C4D Standard materials, D5 also supports most of the materials from other renderer including Octane(Blend material, toon material and procedural textures are not supported yet), Corona, and Redshift materials.
2. Sync
Click on this button, and the scenes in D5 will be updated. You can use it to sync models, materials and scenes from C4D to D5.
3. View sync
Click on this button, and the scenes in D5 will be updated. You can use it to sync models, materials and scenes from C4D to D5.
4. Camera sync
Turn it on to synchronize the cameras you set in C4D to D5's scene list.
5. Light sync
Support the sync of spotlight, point light and area light.
6. Export .d5a file
You can either export the whole project or export certain objects to D5. .d5a files can be directly read by D5
C4D - D5 Workflow Made Easy
Supported versions
The current D5 converter for Cinema 4D supports C4D versions from R20 to R25.
C4D+D5 rendering
Multi-sync with various modeling solutions
With multi-sync support of D5 converters, you can simultaneously synchronize files from multiple CAD/BIM software into one D5 scene using different plugins. That is to say, your workflow can be streamlined beause you get to focus on modeling an architecture in Archicad, design a particular furniture with C4D, and render in D5 at the same time. Multiple software work simultaneously as one in D5 Render, saving your valuable time for further improvement of the project.
Product design and rendering
An important part in product rendering has to be setting up a background with appropriate lighting that goes well with the product itself. Rendering with D5, you can save the scene you carefully crafted as your go-to scene for future projects. In this way, next time you need to render a new product, you just drag and drop the model into that perfect scene. What a time-saver!
Cinema 4D is known for having this amazing fur function to simulate realistic fur materials /textures which can be used on interior furniture. Most rendering software is unable to produce satisfactory fur, so with C4D-D5 workflow, you might see your interior renderings at another level using the fur materials mapped from C4D.
Meet the Winners | D5 Render Challenge II, A Global Rendering Contest
Top-notch rendering workflow for landscape designers | Speed up visualization with D5 Render
Loudly Quiet - Let the renderings speak for me | A virtual exhibition film rendered with D5 Render
D5 Times Vol.05
D5 Render for Revit | Best Real-time 3D Rendering Workflow for BIM Professionals
How 3ds Max works better and faster with D5 Render for animation
Work & Life made easy with D5 Render animation and 3ds Max
“With D5 Render, we not only get to meet the deadline, but also live up to clients' expectations. ” —— An interview with Arthur Studio
Arthur Studio: Architecture visualization, animation making, BIM consulting, real estate development, landscape design, architecture planning, construction organization, municipal bridge design, etc. Current Workflow: 3Ds Max + D5 Render(for animation), VRay(for still frame).
Reasons for changing the workflow
Let's just face it, still frame rendering alone can not satisfy our clients these days. In the era of short videos, rendering industry has followed suit. Clients tend to see the visualization moving, for animations do display the project more vividly and precisely. It goes without saying that animation also helps when bidding. Some may call it a result of fierce peer competition. Well, I believe this is the current trend, and we are going to follow it.
However, with more projects in progress came a shorter production period. That, to be honest, is a headache for us.
Luckily we discovered D5 Render. With D5, we not only get to meet the deadline, but also live up to clients' expectations. During the process, D5 has made it possible to improve our working efficiency and saved us a ton of time. Production takes less time to finish, and negotiation with clients gets much easier, which is exactly what we need with such a tight working schedule.
Large-scale bird's eye view rendering
Real-time rendering process
Let's take a look at a project we've done. We were assigned the Yinhe Cold Chain Industry Complex project with only 2 days for production. We first negotiated with the client, and they gave us some unexpected advice after seeing the demo. So the demo ended up needing a lot of changes including skyline, rescaling the vegetation and adjusting some assets. In that case, all of the cameras need to be rendered again, which, surprisingly, only took D5 several hours. We couldn't have made it without D5 Render.
Working with 3Ds Max and D5 Render
I first learned about D5 on a work-related forum last June. A peer worker shared his works rendered with D5, and that led me to search for what D5 Render is. At that time, D5 1.9 was in beta besting. I thought to myself: "why not give it a try?", and the outcome was quite surprising. After 2 months of testing, D5 was put into practical use in all my animation projects at hand. From then on D5 has been the first renderer I turned to for visualization.
For every project, it starts with modeling. Materials we get from clients usually include SketchUp models, CAD floor plans, but sometimes we get only part of the image information.
We would first deal with all the models needed in this project with Max.
Then, we export these models with D5 Converter - 3Ds Max as .d5a files into D5 Render for animation making.
The exporting process with D5 Converter makes our work much easier, and the workflow of 3Ds Max and D5 is such a convenience. As is often the case, we need to edit or change some of the models in the renderer, which can be quite time-consuming. Now, we just replace them with a click in D5.
After the modeling is confirmed, the project goes to rendering artist who is in charge of archviz and animation making.
And in this process, D5 strikes us as efficient and speedy.
For a 2-minute animation, we usually had to spend more than 10 days in making. The animation takes a long time to render, and we even had to send some of the cameras to rendering farms. These are all the costs of production. So we tried some of the real-time render engines, but they took 5-7 days. To be honest, rendering was such a laborious task.
However, D5 was able to shorten the time waiting for output and greatly improved our working efficiency. I got to spend more time digging into the production of animation including camera movement, detail of the scene, light and shade, material adjustment, etc. If I stuck to my previous workflow, then I couldn't have afforded the time for that. Now the whole process of animation making takes about 3 days, and short scenes take only one day to finish. (rendered with RTX 2060)
D5 does not compromise on rendering quality for a shorter rendering time. Quite the opposite, D5 impresses me with the best rendering quality among all the real-time renderers that I've used. How the materials and texture look in D5 is surprisingly close to the physical objects in real life.
Other than that, D5 has so much more to discover. Here's another thing that surprised me: I made models of light strips and trees with hanging string lights inside 3Ds Max, then exported them directly into D5 Render. See how they fit into the scene! You can see below. I've created my own local asset library in D5 and enriched its contents. As a Max user, I find it extremely easy and convenient. The imported models are orderly categorized and easily accessible for use in D5.
As anyone in this industry might know, working overtime or even through the night is part of our everyday life. D5 has really helped me in saving working time. Doing this job, we can't expect too much leisure, but I do have more free time to myself now. I use it either to better the production, or to give myself a rest. I used to dream of this work-life balance, and now I have it thanks to D5.
D5 Times Vol.04
AMBITION｜D5 Render Challenge Interview with Best Original Award Winner
A Work of Tadao Ando | NYC Fair-faced Concrete Luxury Condo, 152 Elizabeth Street
Pushing the Art of Architecture to the Public | RayingLab Special Report
D5 Widget | Tap into Infinite Imagination of 3D Storytelling
D5 Smoothness｜Large Scene Capability and Real-time Interactivity
Real-time interactivity with photo-realism quality is the core value of D5 Render. D5 GI ensures the performance of real-time rendering, but as the complexity of the scene increases, the rendering overhead will gradually increase and the real-time FPS inevitably decrease. With a large number of faces, lights, models and textures, whether D5 can still guarantee responsiveness and FPS in real-time is of great importance for the user experience.
Optimization of Model loading
Many 3D assets have an extremely large number of faces, and some consist of countless sub-objects that affect rendering efficiency. D5 Render automatically merges models of the specific kinds of asset, combining multiple small models into one large model for a reduced DrawCall* and improved efficiency.
Since D5 version 2.0, models have been loaded with a more efficient polygon rendering method, which has greatly improved real-time performance. Version 2.0 has seen a significant improvement in FPS and responsiveness comparing with version 1.9.
*DrawCall: The rendering command sent from CPU to GPU. Too many DrawCalls will cause the GPU to wait for a long time and hinder the efficiency.
Optimization of Material Texture
The new version of D5 Render uses Texture Streaming to dynamically load texture maps, ensuring that material textures are loaded only when they are in the camera, and store other textures temporarily on the disk. This technique, together with mipmap, ensures that material textures look just right at all distances with minimal overhead.
In a comparative test, both RAM and VRAM usage are reduced and frame rate is slightly improved with texture streaming enabled. For some scenes, the memory usage was saved by more than 40% (from 11G to 6.2G).
Optimization of Scenes with Many Lights
In general, the number of light sources will have a direct impact on the live preview responsiveness (frame rate).
In this night scene below, there are several hundreds of light sources:
In the old version, the memory cannot be dynamically allocated according to the number of lights when calculating shading, so it must be allocated in advance according to the maximum number of lights (e.g. 1024 lights). Higher screen resolution means higher memory overhead, which poses a challenge to the performance of the real-time preview.
To solve this problem, D5 optimized the strategy of sampling lights. First, D5 divides 1024 lights into groups, calculating the total brightness of lights in each group, and then further sampling the specific lights in the groups that contribute more to the scene. With this optimization, the time of calculating GI for a scene with 1024 lights drops from 23.84 ms to 11.54 ms, and memory usage is reduced by about 150MB.
Optimization of GI algorithm
The optimization of the new D5 GI sampling algorithm above will also improve the frame rate for large scenes. Version 2.1 is enabled with 2-4 times faster reflection calculations and nearly 4 times faster GI calculations. That's why D5 2.1 always has a higher frame rate than 2.0 in the same scene.
D5 "Smoothness" Summary
“Smoothness” can be measured with 2 indicators:
The time between the mouse click on the user interface to the first frame of response from the D5 viewport preview.
The frame rate for real-time rendering when the viewport changes dynamically.
The example below shows a comparison of the "smoothness" of D5 version 1.9 and D5 version 2.1:
Note: You can see that the new version of D5 on the right responds to commands (click to move camera views) significantly faster than the old version (it always moves faster than the left one). And, the frame rate of the new version is nearly doubled when shaking the viewport.
D5 GI｜Striving for Offline Rendering Quality with Real-time Experience
D5 Times Vol.03
D5 Times Vol.02
D5 Times Vol.01
Why You Should Switch to Real-time Rendering
What does rendering mean?
SketchUp Rendering with D5 Render
How to sync 3Ds Max with D5 Render?
Why choose D5 Render
3ds Max Render Animation Making with D5 Render Livesync Plugin
Glass Rendering Tips with D5 Render for Realistic Architectural Visualization
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