Archiv der Kategorie: Work

Rendering of Barcelona Pavillon

Rendering of Barcelona Pavillon - PBR materials created with PBRtist based on photos took on location.
Rendering of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavillon

In March 2019 I was on a trip to Barcelona and took the opportunity to make some architectural photos of the great Barcelona Pavillon designed by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona.

Prior to that journey I’ve already created a 3D model of this piece of ground breaking modern architecture with the lack of good image sources of the used materials – marble, onyx and travertine. A great opportunity to make some nice architectural photos and also to get high quality image sources to create materials for my Physically Based Rendering (PBR) workflow.

I arrived at the location half an hour before opening with enough time to make a reference photo without any people around. The sky and background from this photo is used as the background for the rendering above.

Barcelona Pavilion in March 2019
Reference photo of the pavilion

In the next hour I took 90 photos. Some architectural ones you can see here. The rest were details of the used materials and some construction details.

Back home I’ve used Capture One Pro to develop and prepare the images I like to use in my rendering.

Cropping a photo of the original Barcelona Pavillon travertine tile.
Cropping a photo of an original travertine tile using Capture One Pro

These images got some retouching using Affinity Photo and I drag and drop them into PBRtist to create a realistic 3D material.

Creating a travertine 3D material with PBRtist based on photos of the Barcelona Pavillon
Creating a travertine material with PBRtist

PBRtist is a tool to create all maps used in a Physically Based Rendering (PBR) workflow based on a single image. For this travertine material I’m using the Diffuse, Normal, Roughness and Occlusion map. PBRtist has a seamless integration for Cheetah 3D to export a material to Cheetah’s material format.

This was done for all materials used in my 3D model based on the images took on location – the big golden reddish marble wall inside the main house (which is not visible here), the greenish marble walls at the entrance and around the main building. Also the travertine used in the walls around the pool are based on separate image sources. With PBRtist this job was done in minutes.

3D model of the Barcelona Pavillon created with Cheetah 3D using Physically Based Rendering materials created with PBRtist.
3D model created with Cheetah 3D using PBR materials created with PBRtist

The final rendering was done in Cheetah with a resolution of 7282 x 4096 pixel, the size of reference photo you see above. The background of the rendering is transparent, because I want to do some keystone correction and compositing with Affinity Photo later.

Final rendering of the Barcelona Pavillon with a transparent background in Cheetah 3D based on materials created with PBRtist.
Final rendering with a transparent background in Cheetah 3D

Here the final image keystone corrected and composited with the background from the reference photo above in Affinity Photo.

Final composition of the Barcelona Pavilion in Affinity Photo.
Final editing in Affinity Photo

As a give-away here an USDZ file from the Barcelona Stool used in my model.

USDZ file of the Barcelona Stool
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Fujifilm GFX 50s Mamiya Shift 50mm vs. Keystone vs. Panoramic Head

In this article I compare three solutions to create a perspective controlled architectural photography.

  1. 3 by 2 stitched and keystone corrected image using a panoramic head and the GF 32-64 @63mm
  2. vertical shifted image using an old Mamiya 645 Sekor C 50mm shift lens
  3. single keystone corrected image using the GF 32-64 @44mm

All RAF files were imported to Lightroom and exported directly as DNG files. Alternatively you can use Adobe DNG Converter or Irident X-Transformer for the conversion.

RAW development were done in Capture One Pro 9.3. As long as Phase One is not willing to support the RAF files natively, the DNG conversion is the only way to get Capture One to work with the GFX RAW files. I have not update to version 10 of C1 yet, because with the latest version you have to fiddle the EXIF meta data. Phase One actively blocked this camera model in the latest version to protect their camera business.

Another problem with Capture One is that the DNG files do not have the correct color profile, resulting dark and dull images. To solve this I have used the GFX 50s ICC profile from Ken Dun Photography’s website. Additional adjustments were done on the final images: increased saturation, recovered highlights and shadows, added a bit of clarity. Using Capture One’s automatic buttons gives a good starting point for these adjustments.

Panoramic Head and GF 32-64 @63mm

These six images were exported to 16bit TIFF files and loaded in a new PTGui Pro document. Clicking „Align Images“ let PTGui to analyse the images to search for matching control points for sticking the images together and displays a preview of the panorama. In the „Panorama Editor“ I have corrected the perspective and cropped the image. Clicking „Create panorama“ let you specify the file type and settings. The setting were 16bit TIFF file, with packed bits compression and no alpha channel. C1 can’t handle TIFF files containing an alpha channel.

Stitching 6 image in of PTGui Pro

The resulting image has a resolution of 11094 x 8501 pixel (94MP). This image were cropped in C1 to the desired size and some little more adjustment were done.

3 by 2 stitched and keystone corrected image using a panoramic head and the GF 32-64 @63mm

Pros

  • High resolution result
  • Very good Image quality
  • Big field of view
  • Works with all kind of lenses (primes and zooms)

Cons

  • Additional gear needed
  • Time consuming process
  • Keystone correction downgrades possible image quality
  • Tripod recommended

Mamiya Sekor Shift C 50mm lens

Using a shift lens is the classic way for architectural photography solving the problem of perspective correction. The problem with the new Fujifilm GFX 50s is, that there is no native shift lens yet.

I’ve got the Mamiya Sektor C 50mm shift lens from eBay for 550 Euro. With the Fotodiox Pro M645-GFX adapter this lens fits on the GFX 50s.

Mamiya 645 Sekor C 50mm shift lens

Mamiya 645 Sekor C 50mm/f4.0 @ f11 shift lens 10mm vertical shifted

Pros

  • State of the art perspective control
  • Less time consuming process compared to panoramic head solution

Cons

  • Poor image quality
  • Tripod recommended

Keystone corrected single image @44mm

Single shot keystone corrected image GF 32-64@44mm, ISO 100, 1/30, f13

Pros

  • Shooting handheld possible
  • Most less time consuming process 

Cons

  • Keystone correction downgrades image quality

Image Quality

The following gallery shows 100% crops from the upper right corner of the building:

The image quality of the pano is the best one followed by the single shot at @44mm. The IQ of the Mamiya lens is worse and not acceptable for a modern medium format camera.

Conclusion

In the end I prefer the solution using a panoramic head. The image quality is the best of all. I can shoot exteriors with my preferred focal length of 63mm (50mm full frame equivalent) wich gives the most natural field of view. It’s the most time consuming process, but it’s worth the result.

The simple one shot and keystone corrected result is also acceptable. This solution is simple and the most less time consuming way. You can avoid problems with ghosting and shooting handheld is possible.

The Mamiya shift lens is only acceptable for low resolution images. The IQ especially in the corners is really bad. Maybe I’ll give an Contax 645 Zeiss 35mm lens in conjunction with a shift adapter a try, but this will be a quite expensive way. 1.000 Euro for a used lens from eBay and additional 450 Euro for a Mirex adapter is not a cheap experiment.

Based on the panorama created from six images, I have used this source for retouching. It was done completely in Affinity Photo. I prefer this software over Photoshop, because it’s more easy to use and the recovery brush works very well in most situations. I was able to remove the street light on the left side just by masking it out.

3×2 Panorama GF 32-64 @64mm retouched

Kampagne für Udelhofen Immobilien Bonn

Ende Januar 2014 fand für Udelhofen Immobilien Bonn ein Foto-Shooting für eine Business Kampagne statt.

Anlass war der Bezug der neuen Geschäftsräume in Sankt Augustin durch die Tomescheit GmbH und die am 13. März 2014 stattfindende Neueröffnung der Schokowelt Sankt Augustin.

Business Kampagne für Udelhofen Immobilien Bonn

Business Kampagne für Udelhofen Immobilien Bonn

Die Schokowelt Tomescheit GmbH bietet auf ca. 300 m² Verkaufsfläche köstliche Schokoladenspitzenprodukte weltweit bekannter, namhafter Hersteller an, die das Herz des Schokoladenliebhabers höher schlagen lassen. Wer große Mengen günstig einkaufen möchte ist hier ebenso willkommen, wie derjenige, der hervorragende Qualität zum günstigen Preis erwerben mag. Im umfangreichen Sortiment befinden sich ebenso Textilien wie Handtaschen, Mützen und Jacken der Firma Milka und vieles mehr.

Schaufensterwerbung Udelhofen Immobilien und Sushi Circle Bonn

Für Udelhofen Immobilien Bonn fand am 11. Oktober 2013 im Restaurant Sushi Circle in Frankfurt am Main eine Fotosession mit Günter Udelhofen und Christian Kutschera statt.

Sushi Circle

Dieses Foto dient während der Umbauarbeiten als Schaufensterwerbung für die neue Filiale des Unternehmens Sushi Circle in der Friedrichstraße 26 in Bonn.