The Quasi-Clay Style

The Quasi-Clay Style by Oliver Shea

The image I am using for this tutorial is part of a housing project I am presently working on. We are going to try and achieve a fake or ‘Quasi – Clay Style’ effect in this tutorial. For this tutorial I used Podium as my choice of render application, but you can use anyone you prefer for your raw render image. You will also need Google SketchUp and Photoshop.

1. Open up your model in SketchUp.

2. In the SketchUp Styles window set the line Extension to between 3 and 5.  Set Front/Back face colour to light grey. Set Background colour to very light grey (never use absolute white for renders). Now paint your windows a darker grey and add a very small amount of reflectivity if desired. Highlight certain areas by using deeper grays/colour if you like. See settings in below images:

3. In the SketchUp Shadows window Display Shadows. Set Time and Date to compliment your scene. Set the Dark slider to between 8 and 15 (this affects the sun strength in Podium). Check “Use sun for shading” (this produces soft shadows in Podium).

4. Now open SU Podium. Make sure you have the latest version. Set Render Size to at least Viewport Resolution. Set Quality and Smoothness to Full. Select the  2_quality.xml preset. Click Render and wait for it to finish. Now change preset to “Black and White.xml” to create a mask of your render.

5. Now change the SketchUp Face Style to “Hidden Line”. Turn off Shadows. Change Background Colour from very light grey to white. Export image at twice your Viewport Resolution (this will give crisper lines). See settings in below images:

6. You should now have a raw render, line export and mask to begin the next step.

Raw Render

Line Export

Mask

7. Open up Photoshop or similar image editing software. Open the render, line export and mask. Copy and paste the line export over your render. Resize (accurately) and change blending mode to “Multiply”. Your layers should look like this:

Set Blend Mode to Multiply

8. As you can see, the render is quite flat in tone. We need to adjust the levels to create a more contrasting image. Select your render layer and create a new adjustment layer (levels). Check “Use previous layer to create clipping mask”. Up the whites and lower the blacks. See images below:

Create Adjustment Layer

Check ‘Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask’

Increase the Whites and Lower the Blacks

9. Now open up your render mask. Copy and paste over your other layers.

10. Select the white using “select color range” tool.

11. Now, while the sky is selected, select you render layer and create new adjustment layer again, but this time choose “Gradient…”. Check “Reverse” when you get the option. Change the opacity of this layer to around 35% (opacity depends on your scene).

Set Opacity at 35%

12. Now create another gradient over you render layer. Change the blending mode of this layer to “Soft Light” and opacity to around 40% (again, opacity depends on your scene).

Set Blend Mode to Soft Light and Opacity to 40%

Result

13. Merge the gradient layers to your render layer when you are happy with the results.

14. Create New Layer. Fill White. Go to Filter>Distort>Lens Correction. Adjust vignette level. When you are happy, change the blending mode of this layer to multiply with opacity around 60-80% (again, opacity depends on your scene).

Blend Mode to Multiply and Opacity to 62%

15. Your image is nearly finished. You may want to add more variation to the line export layer to give a more hand-drawn impression. In SketchUp, change the line extension to 30 and export another “Hidden Line” image of your scene. Place this second line export over your image and erase some parts here and there. This step is not completely necessary but it ’softens’ the transition between line and render. Change opacity to suit your scene.

16. Now do some final levels/contrast adjustment to make image more ‘punchy’. You may want to add some more gradients/overlays to balance the image. Also, a high pass filter overlay can help bring out some lost details.

17. Select the render layer.  Add noise (Filter>Noise>Add Noise…) try 2 % monochromatic gaussian noise or less (don’t use too much). This step is vital.

18. You can also add some warmth to the image using Photo Filter or ColorAdd. Finally add a border to finish the image.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and find it useful in your workflow and presentations.

Oliver Shea

Here are a few example images of Oliver’s work. They show different ways of using his style with and without textures/colour.

Images Courtesy of Nicol Thomas Architects