Making of Lake Lugano House

David Santos has set upon recreating the Lake Lugano House. A
beautifully designed house by JM Architecture that he modeled
using SketchUP 2015 and rendered with V-Ray for SketchUP v2.0 as
part of a personal study of HDRI based dusk lighting. Follow David in
this article as he takes us from start to finish on this one. Enjoy!
Read More

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April 13, 2015/54 Comments/in Making-Of, Native, Tutorials /by Ronen Bekerman

Introduction

The Lake Lugano House (Brusino Arsizio, Switzerland) project was born
out of my motivation to explore the new possibilities enabled by
SketchUp 2015 and V-Ray for SketchUP 2.0. It is a personal interpretative
study of a house, designed by JM Architecture on the shore of Lake
Lugano, Switzerland.

Photo by Peter Sieling

My goal with this project was to study dusk scenes with artificial interior
and exterior lightning, and took close to two weeks to complete. I also
attempted to achieve a photo realistic look using the built-in depth of
field feature in V-Ray for SketchUP. There was a focus on crisp and
contrast-rich images achieved thanks to the cinematography color
grading plug-in used during Photoshop post production.
The project also includes an image with cloudy sky and gold interior. The
tones seen here were mostly achieved using Photoshop.

About the House

Lying on the slope of a hill, on the shores of Lake Lugano, the villa
consists of two volumes organized on different levels due to the
particular topography of the site. A polygonal shaped glass pavilion with
rounded edges stands above a linear underground block. The living and
dining room, the kitchen and storage spaces are located in the pavilion,
while bedrooms, bathrooms and garage are in the lower level.
Each level relates itself with independent outdoor spaces, which are
closely related with the interiors. The glass pavilion overlooks two much
defined areas : the first, toward the mountain, is a very private zone
resulted in the area between the property line and the building setback
line according to the local building code. The second is a garden
overlooking the lake. In the same way, the bedrooms face a garden
enclosed by the building and the perimeter wall. The ring, obtained
between the perimeter wall above and the pavilion, amplifies the interior
space, with seems much larger than what it actually is.

Architecture : JM Architecture

Photographs : Jacopo Mascheroni

Inspired by : James Pickford

The Project

First of all, I would like to thank Ronen for the opportunity of write this
article. Its a great honor and pleasure to be showcased here on the
blog.
This project has its origin back three years ago. I was surfing the web,
searching for references about the use of HDRi lighting and I found a
project that caught my attention right away. It was the Lake Lugano
House 3d recreation by James Pickford and I said to myself that one day I
will attempt remaking this house and achieving the same kind of look in
CG.
After many commissioned projects for clients, I decide that it was time to
make a personal project. A project in which I can explore many things
that Ive learned over the years. Getting the dusk look & feel was
something I was always fascinated about since I got started with ArchVIZ
and achieving that mood where interior illumination and ambient
illumination are combined and in balance was a goal for me during this
personal project.
Once I finally got started, it was delayed due the amount of work I had
and I was unable to complete. But, after the long-awaited 64-bit
SketchUP 2015 came out, I knew that was a great time to resume this
project and test the new capabilities.

Why SketchUP?
Because I love it! SketchUP is a powerful tool that is often
underestimated, and let me show you the real power of this amazing
tool.
Like I said before, the project beginnings dates back to last year, when I
started modelling with a raw CAD drawing that I made from JPGs of the
original drawings. After a lot of tests I found the correct way of modelling
this.

Selecting the Project

Why this house?
Easy!
First time laying my eyes on it the architecture seduced me. The
simplicity of the architectural resolution is so clean and complex at the
same time. It was a challenge to give it detail and to keep it clean. The
curved glass is one of the elements that I thought was important to
resolve well along with the surroundings and exterior design. The gravel
and grass combination was a great challenge in SketchUP.
The prevailing white color and the attention to detail makes this project
a real challenge.
The process started gathering as much information as possible, starting
with the house drawings and photos.

As well as obtaining many visual references for the look & feel I was
aiming for.

Quick AutoCAD draft

Since I didnt have the original drawings and there was only a few
references, much was guessed and eyeballed.

Modeling
The Ring modeling approach

As the house doesnt have 90 degree angles, I developed (after a lot of

tests) a system in which all the parts of the house are modeled by offset
to the main glass enclosure.
As you can see in this process, the steps are :
1.

Creating a plane that is the glass enclosure.

2.

Offsetting to create perimeter beams.

3.

Follow that with the glass and roof parts.

Detailing the Geometry

Getting into the small details took time and I used three plugins to help
achieve what I aimed for :
1.

FLOOR GENERATOR to create the interior and exterior floor

pattern.

2.

ROUND CORNER to give detail to edges.

3.

FUR to scatter grass and trees.

Interior Modeling (SketchUp view, plan view)

The interior modelling was relative simple given that the architecture
itself its a lot of the project.

Exterior Modeling

The exterior modelling was achieved by the referencing photos of the

original house, with emphasis on the vegetation and gravel.

The Vegetation
Proxies used in this scene where from different
collections : Evermotion, CGAxis, Arroway Texture, and various free
sources.
The first set of V-Ray Proxies where used in the ground level. The second
group as background trees.

Materials
After the modelling part the next stage in the process is applying
materials.
This is how the model looks like in clay style.

There where three special materials I give special attention to :

Interior Wood Floor

Exterior Wood Floor

Concrete Perimeter Wall

Standard Materials
The rest of the materials were very simple, basically a Diffuse and a
Reflection layer.

Chrome is a single reflection layer material with fresnel off, and small
glossiness.

Glass Simplified Material

Gravel and Proxy Materials

Lightening
The interior illumination is a mix of IES & Sphere lights.
Interior light configuration without HDRi

Sphere Lights Settings :

Rectangular Lights Settings :

IES lights Settings :

Exterior light configuration without HDRi

Sphere lights Settings :

IES lights Settings :

Two Sided Material :

Global Illumination archived with a V-Ray Dome Light loaded with an

HDRi (1957 Dusk Clear by PETER GUTHRIE)
V-Ray Dome Light Settings :

Rendering
The Rendering Settings

VFB channels (Image of the channels)

Rendering

Framing : Photographic Composition

Below you can see what is behind the framing of the final images

Post Production
Here are the stages of the Post Production :
1.

Photoshop compositing (Screenshot layers).

2.

Correcting rendering errors (RAW render).

3.

Color correction (Comparison).

4.

Levels and brightness (Comparison).

5.

Color vision (Effects).

6.

Photographic effects (Finishing image).

Base Render
Background Added
Composition Adjustment
Color Corrections
Levels and Brightness
Color Vision and Effects 1
Photographic Effects Final