Here is a slowed-down version of the breakdown you saw on our socials, explaining what was done and (maybe) giving some useful tips.
The idea was to take a new shot of an existing project to reduce the time spent preparing the 3D model.
We wanted to do an overcast shot and we started by looking for pictures that could inspire us in terms of colors and environment. We opted for the following one, a shot taken by Alex Berger, a great photographer and friend.
That done, we went back to 3Ds Max and placed a camera. We wanted this dynamic effect so we did not straighten the lines and made a rough camera match, then we matched the light.
As you can see, we wanted the freedom of choosing our camera without the constraints of the picture chosen so we had to rebuild part of the environment. We only cared about the perspective, the lines, and the light so that the entire picture looked “real”.
Following this first step, we cleaned up the picture and extended the first part of the environment using the new generative fill in Photoshop. We think the best way to use this is to leave the generative fill work by itself and keep any part of the image not needed at that moment switched off. In this case, we extended the environment with the building’s layer off so that it didn’t “confuse” the generative fill. We also removed the Windmill. The following image is the result of this process.
Another useful tip is to build the extra parts in smaller pieces so that the generative fill takes into account only the relevant part of the image. In this case, we extended the environment to the left and we also wanted more foreground. We added a “slice” in the bottom part of the image.
From here we brought back some parts of the original image masking them out and addign some details that were not clean enough. In some cases it was easier to add new images rather than working on the masks.
Now the image is basically done. We just painted some extra highlight and did some color-corrections to get it where we wanted.
For the sake of showing what can be achieved in minutes with generative fill, we decided to straighten the verticals still giving room to the building. That left us with the following image.
We used PS to build both sides of the image just using the generative fill. We divided the triangles in 4 parts to retain more control but no prompts were given.
Missing just a person and some extra trees, this time old-fashioned photobashing.
We hope you found this interesting and useful! Cheers!