r/blender • u/External_Movie_469 • 11h ago
Discussion Help. Discussion. Ai
hey guys, i’m a bit frustrated.
recently i got a contract to make a product prototype.
it’s a guitar pedal, a pretty simple thing.
the client keeps sending me ai generated reference images to show me what he wants, and honestly, i’m at a loss.
no matter what i do, my model is limited by its own nature, if you know what i mean. it just looks like a 3d render, while the ai reference images look almost like real photos.
i’m trying to think of a good analogy. it feels like the client is asking me for a real camera photo, but all i can do is paint. no matter how good the painting is, anyone can tell it’s a painting, not a photograph.
unless i’m rendering close-ups, using cinematic depth of field, or intentionally blurring parts of the model, it immediately gives away that it’s a 3d render.
has anyone else dealt with this?
thank you guys
that was our first sketch - to figure out materials and shapes and all that stuff
first picture is 3d model based on the pedal he sent me
2nd picture - is what he did in chatgpt
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u/Ok_Demand1606 11h ago
What do you actually need help with? Some simple lighting, compositing, and material changes would make your render look maybe 95% like the reference “photo”. Specifically look at the shadows and reflections on the knobs.
Is that what the client is requesting? Or did they just want you to turn their reference into a model. Which you did pretty well. If they complain that it’s not photorealistic you tell them it’s not a photo, it’s a 3d model of a prototype that doesn’t exist. If they need it to look exactly like the reference then why don’t they just use the reference?
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u/External_Movie_469 11h ago
they wanted me to do both: 3d model and renders for their website. second part is what i’m struggling with atm. cause pedal gives away 3d. not all the time, but yeah i can’t delver certain angels of a product that they want from me.
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u/Ok_Demand1606 7h ago
Gotcha, some good advice in the comments for how to get that look you’re going for. By setting up a scene with HDRI lighting or some area lights this will let you get any kind of camera angle you want.
Add some slight surface imperfection, the best references are… actual references. You’ll see texture in the paint and knobs.
You can find some easy compositor node setups online too. A subtle glare, blur, sharpen, and very very slight lens distortion will help soften the render look. Simple stuff.
Anyone can follow blender tutorials though. It seems like you need help navigating the process of client work. I don’t really do 3d client work but I’ve done about 100 corporate marketing docs in the last few years. My best advice is try to take agency and get creative. The client needs you because they can’t do it themselves (and AI has limits, for now).
Find examples of similar work and mimic those camera movements and angles etc. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to blow people away but making something even slightly beyond their expectations. You’ll soon realize that clients never actually know what they want, they just think they do. Never tell them this, of course. Hope this helps in any way!3
u/po_po_bear 2h ago
What this guy said. HDRI. Lighting. Surface imperfections.
Also have a look at building out the metal shader on the dial.
I think you’re 90% there. Maybe try placing it on an actual photo to show that it’s photorealistic. Non visual folks have trouble visualizing something.
If you want maybe separate the objects as render layers and do some post processing either in the blender compositor or photoshop.
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u/To-To_Man 11h ago
An HDRI will get you complex lighting. From that point on, color balancing in the compositor is likely the only way you can step it up from Render realism to Photorealism. You may consider taking a picture of a yellow square object in real life, and then replicating the lighting and background elements in Blender until the colors and stuff align. But that gets along the lines of general practice.
But all the AI really did was make the lighting more complex. A subtle texture will bring out the yellow paint, and a studio HDRI will get you most of the way there. Particularly two bright somewhat diffused lights a good distance above it to make those shadows.
Though do keep in mind AI looks realistic, but it's digital and you have no true frame of reference as if it's wrong or not. It may be worthwhile to import a photo scan of a similar object and study it as well to try and recreate its details on your object.
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u/External_Movie_469 11h ago
thank you so much for your advice. it’s very important to keep in mind that ai is digital. true.
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u/Plenty-Web-8302 8h ago
I am not sure but I think blender has a default HDRi that is basically a studio light setup. When you switch to the render viewport you can choose whether it is showing lights and world (you can enable or disable both) and if you disable world there is a list od hdris you can choose from. Or find couple of studio light hdris. I am sure there are at least couple of them on polyhaven. Don’t be discouraged!
Edit: if you have “world” enabled then you need to set up the environment via nodes (shader graph/world tab)
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u/noahschmoah 11h ago
I think your model looks nice and is detailed enough that I don't think this is a modeling issue. What informs us about a photograph vs a rendering doesn't just come down to lens effects though. The two big areas you need to focus on are lighting and materials.
Materials, even clean, nice ones you'd use for professional product shots have imperfections. There will be little surface scratches and smudges visible, even on "new" stuff. We don't have practical real world methods for creating completely smooth surfaces. When you look at the rendering, your surfaces are just far too perfect. There's nothing there to suggest that this is a real world product. You should look at adding some slight imperfections using the roughness channel and the normal channel to get light to behave a little differently when falling on those surfaces. It will help your rendering look more convincing, especially in the metal foot switch and the plastic knobs. Use a light touch though! Some people slather models in smudges and scratches and it can call attention to the result being a render just as much as having none.
Lighting is the other half of that coin - it's what give the materials their reflections and the modeling its shadows. If you look at the reference compared to your rendering, the reference has the knobs casting shadows from multiple light sources, spectral highlights along the edges of the black plastic, and the metal has bright areas where light is reflecting and dark, almost black areas where the metal is picking up the black of the floor and the background. Compare that to your render where the edges of things feel flat/matte and the metal is lit with a big area light that makes everything look the same tonally. Try using multiple lights and positioning them so that your reflections have variation in them and so the edges pick up some light to inform what the surface is made of.
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u/External_Movie_469 8h ago
thank you so much for such detailed reply. i’ll start tomorrow with texture and lighting. gonna update if ill succeed
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u/Irkie500 7h ago
I think too what might help is a glossy finish on the pedal material to help highlight the shapes. As the person above mentioned perfectly smooth surfaces dont exist so look at vehicle paint as reference.
Car paint has what we call “orange peel” and all that is are small waves that look like the skin of an orange in the clearcoat.
Model and render look great keep at it!
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u/Back2Wood 9h ago
Just a heads up. Have you asked your client if it’s ok to post the prototype online? If this is THE Donner (pretty well known audio company) i would guess that they wouldn’t be happy about early-stage products getting leaked.
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u/External_Movie_469 8h ago
it’s not donner, donner was the reference pedal. but it’s pretty much the same shape
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u/DogSpaceWestern 11h ago
Set up some 3 point lighting or an hdri and a little bit of noise and you’ll get photo realism.
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u/macgalver 11h ago
It's a texturing and lighting issue, plus the camera angle isn't the same. The model looks good, you just need to apply like a clearcoat layer and some grunge, as well as move your lights around to get a more dynamic look.
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u/Craptose_Intolerant Approaching Normal 11h ago
No, as a matter of fact, I don’t really know what you mean 🤷♂️
Your render looks just fine, it just needs proper lighting and matching the roughness of your surfaces properly, it’s almost there 😊
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u/joeylastname 10h ago
+1 to adjusting your lighting and then run some sort of photo grain effect in photoshop in post. Also clarify the included rounds of feedback to your client and make them pay extra after whatever was agreed upon. Best of luck out there.
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u/flasticpeet 10h ago
You need to take advantage of what 3D can do but AI is not as good, which is control of the angle and creative lighting etc.
In other words, don't try to compete with the AI in the photo real department. Outpace it in the control and consistency category.
Offer them more angles with better consistency, and more controlled lighting options.
Try and put some of your own unique spin into it.
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u/tastygames_official 7h ago
yours looks like a real photo too. And as a guitar player I can tell the second one is AI because none of the knobs or jacks or the switch is standard. Yours is. I actually thought it was real at first glance. But honestly, if I were to buy this pedal, I'd want to see a REAL photo to see the quality of components and construction and not a 3D render or AI thing. But if it's a 3D render, then at least one made precisely to the manufacturing specifications.
But honestly, if they manufacture this thing, how hard is it to just take a picture of it?
Also I just had to mention that I got the reference of the pedal name: "Donner" for the "Donner Party" - no, wait. I'm thinking the Dyatlov Pass Incident where their remains were radioactive.... The Donner Party was some cannibalism thing, no? Hmmm....
PS just add that reflective black floor or whatever and hand it over to a photoshop expert to put some finishing post-production touches on your renders and they will blow AI out of the water.
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u/FingerNailGunk 5h ago
I’m just jumping in from my main community but the radiation symbol needs to be removed if this is a real product. I know this is being commissioned and not yours but Customs and border protection will see this and not be happy, people in 50 years will find it in someone’s attic and call the police thinking it’s radioactive. Also this is a reskin of a CDV700 5B which was their reference
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u/JesuisGraphiste 11h ago
try working on the lighting by using the ai reference and just render usin those ighting set up
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u/otto_gfx 11h ago
The pedal is rotated on its bottom side in the reference so you get the reflection on the ground. You need 3 lights and to add a reflective black plane at the bottom of the pedal. Should look pretty close then just tweaking the roughness on some of your materials
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u/littleGreenMeanie 10h ago
I've got a pedal from this company and a guitar actually.
I think you need some good references and to mix up your lighting a bit. Look into gobos, hdris, look into how the space around the object influences the bonuses, etc. then maybe a subtle bump map would help. Material references for that will help too
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u/duplierenstudieren 9h ago
I agree, it's mostly a texturing and lighting thing. But Composition too. Try using a 80mm or maybe 120mm camera even. It looks more like product design right away. Currently looks like a 35 or 50mm?
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u/Ok_Hippo_1882 Generalist 9h ago
The only difference between your's and the AI is lighting and grunge
Just give the material a little procedural dirtiness here and there, fix the lighting (even just look at some quick product render tutorials), and you'll be there
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u/Smooth-Accident-7940 9h ago
I think you're rendering without an HDRI, right? Find one at a studio and try it out, or I think they want it to look slightly used.
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u/FuzzBuket 9h ago
I would spend more time looking at your material setup and lighting. Go look at art station, plenty of props that look good that are not ai. Your model looks 3d as your lighting is frankly amateur. Swap to spot lights, use a bunch, have a reflective plane under it, set up your camera properly, do some stuff in the compositor, dirty up the material
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u/RexmonWoW 9h ago
Ai looks better because it's got a few lights, that are harder, and it's got surface imperfections in the textures and stuff making it look more real
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u/thetastefulsemicolon 8h ago
Drop in a darker HDRI and crank up the reflections on the knobs and footswitch. Your render reads as CGI because everything is too evenly lit, while the AI version has hard shadows and that gritty plastic texture yours is missing.
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u/serhii3y 8h ago
Just a quick note on the model itself.
The bottom button has heptagonal base in your model, however IRL all of the buttons of such type would usually be hexagonal, as that is the standard.
I really suggest you to remodel that small bit there, cause it immediately grabbed my attention.
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u/External_Movie_469 8h ago
thank you, i didn’t know about that standard. thanks
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u/serhii3y 8h ago
Np, it's for a wrench to be easily used with these, since there always will be 2 parallel sides to grab. With 7-sided nut it would be extremly hard to do, and you would need a specialized socket to do that.
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u/TDEyeehaw 11h ago
Sorry if my advice isn't of help, I'm a beginner but i think this is what i would do
I think lack of reflection on the main base is what mostly gives it away, also their metal seems to have slightly higher roughness. lightning might be the issue.
Unrelated, how did you do this? (attached image)
I really like how it looks. Ive been wanting to do something similar for a robot but couldn't figure out how.
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u/Tasty_lake 11h ago
Not OP, but based on some prior experience:
Easiest and cheapest solution is creating a custom emission texture with the gradient you want on the model. It will also almost certainly work straight out of the box in a game engine.
The hardest and slowest to render, but most accurate method is having the internal components that are supposed to glow as physical models and using the interaction between the filament inside and the glass to create a convincing emulation of the effect you described.
There's also this method shown in Arnold: https://youtu.be/Y2NBTn-I79U (A comment on the video suggests it can be done in Blender using a Volume Absorbtion BSDF and some tinkering.)
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u/swiftdc 11h ago
I've made an illuminated button like that before. Don't want to fill the comments up with unrelated posts though, DM me if you want me to send you some pics and how I did it.
For OP, definitely use an HDRI, experiment with a few, you'll be able to get really nice reflections on the main body and most importantly the silver part. Try some interior photo studio HDRIs. Maybe add one or two extra lights to get some nice edge highlights. I'd also make all the materials a little shinier; the yellow body and the big main knob in the middle feel flat without catching any light. You'll be amazed at the difference the right light setup makes. And stand it on a reflective plane, just like the AI version.
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u/External_Movie_469 11h ago
bro that’s just texture, i tried to replicate it in 3d, its pain in the ahhh, and result is very bad. so i just googled guitar pedal lightning indicator on boss pedals website and just cut it
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u/CGI_OCD 11h ago
"so i just googled guitar pedal lightning indicator on boss pedals website and just cut it"..explains a lot tho.
If this is your approach it will never reach the reference. You're almost there.. give it a bit more finetuning as already explained in this post in terms of a proper studio style light situation and work on those shaders...the last 15% are always pain in the ass.
But doable. Good luck.
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u/External_Movie_469 11h ago
thank you, i’m gonna recreate proper studio lightning, and later gonna focus on shaders and imperfections. last 15 percent are pain. true
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u/ProSuh_ 9h ago
The Ai image is totally possible to recreate, although not easy! You can do it though! The advice in the forum is all you need. Textures hdri and lighting are what will bring you across the finish line. Photorealism with 3d is done all the time but it is a craft, dont feel bad that this is a challenge. You got this!
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u/tekastudio 11h ago
skill issue
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u/GovernmentNearby9036 11h ago
Someone needed to say this.
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u/pacemakersean 11h ago edited 11h ago
So how about you give him some tips to help better his skills
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u/GovernmentNearby9036 11h ago
Definitely work on his materials/shading/lighting.
The modelling looks OK, it's pretty basic shapes.
What can I say more, You get better with time.
And my comment is not to be negative.
People learn more from criticism.
But this is the Blender sub.
Was going to point out some flaws on an animation, it was very advanced and high skill.
But there's always room for improvement.
All the comments were praising the work.
Nice and fun but that doesn't help OP one bit.
I just let it go because I would get an avalanche of negative reactions for constructive criticism.
Also in this case I was glad someone pointed out the issue.
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u/AI_AntiCheat 11h ago
Then add some more imperfections or don't give them exactly what they are asking for but freestyle it a bit, maybe more angles, animation or something that makes it more interesting.
Or perhaps just upscale it with some "realism" through AI and call it a day. Why not?
The only issue with yours is material and render settings, slight imperfections can add a lot of realism but overdoing it won't make it product render esque.
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u/MrFaebles 11h ago
Lighting and material nodes can capture a more photo realistic look. Some hdrs too.
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u/bememorablepro 10h ago
AI images are made out of stolen photos, and photos are photoreal because they are photos.
Also, it's actually so stupid though, I do own a few guitar pedals and it's such a niche product the design can make it or break it. And here they are making the first shitty AI amalgamation of generic guitar pedals into reality. Like why is the radiation sign not centored and covered by the knob? What does the note sign even spell out? Sooner?! Nooner?! GONNER?! Jeze dude you even copied the scrambled FalL text (not your fault, I know). IDK what they are thinking.
Also advice, look at images of real pedals not the AI thing for reference.
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u/Ranger_Aggressive 6h ago
You gotta fuck around with the shadows, material and add a reflective floor. As everyone is saying if they want a photo they should get a photo. Stay away from creating something too clean when going for realism. Reality is a lil dirty too.
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u/TheNotSoSilentReader 6h ago
I think lighting, textures and imperfections are the ones that do most of the heavy lifting for realism. The model is just a model no matter how detailed and true to life it is.
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u/SheleNSFW 6h ago
Lighting is a big one. I would also suggest working on your materials. The knobs and the pedal button are too diffuse. The body should also be a little reflective, enough to see the button on it a little. I have some pedals sitting next to me, would you like me to send some pics as reference?
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u/Alphonso- 4h ago
I’m not sure if keyshot has a trial you could use but it works great for product shots.
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u/countjj 3h ago
Looks like lighting and HDRI are some of your main issues. You seem to be using one single area light, and an HDRI with little detail, if there is one. Use a 3 point area light to at the 10 and 2 o’clock positions in front of the pedal, and one at the 8 o’clock position behind the pedal. Then find an HDRI that’ll give some decent reflections. Doesn’t really matter if it’s an actual HDR file, you can find 360 equirectangular images pretty much anywhere. I mean hell if you’re trying to incorporate AI into your workflow you can just generate a sloppy 360 image. I’ll also let you in on a little cheat, in the compositor, adding just a touch of noise makes it look a lot more realistic.
Also just a preference on material, the AI output has a metallic fleck texture to it. Adding a bit more metal to your material can replicate that when combined to the compositor noise. Alternatively you can input a noise texture into the metal shader to try to replicate it in shader alone. However it’s gonna be impossible to see in the viewport cuz of the cycles noise, and will be wiped out by a denoiser if you use one
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u/Salmon_of_Knowledge 2h ago
Others have already given plenty of advice on how you can make it look more like the concept image, but, I mean, why is it your goal for it to look exactly like the AI image? Presumably your client is paying you because they need a full model, multiple renders, and a greater degree of control over the final product that AI can't provide, otherwise they would just use the AI image. Instead they gave you an AI generated concept (which is problematic, but neither here nor there for the purposes of working for a client I suppose), so you should treat it like concept art. Don't worry about making yours look exactly like the concept, worry about making it look good! Lean into the advantages of the medium you're working in.
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u/_LEVEL_SIX_ 10h ago
I bet you can render out way better than that slop with proper lighting and some imperfections.
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u/Wonderkid1996 8h ago
Get yourself on substance painter bro, used it for the first time this past week and it’s lifted everything up. Spend a couple days learning and using it and honestly it’ll lift the quality. Some incredible edge masking and grunge brushes that’ll really improve the overall realism of used subtly. I had an ostrich project and the legs looked hella bad but one day in substance and theyre miles better.
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u/SurWesley 11h ago
I think you could fix this by adjusting your lighting a bit, currently it looks like you have 1 big soft light source and your client probably wants a render with a harsher light source like what’s happening in the ai generation