When I do Renderings at work I usually have a 24h-48h turn around time. Meaning I have around one work day to prep the image, render it overnight at my house, and then make a few Photoshop adjustments first thing in the morning. This really doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for adjusting and refining things, and can lead to some pretty shabby looking photo realistic renderings. I technique I have started using to help cover up some of my ruff edges and save time is using Instagram and toy camera Photoshop actions (http://dbox.tumblr.com/post/5426249009/instagram-filters-as-photoshop-actions). The instagram actions add various noise filters and colors that help hide the noise caused by not having enough rendering time in Maxwell, and they help to blend the photoshoped elements with the rendered model. When you build a pristine perfectly crafted model you want to shoot it with a nice DLR (Pure Maxwell Render) and really show off your craft, but when you make a few mistakes and have a few ruff edges you might be better off using your Hogla (instagram actions) to shoot some slighly blurrier, but extra fun images.
Below are a couple examples of some recent renders pre instrgram action and post instagram action.
This style of renderings has really become popular. I like it a lot, and I think you make a great connection to DSLR and Holgas. and If you want to see some really great renders, check out this company dbox, the guys who made these PS actions. (although it may make you feel worthless because they are amazing) or inspire you.
Side note: I think these are very nice renderings. You have done a fantastic job fitting them into the photograph. Im convinced.
Pretty neat. The instagram action definitely takes away some of the pressure to have a perfect image (and model) although in this case, they look pretty good either way; it took a bit of searching to decide what was real and cg in some places. There is something fishy with the scale or positioning with the white car and the building though…
I actually fixed the problem with the car in Later set of renderings (another option for the building that I personally like much less) for this project…..I totally missed seeing the car until I was almost done photoshoping and then couldn’t really fix it I just had to laugh about it.