How to create realistic puddle road or wet paving in VRay 3.4 for SketchUp

In this tutorial, you will learn how to render wet paving or puddle road image in V-Ray 3.4 for SketchUp. This particular render technique is applicable for rainy scene, sunset view scene or night scene with strong vibrancy of colored street lights or car lights reflected on wet paving. For this tutorial, I would like to render a roof parking area with wet paving for demonstration purposes.

SETTING UP YOUR BACKGROUND

STEP 1: Set-up your background scene by adding HDRI. Here, I used the HDRI ‘Rooftop Night’ from ‘HDRI Haven’. Follow the setting for adding HDRI in the scene. Go to’ VRay Asset Editor’> ‘Settings’> ’Environment’> ’Background’> change the value of ‘background’ to 20> expand the option selection> select ‘Bitmap’> then load your HDRI> under ‘UW’ change the setting from UVWGenChannel to UVWGenEnvironment> under the ‘Mapping Spherical type’ change the value of horizontal rotation based on your preferred angle view.

HDRI ‘Rooftop Night’ preview from HDRI Haven

STEP 2: Still in the HDRI settings, Change the value of ‘GI (Skylight)’ to 20. Then expand the ‘Environment Overrides’> enable the ‘GI (Skylight)’> click the loading option> select the ‘Bitmap’> then choose your preferred HDRI. 

STEP 3: Go to ‘Lights’ and disable the ‘Sunlight’. We don’t want our HDRI to be overpowered by the VRay Skylight when we proceed to rendering.

SETTING UP YOUR MODEL

STEP 1: Set-up your SketchUp scene by adding a plane surface. Under ‘Shapes’>’Rectangle’, draw a plane surface.  Later, during the render process, this will serves as a base for wet paving texture, rendered using VRay 3.4

STEP 2: Select the plane surface model, using the SketchUp ‘Material tool box’ select and apply concrete material to the model.

STEP 3: Go to VRay ‘Asset Editor> ‘Materials’ and select the material you applied to your plane model which is the ‘polished concrete old’. Under ‘VRayBRDF’, go to ‘Diffuse’ and click the ‘load image'. Under ‘Bitmap’> ‘File’ click the ‘Open file’ icon then select a more realistic concrete texture. If necessary, go to SketchUp ‘Material Dialogue box’> ‘Edit’> change the dimension value.

Concrete texture from istockphoto

STEP 4: Under ‘VRayBRDF’, go to ‘Reflection’ and change to color surface from black to white by extending the level. 

STEP 5: For entourage, add 3-D cars to the scene. The 3D cars are available in 3D warehouse.

Test Render: Find an appropriate view and save the scene. Run a test render. As you can see the reflection of the concrete paving is very strong. Hence, we are going to add reflection glossiness with appropriate texture.

METHOD 1 (adding puddle road map using BITMAP)

STEP 1: Under ‘VRayBRDF’, go to ‘Reflection Glossiness’ then click the ‘load image’ icon. Expand the loading selection and select ‘Bitmap.

STEP 2: Select the appropriate map texture available in the folder. Here, we will be using the puddle road map. During the rendering process, in order to visibly notice the puddle road map, you have to change the size of the diffuse texture in SketchUp. Here, go to SketchUp ‘Material Dialogue box’ and change the dimension size of the concrete texture by increasing the value. Here, the size of the puddle road map from the 'Reflection Glossiness' is relative to the diffuse texture (concrete paving texture) from the SketchUp model. When done, click the render button for test render.

Sample map texture ‘Puddles road map’

Result so far using BITMAP

METHOD 2 (adding puddle road map using FALLOFF)

STEP 1: Under ‘VRayBRDF’, go to ‘Reflection Glossiness’ then click the ‘load image’ icon. Expand the loading selection and select ‘Falloff’

STEP 2: Under ‘Falloff’> ‘General’> ‘Color 2’, click the ‘load image’. Click the ‘Bitmap’ and select the appropriate map texture available in the folder. Here, we will be using the puddle road map. 

Sample map texture ‘Puddles road map’ 

STEP 3: Still on the ‘Bitmap’, under ‘Manipulation’, check the ‘Invert texture’. When done, click ‘back’.

Result so far using FALLOFF

RENDER SETTINGS

STEP 1: Under VRay ‘Settings’> “Camera’, change the parameters for ‘Standard camera’ with the following value: (1) Film Sensitivity (ISO) from 100 to 120, Aperture (F number from 8 to 7, Shutter speed (1/s) from 300 to 260. To enhance your render image during post-production, add appropriate render elements for the scene such as denoiser, raw reflection, raw total light, Material ID, and Object ID. When done, click the render button. 

Final Render Image with render elements

My other works with wet paving or puddle road

THANK YOU FOR READING!