Mountain House Exterior

[luisgamino2]

Hi DanSHP

That was a Nice work with Photoshop, You really enhanced the image.

Materials, vegetation, the SKY, colors look so much better, with 10 min. The render looks so much better i really liked how right now the Wood looks.

Also i really liked the constrast You did in Photoshop it feels more depth.

I don't use too much Photoshop but i agree here sometimes can be a real tool to enhance the render.

I use camara raw with Photoshop danSHP to give some little details to the render.

I'm not an expert on Photoshop and probably later i'm going to take some lessons to really understand how can i use Photoshop in a harder skill.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Well this has sort of taken on a life of it's own.

I had to make some revisions per architect and his clients. they speced out some different stone and siding, up-sized some of the timber truss members, adjusted the timber wood tone. modified the chimney and other less noticeable things. Plus I shot a new background photo.

I tried to incorporate all of the helpful suggestions and etc from you all. Here is what I have arrived at.

Thanks again to all who commented and any other feedback is welcome as always.

[glorybound]

I would add a hint of blue to the glass, and you'll be golden. Good job! Maybe warm it up a little.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Hi Bobby. It was helped by your previous comment re glass. I am guilty of often accepting the result vray compiles and not trying to overide it very much.

That said with the glass I have now realized that sky map in environment or light dome reflects in the glass with a brightness at etc that is not so good. Surrounding the entire model with another environment would change that but time consuming to set that when it will never actually be seen.

Using cryptomatte render element I added an exposure adjust to the glass in the VFB. I love that cryptomatte and vfb layer adjustment capabilities. I actually, again implementing your previous advice, tried to add some blue with another hue/saturation VFB adjustment. Did not get the even better effect you show above.

Thanks x 10!

[fixeighted]

That is a marked improvement (pun intended )
I still think some of the shadows could be darker but it's arguable...

The glass as we know makes a huge difference and this version shows that.
You can always put random stuff, trees, extra houses that would be opposite for example (invisible to camera) or image planes, wherever
they need to be in order to get stuff reflected that the hdr cannot provide. Cheap and fast.

In this example you can also add some of the foreground vegetation from the original photo and mix that in to give the hue variation that's a bit lacking.
Personally I think it's important to leave the original photo untouched at first, so as to keep that separation of the milkier background and more saturated foreground.
If the house is then matched to the foreground it beds in better, then all other corrections are tweaked on top of the whole.

That said, I had a horrible job last week that needed matching to this disgusting photo, which is just all over the place in terms of nastiness.
I kind of gave up in the end trying to fix it. A case of garbage in/garbage out.
I won't show the result unless you force me...it was not great

[seandunderdale]

It is such an improvement over the first render you showed, ou should be very proud of the progress. The trees, and ground greenery look so so much better. The removed clouds help, with some gradient in the blue.Tree placement is better, but I wonder if there were one of two really close to camera, at the edge, with blur on it, to really sell a foreground object and pull you into the shot....anyway, just a thought. Overall a huge step up.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Mr Fixeighted (Bert?), thanks again for your ongoing help! I have put image planes, trees and etc off camera to show in window reflections, cast shadows etc. It is somewhat time consuming, esp the image planes used for reflection, but not a deal breaker. It did not make sense on this one. A very open sky with far distant trees kind of surrounds the area behind the camera.

Sean, many thanks also to you! I like your idea about a foreground tree on the left. They do not plan to plant a tree there, not sure if the architect would possibly be concerned the approval board might pick up on that. If there is another round of revisions (quite possible) I will probably do that and see if it sticks. Thanks again, your valuable comments are a great help!