First Post - Dusk Scene

[leotchest]

I've now embedded the images so its easier to see them. Would really appreciate any suggestions for improvement on the lighting. cheers




This is WIP on a lighting study. Its a dusk scene. I started with all custom photometric lights (as specificied by the designer) but experienced random errors in terms of the lights not casting light correctly. So I have replaced most of them with vray lights, standard max lights & photometric lights on an isotropic setting (as opposed to a custom ies file). For instance, for the lighting to the wood beams + soffit, I am using a vray light to light the soffit & then an additional isotropic photometric light to light the beams. Couldnt get one light to do the job adequately! Theres about 120 lights in the scene, though rendering is not intensive on memory (only uses about 760mb ram).

Next step is probably to add trees & people (which is a shame because it will obscure a lot of the lighting). After that I have to do a night-time version.

Suggestions please ?
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[paulison]

very nice work, especially with lighting and material settings.

for evening shots i think you need to make the images a litte bit more 'blown out'. Try really cranking up the contrast slider in photoshop to see what I mean and then compare this to a photo. Also maybee the lighting shouldnt be so white (depends on the light types of course)

I think if you had a photographic foreground or much better work on the texturing (grout lines too big and texture maps on tiles look too artificial) this would help a lot but i realise the focus is on the building lighting itself so from this point of view it looks excellent to me. You could also do some kind of DOF in the foreground to keep the focus on the building?

If you decide to exaggerate the lighting levels then you will need a matching background. Currently I think your background is too dark and should go for one of those dusk blue ones with the sun on the horizon as they are more marketable even though it may not be 100% realistic.

I think vary some of the lights a bit...some on, some off. Also get a nice reflection map taken around dusk when lights are starting to come on. This reflection should be visible and consistant over all of your glass (not just the ground). At the moment it looks like you have a daytime reflection map.

For more ideas, it really pays to have reference photo's of evening dusk shots so try find some good professional quality architectural photography at dusk (I think architectural always looks slightly different to lifestyle and other photography).

Thanks for posting, it has given me a good chance to think about how to improve this kind of image (im in the same situation!). Pity there hasnt been more comments as it looks like a nice project for some people to give good tips

[priad]

Hi, nice scene.
First of all put your trees on the scene because you will remake your light settup after, your image have not enought shadows so the tree could help in this case.
I agree with Paulisson for the ground texturing, it seems non realistic.
global tint need to be blue and the shadows (sharpen but blue).
What is your exposure mapping? It seems to be linear( the dark area are too dark IMHO).
And you are near the night shot here hehe

Keep the WIP up!

[leotchest]

At last - some feedback! I am so happy to get some comments - thanks These are exactly the kind of comments I was looking for as I think they would have helped make the images that much better. Unfortunately it is too late for me to make changes though.

The foreground textures are very very weak and I definitely need to figure that out for next time. This project was done to a super low budget so I had to be careful of my hours. For the reflections I used a "stageset" with photos of neighbouring buildings applied as maps - all the surrounding buildings are quite low so you dont see them in the upper stories. I also used a reflection map of the sky - but it isnt too apparent in the rendering.
Priad - I used linear multiply with the dark multiplier set to 1.2 to brighten up some of the dark areas.[/img]

[Candelero]

Go for some different colour on the night shot... talking mainly about the lights...

This one now, looks Cold... !

Best regards,
nikki Candelero

[jujubee]

It's good work overall - just needs some minor tweaking. The cold feeling was what I felt too with the last image. The woman with short-sleeves walking by trees with few leaves is what does it.

I would take the yellow tiles, add some bump and some slight glossy to them. Also add some slight glossy to the pavement with a noise map as well. If you can take it into photoshop and slightly discolor portsion (Burn tool set to low?) that would give the foreground enoug variation.

[leotchest]

yup - i think some more non-white lights would be good. In actual fact, a lot of them are not white - they are set as 'metal halide' kelvin 3600. However, I think i could have boosted the colour a bit. I think its the white lighting on the upper level canopy that makes it a bit cold looking.
The trees are kind of spindly, not great - but its a balance between a nice tree and trying not to obscure the building behind.