lack of contrast in rendering

[max montana]

hi there,
this is my last project. first image is the rendering, second one after editing in photoshop.
especially in this interior i realsided that a lot of my interiors look very flat and dark, i only get satisfying results with a lot of post work in ps.
can someone tell me how i can rise the brightness and contrast in this rendering?
vraysun intensity mult:1,5
vray sky intensity mult: 3,0
cm: reinhard mult: 1,0, burn: 0,3, gamm:1,0
all objects with glasmaterial on`t cast or recive shadows, and are excluded from gi

very thankfull for suggestions,thx

[jacksc02]

have you tried a LWF/Gamma 2.2 approach?

[glorybound]

post

an s-curve in PhotoShop is the typical way or the same curve in After Effects for animation.

[dlparisi]

Your glass looks to be a little too white (what's the diffuse color?), is it supposed to be frosted or something? I think this is killing a lot of the contrast for everything behind the glass. If it's supposed to be this kind of glass your kind of stuck for this image, but normally the diffuse color of the glass should be almost black to give you nice reflections and see a lot of contrast behind it.

[rmejia]

I always set the Color Mapping at Linear Multiply with Dark:1 and Bright:1, as to me these produce the most contrast. Apart from that, post work in Photoshop is always a must

For interiors I also sometimes override the Environment, the GI Environment (skylight) override, raising the multiplier to brighten up the whole scene.

[max montana]

thanks for your replies,
with dlparisi`s help i realised that the glassmaterial effects the flat image.
the color of the glasmaterial was much too bright.
i made a testrender without the glassobjects and the image is quite ok.
then i ried a new glassmaterial with dark diffuse color, but the image is still flat.
what am i missing with my glasmaterialsettings?
thx

[etown]

I found by adding a bit of color to the refract slot and upping the reflection will add some more depth to the glass.

[3DMK]

vraysun intensity mult:1,5
vray sky intensity mult: 3,0

very thankfull for suggestions,thx

I would try leaving the vray sun & vray sky intensity at their default values of 1 as this will give a nice & [realistic] contrast.
By making your vray sky so bright [mult-3.0] compared to the sun you are flooding the scene with diffuse light making it loose contrast.

Hope this helps

[flino2004]

I think you have 2.2 gamma (twice)...if you final output is EXR set gamma in color mapping =1

[v_wrangler]

same guess as flino!

[3DMK]

After looking at the scene a bit more I think the glass problem is this linked to the entire scene looking a bit GI flat. I think GI is the thing causing the lack of contrast as the glass is only reflecting whats in the scene anyway.
There isn't any walls in the scene & a huge open area so light is flooding in from everywhere making the scene very evenly lit. You may need to sample the scene with higher GI setting which unfortunately means a longer render. Maybe try a vray dome light to give better GI shadows, but anyway I would also go back to the default settings for your Sun & Sky as they have been setup to be physically correct so it makes sense that they would look more natural with high contrast.
Hope this helps

[add101]

I've been having some similar issues with scenes.
What are you Vray Camera settings?
I have an idea that it might be to do with VrayCamera settings. I have gotten some improvements by experimenting with this, but quite time consuming to >change setting>render preview>change setting>render preview. V-Ray RT looks like it could help a lot with this!
So i've been changing in post (Photoshop and Vegas), but i'd definitely like to investigate more when i have some time.
SolidRocks plugin looks like it's got a preview window feature preview and adjustment for VrayCam. Something i'd also liek to look into more.
Nice images. I like the atrium.

[Pixelab]

Your glass need fresnel reflection (and reflection slot can be white 220 instead of grey) IOR is more around 1.5 (but won't change much) Diffuse color isn't important as long as you make leave 255 white in refraction slot.

To color the glass, I'd rather play with a fog color multiplied down.

[max montana]

thanks for your replies:
i used now glass with fresnel refl and the result was much better.(thanks for the hint pixelab)
i also tried your suggestions with vraysun+sky mult to 1,0, (which i alsways use in exteriors) and got a very dark amage as result.
then i tried to fix this by editing my vraycam settings
original settings:
f-number:5,0
shutter speed: 300
iso:100
and lowered the f-number to 4,0 and then 3,0 and lost alot of contrast...
to fix that i lowerde my gamma from 1,0 to 0,7 and it was better, but still too dark.
original cc-settings:
reinhard; 1,0-0,3-1,0
then i went back to vray sunmult1,5 and vraysky 3,0, rendered the image first without glass, which resulted in a nice bright rendering, then rendered the glass with the new glassmaterial with fresnel refl and composed the 2 renderings in post.
it`s not phys. correct but satisfies my needs.
thanks for your help.