Please help me bring my renders to the next level :)

[loac]

I have been using Vray on and off for a couple years now for different projects, and I think that my renders look pretty good but they could certainly look better. I think I have hit a wall in improving my skills, so I ask for criticism and tips to improve. Here is one of my latest renders:



The walls should be a shimmery/metallic fabric wallcovering, the floor is ground and polished concrete. I am not sure why the reflection of the lights in the glass is so distorted...

I guess the biggest overall issue I have is that I can't seem to get that 'clean' look that I see in a lot of great Vray renderings, even when I turn up the quality quite a bit. For example, this image was rendered with Irradiance map (-4 to -1, subdivs at 100) and light cache (subdivs 1000, sample size .01) and detail enhancement on.

Any advice is welcome.
Thanks!

[arqestevez1]

Re: Please help me bring my renders to the next level

hi
detail enhacement is not something you MUST use... it does help with details but also, if you don't use the right setting, it'll remove reflection glossines of certain objects. so, for now just turn it off.
in order to reduce the noise, you have to go to the image sampler rollout, and change the noise threshold value. the smaller the value, the less noise you will have. i use a .005 ... if you make it even smaller, you will only increase your render times.
another thing than makes renders hard to control is the excessive use of emitter materials. an emitter is not recomended to be used for illumination, for that just place a rectangular light in front of the emitter. so, also reduce the emissive multipliers.
and for the walls, try with some of the presets materials, or, try increasing the reflection multiplier value up to... something like 24
really hope this can help you.
see you around

[loac]

Re: Please help me bring my renders to the next level

hi
detail enhacement is not something you MUST use... it does help with details but also, if you don't use the right setting, it'll remove reflection glossines of certain objects. so, for now just turn it off.
in order to reduce the noise, you have to go to the image sampler rollout, and change the noise threshold value. the smaller the value, the less noise you will have. i use a .005 ... if you make it even smaller, you will only increase your render times.
another thing than makes renders hard to control is the excessive use of emitter materials. an emitter is not recomended to be used for illumination, for that just place a rectangular light in front of the emitter. so, also reduce the emissive multipliers.
and for the walls, try with some of the presets materials, or, try increasing the reflection multiplier value up to... something like 24
really hope this can help you.
see you around

Hey, thanks for the response Omar. I didn't know about the noise threshold value. Thanks for the tip. I am not using any emissive materials in the render above, only rectangular lights. Like you said, I have had trouble in the past with using only emissive materials.
I guess improving is really just a matter of a lot more practice perhaps...

[stuartmitch]

Re: Please help me bring my renders to the next level

Great advice Omar. One small correction. The noise threshold is on the DMC Sampler not the Image Sampler.