Interiors work

[flino2004]

I agreed with delfix about the color of the lights...I would use some magenta,yellows, etc very subtle for ambient lights coming front the windows...AO would help but very subtle....I think in general interior views are more difficult than exteriors..all the best interior that I've seen so far, most of them have the same characteristics ....no direct natural light, excellent architectural details, good DOF, some color in lighting and of course composition....like professional photography.....on top of that mapping and shading are even more impressive...and they don't look pristine, so there are dirt textures, glass with dust, etc

You are not alone!!, pretty much few people can have all the boxes checked for nice interiors.

Fernando

[MoonDoggie]

Here's what I came up with when I saved your 8-bit photoshop file you attached and photoshopped it over 5minutes.

Original image first, second edited, third Photoshop moves. You can imagine this would have been better with some render elements and a 16 or 32-bit file . Hope this helps.

[3DMK]

Hi there, I agree with all the comments above, but not only the light is not pure white the mat too, there s nothing pure white 255,255,255, or pure black 0,0,0 in a materials, I tend to go 220-230 max for my whites or it get completly flat as theres no information other that the max it can display (255,255,255) I disagree with the ambiant occlusion pass in every renders, imo it should be use for certain situation\environements, Is nt why we calculate gi?

Another point about irmpa+lc Its the most reliable\fastest way to calculate, but irr maps tends to average too much sometimes and you loose a lot of detail but you dont know it unless you have someting to compare, so what I do when i test render at lower res with a materiel overide like deflix mentioned above render with BF+LC, brute force is more precise and then you can compare with irr map where you loose shadows and details, it get easier to tweak irr maps after.

Post-production is a plus if you can afford it, true you can add a lot with it but not if you render is missing info, by missing info I mean:lac of shadow or missing shadow, bad material, lots of noise, burn area in the image (255,255,255,) or completely black unless you save in 32bits and recalibrate everything in the renders but it can get tedious.

Only my 2 cents, hope it helps!

Your GI is looking incorrect due to the above reasons Krono states.
I can see straight away that your white materials are just too bright which causes the GI engine to transfer too much light as it bounces off that material. [the computers under the desk is one area]
Apparently the most diffuse white you would get is Fresh SNOW which is still only reflecting around 85% [diffuse value]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo

So if you calculate 85% of the 255 values you get an approx 216 value for snow....therefor you should be using a value under this unless of course your are rendering snow...lol
Anyway since I learned that theory [from someone/somewhere I can't remember] I have found my renders have much more correct GI, and I don't mean more/better details just more correct which of course gives you a more realistic looking image.
Try keeping all materials under 200 value diffuse and you will see much better results.
and don't worry that your whites wont be white.....just adjust your camera untill the object renders white, which has no effect on what value the GI is using for bounces. The GI will use correct 200 value for diffuse bounces even if your white is being rendered at 255 by the camera.
To understand this fully do a prepass with your GI ..save it then render with your physical cam with different exposures. as you will see the rendered pixel value can change depending on you cam settings even though it is using exactly the same original GI values.
If you are using Irradiance map then use it with the Detail enhancement, as it as it will give much better and correct details..unlike AO which is really only usefull for adding dirt effects, something rarely wanted in clean/new architectural renders.

Hope this helps more than confuses you!
all the best

[nate]

Hey, sorry for the delay in responding and thanks for the advice, it’s really appreciated!

I have been trying to take on board the comments in more recent work although I must admit that old habits are dying hard! I’m working on breaking the habit of using white lighting throughout deflix (I thought I was trying to achieve the clean look, lol!) and adding more colour from different light sources. I’m still quite tentative about this though, should probably push it further to get more variation and depth.

I’m also taking note of your advice kr0no with regard to the whites and blacks. You’re absolutely right, I have been using 255,255,255 again, trying to achieve a clean look again but ending up with a flat/burnt out one, I’ll be lowering the values from now on. To 3DMK - I had no idea that it was possible to get a white effect using a value of 200 or under! I’ll have a play with this.

With regard to AO, I haven’t had much luck producing a decent look before as when I multiply the AO layer in Photoshop it always seems to make the entire image way too dark if the opacity is too high or not very noticeable if it’s too low. I guess those who do use it this way add a layer mask? My renders could certainly do with the AO as walls often blend with ceilings but again I’m guessing this is probably to do with the complete white values that I’ve been using? Would the detail enhancement also help to clear this up? I have seen some tutorials where wall materials have Vray Dirt in the diffuse channel, maybe I’ll try this.

Thanks for the Photoshop tips MoonDoggie! Again something I need to work on but it definitely shows how it’s possible to create that ‘visual focus’ out of what was a pretty flat image. Is DOF also something that is generally used in images like this to add focus? Obviously I’ve seen it used to great effect when used on close ups but wondered whether you’d all be using it on a larger scene too in a subtle way?

Think I need to start pushing my boundaries somewhat in the ways suggested above. I’ll give it all a try on the next project as I’ve got a bit more time on this one and post up the results in a week or so.

Thanks again for the comments, could see that my renders were generally way off a lot the work I’ve seen but found it really difficult to identify why specifically. It’s good to have some direction to work in, although obviously there’ll always be something else to learn in order to improve. I hope so anyway otherwise it’d just be boring

[nate]

Here's the reults of my latest efforts. I've tried a few new things here - HDRI instead of Vray sun and sky, an AO pass as well as detail enhancement (still very much need to get to grips with the settings of the latter to avoid massive render times) and no white lights! I've also put a bit more time in to the post-production side. If anyone's got the time to comment I'd appreciate it. I think it an improvement to my previous post but have I been too subtle with the AO and light colour variations?

[Kr0no]

Hi there, it is getting better, nice quality overall, but there still a couple of point that maybe improve. I feel the white maybe a little too white again but we can feel it more with the slight coloration in your lights, I'm not sure about the glass, seems semi-opaque maybe its wanted I dont know but if its not hope your glass diffuse color is completely black ( and this impact on render time, glass color between white and black) It looks like we could fell more of the exterior but its hidden behind the glass, for the lamp shade play with the vray2side material with translucent to get a nice shade effect and not full blast, the overall glow effect is abit overkill for my taste, my 2 cents in a constructive way, hope it help!

[nate]

I did knock back the background image but possibly too much to be realistic, although I've just checked my glass material and the diffuse is white not black so I'll be changing that, oops! Client's comments were that it all looked a bit 'grey' - thought this was down to the scheme design but actually if I increase the contrast (significantly) in photoshop the colours punch out a lot more. Now I just need to figure out how to do this in max with the lighting rather than having to achieve it in post :S

[MoonDoggie]

Very nice. Good improvement. In the first image of the 2, I'd like to see more contrast, it's lacking anything below 30% Gray, check PS levels for verification.

Here are the original levels in the image:



Here is the 30s edit I did pulling the levels in so you get a more full gamut of darks and lights, and a simple vignette through PS'ed Lens Correction tool and some slight color adjustments.

[nate]

That's a reallly helpful tip, thanks MoonDoggie! Didn't understand what you meant until I looked at the levels of the image you photoshopped, huge difference! I do find with the post-production isde of things that the longer I look at the image the less I see it so to now know a way to check whether the render is too 'grey' or lacks contrast is definitely going to become part of my workflow.