House in Yucatan

[teofas]

Hi to all, i have been a vray for sketchup user for some years, and i decided to make a jump into vray for 3ds max, this is my first serious work and its been a hard transition from skp to max vray. I design this for a client and all model in sketchup then import to max and render, all your c&c are welcome.

[flino2004]

I like the rendering and the design. Regarding the rendering I would use a subtle DOF effect. About the design, I would take the stone wall out next to the main door. You already have two stone wall planes... So the other one is a veneer applied to the wall.... Instead I would probably use another color on the whole volume.

[Crayox13]

I always love this ambiance. Is that hdri in background slot for GI?
Only thing I would change is the stone pathway, I wouldn't make it shiny but rough, the bump doesn't fit also.

[teofas]

Thx for the advice guys, ill take notes for my next project.

[matanov]

Very nice ! Maybe the pathway needs more bump or even displacement, also the Audi is too chromy.

[snivlem]

Very nice, love the composition and colours. I'd only lose the 4 single plants on the grass as it's a little untidy for my tastes.

[joconnell]

There's a lot of contrast in the render which I like but maybe the lights are a bit too burnt out in places? Since you're coming from a sketchup background, were you using any kind of linear workflow or gamma setting on the render? It looks like you weren't which might explain the range!

[teofas]

thx for the feedback guys!!

joconnell: Don´t really know what is the linear workflow or gamma setting exactly, but ill look for it in google, if you have any links to explain this ill be gratefull bro.

[joconnell]

Right.

So the gamma thing is based on one main problem. Any monitor you use isn't displaying colour evenly. Rather than having smooth gradients of light to dark, your monitor has problems doing this and ends up darkening the midtones of the image. Where you'll mainly see it is in your lights and shadows. In your image you've got some very hot areas around the lights but they very quickly fade out into dark which looks a little bit unnatural to me, and it's a sign that you're not using any kind of gamma.

The idea with any of the linear / gamma workflows is that you counteract this darkening of the midtones that you're seeing. The result in the image is it will open up your shadows a lot, you get more realistic falloff of light, and you'll likely get shorter render times for better looking images.

If you were to do an overall gamma adjustment on your scene, it's pretty much the same as raising the mid tones on a curves or levels adjustment in photoshop so you'd get more "airy" looking renders with better light falloff, but you'd also wash out all of your colours in the scene so everything would be very faded. Thankfully 3dsmax has plenty of preferences to deal with this. It'll know that you're going to be brightening the image after, so any colour or texture you pick it'll darken it at render time so it comes out looking correct.

The only thing that makes a difference in the workflow is what you're going to be doing with the images after they leave 3dsmax - are you going to be working on them in a compositor, or will they be final images sent out? That will determine whether you burn in the gamma adjustment into the image, or leave it off for working on the image further in a compositor like nuke or after effects.

[andybot_cg]

Hi Teo! Congrats on making the jump to Max - your plants and grass look great I agree with some of the other comments that the contrast seems too strong in the image. Make sure when you work on color adjusting that you have a good monitor. For example, if your screen is really bright and not well color adjusted, the images you post will look too dark and possibly too saturated for others.

Andy

[teofas]

joconnell: Thx a lot bro for taking the time and trouble of writting the explanation, i really apreciate it. i think i use gamma of 1.1 on this image, i know i need to research on this matter cause the last render i did the grass was almost black, wich is very frustrating cause i use multiscatter and in the day scene grass looks very good but in low light grass looks black at first i thought it was the ambient occlusion, but it wasent that, i think it was the gamma i use, but if i raise up the gamma to 2.0 then the render lost contrast, anyway I am sure that with time ill be able to fix this, thx again for the feedback and your time.

[joconnell]

Yep, what you're best off doing is setting your gamma at the very very start, so that any time you're setting up lights and materials, you're already choosing the correct colours and values for that gamma. You'll definitely have less contrast using a gamma workflow than a 1.0 gamma, but typically people will do a small amount of grading on their main render to bring this back in. Never bother trying to change gamma after a scene is finished, or compare different gammas, it'll never work properly!