Lighting case studies

[khoross]

Hi guys
This is a W.I.P scene i am working on in my free time, it's inspired by Swatt Miers Tea house.
i thought it would be nice to try do a sort of time lapse rendering during different hours of day .
its all lit by my own HDRI's, they are 4 to 5k HDRi's, it's the maximum resolution i could get from my equipment.
let me know what you think.

Best Regards

[flino2004]

They look too dark to me and another thing is the scale...that house looks very small or the trees are too big...if you compare the trunk is like 3-4 feet diameter or at least that is the impression I have.

[squintnic]

did you forget to turn on GI?
looks bad imo
try some of the commercial HDRI packs - cgskies are very good

[khoross]

Thanks for you're comments,
GI is on , the thing is there are dense trees all around.
Yes you are right flino the are too dark , i was aiming for a high contrast images, forest like ambiance.
I have to work more on that i guess.
I have tried commercial HDRi before , the only disadvantage they don't represent the same colors of the skies in my region
Especialy on sunset & magic hour.

[stevesideas]

Best way to test your lighting is to use a basic white material to begin with. You can then see how the shadows, GI etc all interact. Just chuck it in the override. It does look too dark at the moment. You should be able to get a nice amount of light bouncing round with a vray sun and sky. Check out (similar) reference images too....probably the most important thing to do.

[tom schuelke]

maybe turn on linear workflow to get the light deeper into your scene.... not nessesairy 2.2, but mayby 1.8 in the settings .

also you could aply a twosided material for the leaves to get some more light down...

[khoross]

Tx for the feedback, i am using linear workflow, & the rawlighting pass is well lit,
I guess i went wild on the contrast in post & i did put a dense forest behind the camera for shadows
I'll tone that down also.
I'll recheck the dynamic range of my HDRI's
You're right steve i should have looked for photo reference :s.
I will post updates soon , planing to add more detail to the scene & atmospheric effect after i fix the lighting.
P.s: leaves are 2 sided materials, GI is on ,
Best regards