Bathroom Interior - WIP

[paulison]

Hi all,

I am a new vray user so I apologise for the lack of quality in this image but hopefully someone has some comments on how I can improve things. Most of the current settings are based from comments on this forum (I have written them all out at the bottom)



Not all of the materials are set up (chrome for example) and only the lights in the recessed ceilings are actually on (3 photometric directional point lights with an IES web). I have stored only the Irradiance map and used photons for the second bounces. The scene was looking very dark and flat so i went back to the IES lighting which seems slower but looks better IMO

My main concern is how to get a bit more shadows in the scene, like in the recessed ceilings and also around the cabinetwork (for example). Here are my settings which are a combination of soluto's "method" for IR and photonmap settings I got out of a tutorial:

AA: adaptive -2/1
AA Type : Area (I like the look of this)

first/second bounce: 1.0/1.0

IR: -5/-2
0.25
0.25
100 (Hsub)
20 (Interp)
Least Squares Fit
15 Calc Pass interp samples
check sample visibility

Photon: 20 bounces
Auto search dist
200 max photons
1.0 multiplier
12.0 Max Density
Convert to Irradiance Map
10 Interp
0.0 Retrace threshold
10 Retrace Bounces

Environment: Overide with multiplier of 4.0

QMC Sampler:
Amount: 0.5
Noise Theshold: 0.01
Mix Samples: 25

Color Mapping: HSV Exponential
Dark Multi: 1.7
Light Multi: 1.0

Render Region Division: 128 x 128
Face/level coef: 2.0

Global:
Max reflection/refraction depth: 3
Max transp levels: 50
Transp coeff: 0.001

Hope thats all of the important settings. Any tips/ comments are sincerely appreciated.

[percydaman]

wow, I think you need to tone down the reflection strength, as it makes the image confusing to look at. Id like to see a test with just diffuse material applied to all so we can see how your lighting turned out.

[paulison]

ok ill give that a go but my computer is crunching through a high res version of this with the dark and light multipliers set at 2.5/1.5 to try and brighten it up. So far its looking better but a bit flat.

I see what you mean by reflections...theres a lot in it because of glass + marble. Id like to get the glass looking a bit better. At the moment I think ive used EGZ's glass at its defaults.

Man i need a faster computer!

[paulison]

I rerendered at a higher resolution with dark/light multipliers of 2.5/1.5

Ceiling looks more white now which is cool but any extra tips are very welcome:



Im rendering a all white image at the moment at low res. I had to turn off photonmapping for the second bounce at low res because the image went really weird (black with white blurred edges on corners). Actually im thinking it looks much better using direct computation for the second bounce....oh here its done. The glass is turned off and I havnt stored the Irradiance Map and I dropped the Hsubs down to 50:

[percydaman]

give those reflections some glossiness and It will look alot better.

[NumButt]

Tips

You're right about the render without glass looking much better. I would try turning of shadow casting on your glass objects, if you think about it, clear glass doesn't cast shadows!

Also try putting a touch of yellow in your lights as indoor lights are rarely project purely white light. Your glass could do with a hint of green, the lead in most glass gives it a slightly green tint. This will help distinguish it in the scene.

[paulison]

thanks guys. Hopefully I'll be using the full version tonight so I can combine your suggestions with IR+lightmap