Mtn House interiors

[OPEN_RANGE]

This is still somewhat WIP. I need to render at better settings to reduce noise in the shadowed areas. I'm also thinking of experimenting with DOF which I have not used before.

First time trying bloom/glare vray lens effect. I've got some questions and considered a separate post regarding that.... but here is one issue/question

I tried assigning object Id to the vray lights that are in each light pendant in view 2. That was not working, I'm guessing you cannot assign a object ID to a Light for purposes of vray glare/bloom? I ended up assigning object ID 3 to the glass cylinders and that seems to work.

I wanted to also nave some glare/bloom on recess lights in ceiling. They all have a vray material with self illumination turned up. I assigned that self-illuminating materiel and material ID 2. That does not seem to work for vray bloom/glare. Next I assigned object ID 3 to the recess light diffuser. that works but the effect is very minimal and I cannot see how to separate it and give it separate glare/bloom parameters from the pendant light which also has object ID 3.

I am interested in any other comments about the renderings. I don't get to do many interiors so any advice or etc much appreciated.

[chadstevens]

Hi there, I'm posting as no one else has yet and I'd also like to get other people's views.

Most of this stuff you might already know but I'm going to mention it so that if someone else comes along that does not, they will also get some tips.

The renders are coming along nicely, I think there are quite a few areas where it can be improved, I hope you don't mind.

1. Lighting looks strange, it's almost as if the lighting inside the house has been increased to match the daylight system outside. Interior lighting is far less luminant than the sun and so that should be present in the image. Try looking up the lumens value of lights and entering that in to the vray light properties
(make sure to change units in the vrayLightProperties to the corresponding value you looked up).
Once the interior and exterior lighting is set to the correct value, change your camera exposure to match. NOTE: the sun will cause overbright areas on your floor, but that's how it is in reality and it can be overcome in different ways.

This thread should help with that: https://forums.chaosgroup.com/showth...c-OCIO-and-LUT

2. Materials can do with some work, I would recommend using the VrayEdgeTex material to catch highlights on your geometry that does not have round corners such as the kitchen table, cupboards, chairs et...

Your metal materials seem to have too much of a diffuse vale to them, in your second image you can see the dishwasher looks to white-ish this is probably due to the diffuse value being a default grey, change it to black and see how it looks, same goes for any other metal you have in your scene i.e. the faucet in the kitchen.

The glass in your scene (Excluding windows) could do with some fog colour which will add a colour tinge to them, making it look more photorealistic, (green/blue is a good way to go) remember that the fog value will probably have to be quite low something like 0.005 depending on the colour you use. Play around with the fog bias as well, this will change where the fog colour shows up in the glass i.e. thicker areas have more of a colour tinge.

Your white values are overblown in comparison to the other materials in the scene, this could be due to the lighting and/or the actual diffuse value you used. Try to never exceed an RGB value of 230,230,230 for any material.

3. Backplate does not match reflections, you can see this in the kitchen table.

Here is an image of the areas I'm talking about.


I'd like to seem the updates as you continue

I'm sorry for the long article, but I hope it helps.

Cheers.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Hi Chad,

thanks so much for your reply and valuable feedback. That's exactly what I was hoping for. (I'm not sure why I often get 0 reply like on my last image upload: https://forums.chaosgroup.com/showth...7-Tiny-Home(s))

1) Regarding lighting: I have a vray sun+sky with sun aimed thru windows. I have one vray plane "fill" light, color=255 back behind the kitchen island. Physical camera f/9, 1/40 sec, ISO 100. does this seem like a reasonable base set up?

The pendant lights have small vray sphere lights, color temperature=3500. The recess lights that you circled, only have self illuminating material. No actual vray light. I will add lights to those. Is this the primary thing that is causing you to feel the lighting is strange? Or is the overall light set up maybe in need of re-config?

I read that link to the tone mapping discussion. Makes my head spin. I have read about and watched some videos about tone mapping. experimented with it a bit but still in the weeds with that. My next step with that was to try using fusion (free I think).

2) Materials: almost all the furniture has small radius edges included in the modeling. the counter top has slight eased/chamfer edge (per architect) modeled. I will add chamfer to cupboard shelves and maybe increase some of the other edge profiles/radius with some added vray edges texture. (maybe the modeled edge radius is not enough on some of the furniture)

The dishwasher does indeed have a grey diffuse. Will change to black and see how that helps. The metals on faucet and cab pulls are supposed to represent a dull dark hand rubbed bronze. (common fixture finish by moen, kohler, etc). Kind of tarnished.

I'll try some slight value fog color in the glass. Ceramic plates have diffuse value 230. I will try using vray color map and setting 230 there to see if any difference. It may be that because they are close to the fill light and so maybe I adjust down to 200 or so.

3) Backplate reflections: I struggled with that. I want to add the backplate in photoshop, but I would like it to appear in the counter top reflections. I tried mapping the backplate to a plane outside the house and positioning it so the view was as desired. It seemed to kill all of the reflections in the whole room. I tried all sorts of object properties and vray properties to make it visible only to reflections, not cast or receive shadows, etc. Just couldn't get it to show up in the reflections and still keep the window openings as an alpha to add the backplate later in pshop. Any suggested config for achieving this would be a great help to me.

Here where I am and where this house will be built there is a lot of advertising with pro real estate photography. Interior real estate photos have evolved to use multiple exposures so interior is exposed nicely but exterior is not overexposed/washed out but instead, by combining multiple exposures, exposed nicely to show off important views. showing the views is important to this.

Thanks again for your very helpful and detailed reply

[OPEN_RANGE]

here is an update. Still plan to work on getting the backplate into the counter top reflection

[chadstevens]

Yes, this is already much better

Whites are no longer overexposed, which makes everything feel much more professional and natural.

As far as the tone mapping I linked to, it's quite easy to use, if you look at post #54 there is a downloadable zip file that contains filmic lut files (use the high contrast one), what it does is compress the highlights so they are not overexposed, a good explination can be seen here, it's for blender but the concept is exactly the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9AT7H4GGrA

In order to get the lighting to look correct, I would turn off all lights except the sun, put a gray material (127,127,127) in the global override Mtl slot in the vray settings (make sure to exclude the windows from the override OR just hide them initially). Play with the camera exposure until the overall image looks correctly exposed (note: that the places where the sunlight hits the interior should appear overexposed as that is the natural behavior as you will see in the video I linked to) after you've got it where you like it, start enabling the other lights in the scene and see how it effects the lighting. Based on the amount of windows you have in your scene I shouldn't think you'd need a fill light, but you'd know better than me as it's your scene.

If the scene looks really cool as a gray material, and you don't like it much when the other materials are back on, it means you need to work on the materials, again it's difficult for me to give advice when I can't really tell what the materials look like, but I would suggest exxagerating things like the bump, glossines and reflection maps in the scene, just so it's easily visible (don't over do it though). I think once you develop the lighting and materials a bit more, you'll notice a massive development in the visual quality.

As to why other people don't comment on other peoples work, I think there are two reasons (that I myself also face).

1) I don't like criticizing people's work as I don't want them to take the criticism to heart and give up.
2) It takes quite a bit of time to actually evaluate someone else's work and then derive solutions based purely on a few images. A good example is a lot of the things I mentioned in the first post you already had correct, but by just viewing the image it doesn't look like that, so I end up giving advice for things you already know.

So in conclusion I think that scene geometry has a lot of potential, but the lighting, materials and post need work to bring it to life.

I hope this helps.

Cheers.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Chad,

Thanks again! Your input and observations are very helpful and valuable to me.

I will look into tone mapping some more. I actually had already read some about it and even spent $25 on this video https://vimeo.com/ondemand/tonemap It is pretty comprehensive but does not cover the lut file approach that is discussed in the thread you linked to. I tried using some of the techniques in the video that make use of native pshop capabilities, Camera Raw Filter and Smart Filters. My first experience was that it was a huge time sink and didn't do much. BUT I was trying it on an exterior image so not the best plus just a first go round. Still the time involved was a deal breaker for the type of work/clients I have. I will continue to explore this as time allows. Also hope to incorporate a layered render elements workflow with PSD Manager and/or ProEXR. Again need to find/dedicate the time to get up to speed with that.

I actually did start with sun/sky and a gray overide material as you describe to get the basic exposure. I went from there straight to adding materials but did not add the other lights until near the end. Did not need to adjust exposure/lighting much as I added materials, just adjusted for slightly longer shutter speed. So kind of followed the process you describe but not completely. Next time<g>.

Your advice to exaggerate bump, reflections etc is well taken and I think a short coming in a lot of my work to date. Going to try to put more focus and skill development into that (and everything else).

I post my images specifically to get critique and I am never insulted or discouraged by feedback. I try to include that sentiment with each upload. I have benefited greatly from forum based feedback over the years. First at CG architect, but that seems to have become very diluted. This forum seems more focused and just...better. I understand the time it takes to reply and so I get why zero replies. Things that I have posted that were really out of whack got replies. Things I post that get zero replies I generally take to mean, well, it's OK, no serious defects but not super cool so... ho hum. Esp when compared to some of the top level insane work that gets posted here.

Thanks again for taking the time to help me with this!!

[chadstevens]

Not a problem, I look forward to seeing the updates FYI I would definitely spend time in post, I know it is time-consuming, but you'll soon get into a rhythm and know how to manipulate your images much faster. It is essential in any good 3D project, that's why even professional photographers do post work to their photo's before publishing.

Cheers.

[chadstevens]

I hope you don't mind, I have taken your render into post and did a quick 2 min job, boosting contrast etc... I think one of the things that would definitely make a difference to your render is overexposing the backplate, you'll notice this is generally the case when you see interior photographs and it makes the image look more natural see example http://llidesign.co.uk/assets/img/sl...ing%20Room.jpg

Here is the image, please excuse the crudity as I did not spend much time on it, but you get the general idea.


Cheers.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Hi Chad,

I don't mind at all and thanks for that. The only thing I have done in post is add a curves layer to increase contrast, but not nearly as much as what you have.

Regarding backplate - of course you are correct BUT>....

Here where I am and where this house will be built there is a lot of advertising with pro real estate photography. Interior real estate photos have evolved to use multiple exposures so interior is exposed nicely but exterior is not overexposed/washed out but instead, by combining multiple exposures, exposed nicely to show off important views (selling point). showing the views is important/critical to this.

[chadstevens]

You are right of course correct, maybe try a different backplate? Haha, I'm really sorry for changing things

[chadstevens]

I sent you a private message, but I can't tell if it went through? I can only do so much with the render, if you could provide me with a cut down version of the scene, I can see if I can improve it further with some material and lighting changes.

Cheers.

[OPEN_RANGE]

thanks chad.

I am working on getting the backplate to show in the counter top reflections but not affect the alpha in the window glass. The window glass I use has a refract of about 245 and reflect of 30. No matter what combination of object properties and vray properties I have tried, when I include the backplate in the render it shows up in the window glass reflect/refract and takes away the alpha around the window openings.

So I have now hidden all the window glass and I think that's going to work for this. Still I'd like to know if it's possible to use backplate but not have it affect window glass reflect/refract/alpha. I think I will post separate topic with this question in the General section.

thanks again!

[chadstevens]

In the VrayMtl properties you need to change the dropdown box under refraction to all channels from color only, that should keep the Alpha.

See Here

[OPEN_RANGE]

that seems to be working! thanks! I tried a bunch of other things but... so simple..duh.

[chadstevens]

I'm glad it worked, you should note that if you have geometry behind the glass the alpha of that geometry will be ignored.

Cheers.