Estancia Cottage

[OPEN_RANGE]

There will be 5 of these houses. All based on the same floor plan but different exterior designs. This is Cottage. Farmhouse, Craftsman, Mountain Rustic and Mountain Modern will follow. all will share the same landscape and background photo, at least for now.

I have a panoramic of the background tha tI shot for a different project many years ago. I think I like the version with the more distant mountains.

Any comments etc much appreciated,

[flino2004]

It looks like you didn't use GI...the walls in shadows look very even in color

[OPEN_RANGE]

Flino, thanks for your reply. Maybe I have a problem with how I set this up. I usually use Vray Sun/Sky. For this I am trying Vray Sun/HDRI in dome light. I've used that before but not often enough to be solid with it I guess. Maybe I have a problem with my setup?

After reading your comment I checked out my settings and found I had inadvertently left GI Environment and Reflection Environment both unchecked. I tried using both the HDRI map and the Vray sky map in these slots. The main difference was using the HDRI in the Reflection Environment slot added too much color change to the road. so I went back to the sky.

I re rendered, shown below, with the GI Environment and Reflection Environment checked (settings shown in the attached screen grab). It doesn't look any different than before. Am I setting this up incorrectly? Thanks!

[flino2004]

turn off the global overrides and try to resolve it with the HDRI....make a test view with an override material in white (200,200,200) and showing the HDRI....maybe the exposure is wrong.
I would turn off all the extras lights (only dome ON)

[OPEN_RANGE]

hey thanks for helping me with this! I had previously started as you describe with overide material and only HDRI-dome light on. Did it again and here is the reult. Looks OK re:exposure and etc?

[flino2004]

I usually start with multiplier 1,1 for hdri .. visible ON for the dome so you can see how looks like with the camera settings.
I think is overexposed.

[OPEN_RANGE]

thanks again for your valuable help! I don't know what was wrong but I think the dome light/HDRi were not working together correctly. In the Mat editor the HDRI map horiz rotation was greyed out. I made new dome light, put in in th eMax environment slot and used a camera/viewport in conjunction with the horiz rotation parameter to position the bright point. Now the shadows are showign up as they should. See new test below


I have to use multiplier 80 to get to this point. Multiplier 1 is totally dark. I'll experiment with exposure. I'm using f/8, 1/250 and ISO 100. all my materials/texture maps look like they should ( more or less same as the source files look in pshop)

[flino2004]

maybe under domelight you have "lock texture to icon" ON so you control the horizontal rotation rotating the dome...check the gamma as well....on the dark siding if you don't see much the detail because is too dark I would use vray override material and with the same white that you have GI.
I would also have AO render element in case to get more definition in post

[OPEN_RANGE]

I did not have the lock to texture set, but may have previously. somehow the rotatin seemed to be frozen and I found I did not have the hdri oriented quite right to match the sun. I was trying to fix that and couldn't so, made new light and now it seems to work as expected. I adjusted the HDRI multiplier down to 50 so it looked good in the render. slightly adjusted the camera exposure and here is the result. Definitely gives it more pop. The competing light directions in the previous were impacting result. Thanks again for your help, much appreciated.

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

Are you usin g half dome or full dome in your hdri setup?

[OPEN_RANGE]

Good catch Martin. another setting I overlooked, the full dome was checked. I changed it to half dome and it made a difference. It darkend the down facing areas under the roof overhangs and soffits.To be expected, th elight was coming up form below to some degree I guess.

I needed to adjust the colors to better match the Sherwin Williams specified by the client. So, below is not apples to apples with the previous but it has the half dome HDRI now.

Thank you for pointing that out!

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

also helps if you play with the gamma in HDRI map...dont be afraid do go down quite a bit while leaving the HDRI multiplier in the light properties at 1.
The only stuff you change then is gamma and multiplier in the map.