Thought I'd ask the experts here

[Leslie_Stroobant]

Looking at the other gallery pictures here, it's blatantly obvious that I'm a toddler splashing among olympic swimmers - so I thought I'd give it a shot to ask for advice on what I can do to improve the look of my pictures.
I understand that one of the most basic things would be to complete it - so I don't get that white patch and empty horizon for instance.

A little background: I only started working with V-ray (and sketchup too for that matter) in October last year. I have no previous experience in 3D design, photography, aesthetics, design, photoshop and so on whatsoever - I'm an IT guy.
The building is the new garden furniture shop my boss is having built. I got the budget for V-ray, but not for sketchup pro, so everything is done in make. Obviously, I also have no budget for any other related things such as skatter, vrscans, premium models, textures etc.

I'm hoping to score some general advice here on how I can improve this model, although I reckon that it's a long learning process and none of you could just tell me "do this and it'll look real".

Thanks in advance guys!

[Shiyan lin]

It is not a bad render,just need some improvement.


Firstly,I would advice a more complete background to make more realistic reflection. Instead of modeling the background,you can use some photo from textures.com(keyword::background) which is completely free.


The other thing do matter is how you picture the building,V-ray is like a camera,just imagine that you hold a camera and want to take a photo from this building,then you might not want to take a shot from this angle,maybe from a better angle as you like.Also think twice about Depth-of-Field effect, It fails to emphasize the building,maybe move out trees in front of your camera can make a huge improvement.


Thirdly,look at some photo somehow related to your project,save them together like a mood board(pinterest.com),find out what is the most detail make it realistic,what kind of detail you want to show to others about your project.(some lights/furniture inside the building etc)


Finally,the material is fairly important,there are lots of details like asphalt\tree bark\leaves\concrete make rendering more realistic.There are lots of tutorial in the chaosgroup Youtube Channel which you can learn from.


If you want to save your life,just purchase skatter and laubwerk(UV unwrap is painful as most of skp users like us are not expert in CG)


I'm not expert in CG or Archviz. Wish my 2 cents could help you.

[Leslie_Stroobant]

Thanks for the advice!
One thing I should have probably clarified in my first post: this particular render wasn't really meant to be used in any way, so I'm not looking for things to improve this very render. The trees are indeed a bit in the way, the shop is empty and no lights are on.
The thing I was going for was just a realistic feel, the fact that it's not a good promo shot for the shop isn't a factor here.

I'd love to get extras such as laubwerk and skatter, but my boss won't pay for it and I don't use it for personal projects (yet?), so I'll need to make due with free models and manual placement for now.
I've tried emulating wild grass a bit for the two ditches at the bottom of the picture, V-Ray fur is quite neat!

I -THINK- I've got the material part covered, with the exception of the trees - those I got from the sketchup warehouse. I may indeed need to replace them if I can find better ones.
Other than those however, I'm using (I think) proper materials with a number of maps (bump, displacement, a few with a reflection map). Do any of them look wrong?

One thing I struggle with is lighting / camera controls. I also read a lot about linear workflow and the dynamic range of the camera, but I have no idea how that works or if you can even change it in V-Ray.
I think V-Ray automatically uses linear workflow methods, if I'm not mistaken it's mostly about the gamma value? I don't know really.

I'm going to try to add a bit of background to my scene now.

Thanks again!

[peerman]

There's a free laubwerk version with a couple of trees to try out. Also when you want to add a quick background, you could use a HDRI (there are lots of free ones) that picture a build environment. You could use this to light your scene as well and it could give some more "realistic" lighting. I think Shiyan lin also gave some good advice already! So keep posting!

Best,
Peter

[ValeroStudio]

HDRI Haven is 100% free. Support the artist by making a donation if you like and use his stuff.
https://hdrihaven.com/

Replace the VRay sun with a domelight and use one of these hi-res files. This will make a huge difference in the lighting.

I also agree with Peerman, Laubwerk trees are great.

[Leslie_Stroobant]

Hi guys!
At the moment I'm spending all my time building the network and surveillance at the new shop, so I don't have any time left to work on my rendering skills.
I wanted to drop by to say thanks for the advice, I'll try out the free laubwerk samples when my schedule is a bit more relaxed again.
I actually did use a dome light (the v-ray default) in the render, but perhaps third party ones are better, I should check it out. What I am having a little trouble with though is scale. If I want to do a bit more long distance shot of the store, it looks like a scale model of a building since the "background" (dome light) stays the same size.
The dome light might not be able to scale, so perhaps I need to find the right distance and only make renders at that distance of the model?

Thanks again!

[peerman]

You could always add the sky in afterwards using an image editor (Affinity, Photoshop or GIMP). As for showing some scale. You already have a car in the scene but you could also add some people (there are lots of good ones in the Warehouse).
Keep posting if you have the time!
Best,