Constructive feedback and critique on my current renders everyone please.

[Nando5_official]

Here are the two renders for my exterior scene I'm doing. Personally I'm not happy with it due to it not looking as photo realistic as possible. I'm using a dome light with a hdri map applied and also a white balance of around 6000k for a sunny/cloudy day environment. I'm struggling to make it look the way i want it to be. Do you guys think its due to my lighting or texturing? I'm fairly new to Vray so my technical rendering abilities is still incompetent.

[glorybound]

I think the problem might be your materials. They look flat and out of scale. Also, try using V-Ray sky/dome and set your camera, using real-world settings (100/16/100).

[joconnell]

Right!

So first things first, you definitely need to spend a bit of time finding a photo of the thing you're trying to render - find a similar house in terms of roof and wall colour, similar sunny daylight too. Have a look at things like how bright the sky background is compared to the house (you'd see things like the clouds in the sky being as white / burnt out as your white garage door).
Second thing is scale of textures, a lot of the patterns you're using are too large for their sizes in real life, again a good photo will show you what size you need things to be.
Lastly is some model detail - nothing in the real world has razor sharp edges so you need to have some tiny bevels on the edges of your objects - they'll catch light and give you some tiny highlights which'll make things more realistic.

[Nando5_official]

Right!

So first things first, you definitely need to spend a bit of time finding a photo of the thing you're trying to render - find a similar house in terms of roof and wall colour, similar sunny daylight too. Have a look at things like how bright the sky background is compared to the house (you'd see things like the clouds in the sky being as white / burnt out as your white garage door).
Second thing is scale of textures, a lot of the patterns you're using are too large for their sizes in real life, again a good photo will show you what size you need things to be.
Lastly is some model detail - nothing in the real world has razor sharp edges so you need to have some tiny bevels on the edges of your objects - they'll catch light and give you some tiny highlights which'll make things more realistic.

Thank you sir I'll follow your advice! Is a good workflow to send Existing diffuse maps into B2M/SubstanceDesigner so I can modify it more and also to use substance to Vray plugin? Is that a more professional methodology?

[Nando5_official]

I think the problem might be your materials. They look flat and out of scale. Also, try using V-Ray sky/dome and set your camera, using real-world settings (100/16/100).

Thank you man. I'll work more on the texturing and change the ISO/F/SS to those values also

[joconnell]

Thank you sir I'll follow your advice! Is a good workflow to send Existing diffuse maps into B2M/SubstanceDesigner so I can modify it more and also to use substance to Vray plugin? Is that a more professional methodology?

It's more just try and find textures that are at the right scale to start off with, especially things that tile. You can find images that work well without having to use b2m / substance,try to keep everything as simple as possible to start with! Textures.com is worth having an account on, get into the habit of making yourself a texture library too so you can gradually build and improve your collection of maps, especially when you do things like take an image and make a tileable version. If you're doing architectural stuff frequently, you'll make the same materials over and over so you can start making material library files to save things to, there's no point in making the same materials over and over again!

[notamondayfan]

Here's how I critique work -

Does it look "right"?
If not, then it's likely to be a geometry thing.

Does it look "realistic"?
If not then it's likely to be a material / shader thing.

Does it look "interesting"?
if not then it's likely to be a lighting thing. OR a composition thing.


Of course, there are areas in-between each "thing", but with this approach, you can breakdown what you need to improve on first, and not worry about the other areas. For example, if you're 99% sure the house is modelled correctly, everything is as it would be in reality, and the lighting is correct (can't go too far wrong with sun or HDRI), then it's likely to be materials and shaders. or perhaps a composition thing (although this shouldn't affect realism).

[Nando5_official]

Here's how I critique work -

Does it look "right"?
If not, then it's likely to be a geometry thing.

Does it look "realistic"?
If not then it's likely to be a material / shader thing.

Does it look "interesting"?
if not then it's likely to be a lighting thing. OR a composition thing.


Of course, there are areas in-between each "thing", but with this approach, you can breakdown what you need to improve on first, and not worry about the other areas. For example, if you're 99% sure the house is modelled correctly, everything is as it would be in reality, and the lighting is correct (can't go too far wrong with sun or HDRI), then it's likely to be materials and shaders. or perhaps a composition thing (although this shouldn't affect realism).

Okay thanks for this! You've given me a different and effective approach for future reference on how to critique my own work. I will definitely ask myself these questions when I'm not 100 percent satisfied. Can I ask what your workflow is when creating textures for example do you take it into B2M or Substance designer to make more amendments, then using substance to vray plugin in 3DS MAX?

[notamondayfan]

Okay thanks for this! You've given me a different and effective approach for future reference on how to critique my own work. I will definitely ask myself these questions when I'm not 100 percent satisfied. Can I ask what your workflow is when creating textures for example do you take it into B2M or Substance designer to make more amendments, then using substance to vray plugin in 3DS MAX?

Never used substance or B2M (don't know what this is ). Just photoshop, and start with great textures.

[glorybound]

My go-to sites. I have running subscriptions for the first three.

https://www.textures.com/
https://www.poliigon.com/
https://www.sketchuptextureclub.com/
https://www.arroway-textures.ch/