general lighting exterior scene - balance between materials and lighting

[s_gru]

i have a question that i've LONG thought about but never really nailed down a good solution. my question is regarding balance between materials and lighting.

i've attached a screen shot of a render. in this render, i've added a levels adjustment layer with a layer mask from the alpha channel (blocking off the sky from being affected by the levels adjustment).
the purpose of the levels adjustment layer is to brighten up the grass, the white lines, the buildings... but without affecting the sky.
the left side of the image is the 16bit tif file render, the darker side. to me, it's overal brightness is too dark compared to the sky.
the right side of the image is the adjustment of levels to make the balance between sky and model better, brighter imho it's a better match.

so the question is, why is my grass so dark, the grey massed buildings etc.. is it because i'm simply making those materials too dark?
if yes, where do you start in terms of making materials that "balance" with your lighting?

i hope this is clear? i am thinking that the right side looks like a better more realistic photo when compared to the brightness of the sky (which isn't affected by the levels layer).
ps - this is an hdri in a dome light. it doesn't matter if i change the output of the dome light or exposure of the camera because the balance is still off (aka darker model vs the sky)

thanks,

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi in my opinion you are not making your materials too dark. This has always been a challenge - the balance between sky brightness and scene brightness. The best thing to do is just what you did - use post production editing to level things up.
You can also use different dome lights for sky/lighting, use the options to make one of them invisible or exclude/include objects and so on. Also you can enable the environment override in V-Ray or 3ds max's environment map slot but the best thing to do is to use post production.

[s_gru]

good ideas i'll try some out now to see what works best for me. it's all about finding a process sometimes.

[garipodelu]

Another crucial thing is to study photography and never work without a reference image (not a rendering but an actual photograph - real life scenario). This way you have control of the brightness, contrast and colors.

[s_gru]

funny, i don't work with a reference photo. i've been winging it, eyeballing it. at one point in the past, i tried to do what i do with photography and that is i made a virtual gretag mcbeth color chart and black-to-white greyscale card with 10 steps. it was tricky because of previous render engines gamma adjustments and sRGB, lack of direct color management. but that quickly went by the wayside except for a neutral grey image for whitebalance, but even then it's up to what white balance i wanted in the render.

also the HDR image plays a big role so i have to keep an eye out for that and find some new ones.

as far as matching materials, i can often get color values but not reflectance values from mfgs. on exterior finishes but try to eyeball that too. carpet and wood samples too. the only thing i can assume is that carpet sample photos from mfgs are photographed with a neutral light. but then when i actually get samples it's a whole different story. ironspot brick for example is very reflective but the pictures or samples viewed in-door are not or hardly reflective.

anyway, try to balance all that with a random HDR image and eeek. i think maybe eyeballing is good. although i have done bricks/metal panels that i have seen actual installed photos of and i can use those as reference photos - paying attention to when the photo was taken and whether it was a photo under cloudy skies or bright daylight.

i adjusted the materials in the render i attached and made the brighter, looks like a better balance of sky to model without blowing out the sky. however in real life i think maybe the exposure would have to be tuned down a bit to not blow out the clouds which yeah would make the materials darker. ha.

[garipodelu]

I recommend everybody this article: https://linktr.ee/thecommonpoint It has a lot of good advice on how to refine that photo-real look that we all strive for.