Lighting help and improvement.

[jjobson98]

Hi, I've done a couple renders here, one for day and one for evening, and I'm trying to focus on lighting, how can it be improved in either of the renders?

https://imgur.com/a/66mNfja

Renders to big to upload.

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi start with upgrading the materials. Your images need more reflections and materials with higher reflection glossiness.
Add ambient occlusion, especially to the white walls and window frames and probably the sofa and TV stand, just experiment a bit..
The curtains look fake. Try a different model and material. You could check what is directly available on the Chaos Cosmos Browser.
I am not sure how you've set up your lighting. It seems like you've over boosted the image with exposure - this could degrade your quality and increase your render times.
instead try to think of some way to add more light to the scene - for instance the red standing lamp can be on in the daytime render and much stronger in the night time.
The material of the red canopy for the standing lamp does not seem right as well. Check this docs page for ideas how to improve it.

[jjobson98]

Hi start with upgrading the materials. Your images need more reflections and materials with higher reflection glossiness.
Add ambient occlusion, especially to the white walls and window frames and probably the sofa and TV stand, just experiment a bit..
The curtains look fake. Try a different model and material. You could check what is directly available on the Chaos Cosmos Browser.
I am not sure how you've set up your lighting. It seems like you've over boosted the image with exposure - this could degrade your quality and increase your render times.
instead try to think of some way to add more light to the scene - for instance the red standing lamp can be on in the daytime render and much stronger in the night time.
The material of the red canopy for the standing lamp does not seem right as well. Check this docs page for ideas how to improve it.

Thank you for your reply, I'll take a look into this!

[jjobson98]

Hi start with upgrading the materials. Your images need more reflections and materials with higher reflection glossiness.
Add ambient occlusion, especially to the white walls and window frames and probably the sofa and TV stand, just experiment a bit..
The curtains look fake. Try a different model and material. You could check what is directly available on the Chaos Cosmos Browser.
I am not sure how you've set up your lighting. It seems like you've over boosted the image with exposure - this could degrade your quality and increase your render times.
instead try to think of some way to add more light to the scene - for instance the red standing lamp can be on in the daytime render and much stronger in the night time.
The material of the red canopy for the standing lamp does not seem right as well. Check this docs page for ideas how to improve it.

I added in some AO and looking into the standing lamp, it's definitely been improved. I'm struggling to see where you think I should add in upgraded materials, do you mind pointing some out?

The render is still a bit noisy as I haven't done a proper render to save time.

https://imgur.com/lQOWUBn

[vladimir_krastev]

Here are some ideas:

1 - need more reflections, too much noise (upgrade lighting and/or increase render settings)
2 - too dark
3 - more reflections from the interior, exterior looks unrealistically dark
4 - looks strange, too heavy, unclear what material is it
5 - too dark
6 - looks like the same material as the blue panels behind it only painted beige - needs upgrade

The image is too noisy and too low resolution. All materials look like the same material only with different colour. We could quickly distinguish between materials using reflections. The next level would be adding textures.