Shot looking towards window

[glorybound]

On my Chicago Apartment project, the client has asked me to remove blinds and window covering so, we can see the outside. Tomorrow, I'll be getting across the street photos. Hopefully they are good, high resolution, and usable. But, even if they are good, is it possible to expose an inside shot, looking out, without over exposing the window area? I know in photography you'll use a flash. Is it best to fake it and cut/paste the photo?

Other news on the project. My client, who is the architect, is representing his client. Well, after getting my Chicago Apartment renders, he wants me to redo several other project that were done poorly by a very expensive Chicago rendering firm. I compare my work to the work I see here, and it pales in quality. But, it's nice to know my work is being appreciated, and is being refereed to top quality. Okay, you can stop rolling your eyes now. Here is the work they paid a lot of money for.

[Morbid Angel]

if you expose for the inside, then the outside will be really bright, hance you wont be able to see anything, so if you reverse the logic, to expose from the inside for outside, you will have really low lighting inside but you will be able to see outside. The composition you are talking about however is not improbable, some people do whats called a tone mapping, where they blend several exposures together finding balance at each overexposed area from another times, but those images look unnatural (though interesting).

You can read up about that here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_mapping

For the renders you attached, I don't think they are bad, they are just over exposed and those people do not fit into there at all...but in terms of how they look I think it looks like your regular arch renderings.

[glorybound]

So, I suppose I can expose the outside from inside, and turn up light inside. I'll play around and post my results. Thanks!

[Pixelcon]

Someone asked this very question of Bertand Benoit on his blog and his response was:
"It is a matter of playing with the three basic settings: Ambient external light (generally HDR or VraySky), direct external light (generally VraySun or Max DirectLight) and camera exposure/aperture. Avoiding burnouts often involves dimming the direct light and increasing the indirect element or the exposure/aperture. Then again, any photographer would expect to have at least slightly burnt-out exteriors in these interior shots and would presumably try to get the details back by tweaking the RAW photos. So I don’t think burnt-out exteriors are that much of a problem. They make the output more realistic, and if you really want to flatten the image, remember you are luckier than a photographer as they only get RAW files and we get HDR images out of Vray, with a lot more dynamic range to play with in post."

As he says we have an almost unlimited dynamic range to play with in post and Photoshop can do some useful tonemapping conversions when converting your image from 32-bit down.

[chriserskine]

you can also have a dusk/dawn shot, where you have a cross over with similar light levels inside and out.

[DanielBrew]

I usually give it a slightly blue tint and overexpose the image. If you apply the image to a VRayLightMaterial you can control the brightness using the multiplier.

Not the best example but you get the idea...

[joconnell]

Your vray refraction element should get you the outside but yep, it should be totally blown out in comparison to the interior. Unless the interior has so much glass in it that it's being flooded with light from outside.

[Morbid Angel]

So, I suppose I can expose the outside from inside, and turn up light inside. I'll play around and post my results. Thanks!

I don't think it will give you a good result, though I haven't tried it my self but I suspect that if you expose low to see into the window but then crank your lighting inside, the lights will overexpose and blow out creating unwanted spills of light.

[Neilg]

Just do it in photoshop and adjust the curves until it looks natural. Leave your scene as it is.

[oligophant]

I would go like a photographer, expose the outside, then switch on the inside lights and increase the amount until the burn areas apear, then and only then add little lights to bounce over the walls to lit properly

[chicoone]

you can also have a dusk/dawn shot, where you have a cross over with similar light levels inside and out.

Exactly.
A photographer to take the shot would adjust exposure for the brightest (outside) as a guide. He'll then adjust his flash/strobe to light the inside so that the dynamic range of the scene gets compressed and it more closely match the eye with its wider dynamic range. Do not need to blend exposures, this is not photography... and at any event, the thing to use is exposure fusion: http://digital-photography-school.co...how-do-i-do-it or the flash/strobe thingy.

But in V-Ray, are we not Gods (poetical licence)? We can make a Sun/Sky shine brighter or dimmer at will, therefore is very easy to create the end result obtained by the flash/strobing of the inside except that we just adjust the interior light. In that regard, take your original scene, light the interior without burning windows and then do direct light last.

[glorybound]

here is how it turned out. http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...cago-Apartment

He stressed the importance of seeing outside, but the photo he sent wasn't much of anything. I did what I could.

[joconnell]

For the sake of the final render I'd be nearly inclined to use dof in the main thing so you can defocus a bit outside. The angles of the render versus the background plate are totally different so it's a bit off putting. Blurring it might be the lesser of two evils!

[glorybound]

I would just rather not use it all, but it was a must. I am sure they have their reasons. I'll do it over, for myself, without their photo.

For the sake of the final render I'd be nearly inclined to use dof in the main thing so you can defocus a bit outside. The angles of the render versus the background plate are totally different so it's a bit off putting. Blurring it might be the lesser of two evils!

[joconnell]

Yep I getcha. It's a pain sometimes doing things for people who's comments you know will immediately make a render worse. Not sure who said it but was one of the many recent comments on why post production is in such trouble, someone said "The problem started when people that do it for the love started working for people that did it for the money"