Just not Photo realistic

[Penry]

Merry Christmas all forum chums,

Recently I have been looking 'in-depth' into the Vray renderer trying to figure out just how to get my visuals looking like photos. I see many excellent pieces of work on this forum and have tried many different settings configurations in an attempt to mimic the real world but just don't seem able to get that realistic look. Does anyone have any pointers for this. I have tried uping all the settings for GI, increasing the final resolution quality, increasing the quality of the bitmaps in materials, adding displacement etc but none of these seem to work. I have posted a couple of images for everyone to show you what I mean.

Have a great Chrimbo everyone and keep up the good work all you Vray lot.

http://www.rogepost.com/n/3441705877
http://www.rogepost.com/n/2176240318

[Micha]

Me made happy to use a gamma corrected workflow or called linear workflow. Search at the forum.

[Da_elf]

actually thats just a myth, you dont need to use that work flow to get photo realism you need to remember basic physical principles. basically the lights inside a building are no where near as powerfull as the sun, so if your exposing for outside then you wont see inside. your sky also should be whiter at that exposure as well. Most of my work is for print and printers dont care about lwf. thats only for monitors

[glorybound]

Photo Realistic

Get good at photoshop

I am learning that VRAY is so accurate it is more science then art.

[Neilg]

^ thats exactly why I love it, I'm not an artist in the slightest but sceince is where I can shine.


Anyway, LWF only helps you when you need accuracy in colour reproduction, its not a photorealism workflow. That said it does help a bit with the material editor, only not that much.

The main thing you need is subtlety in deformations - your models, materials and lighting are too clinicly perfect, by the book if you will. Study the imperfections in real life and photography and dont be afraid to go nuts on your modeling. Chamfering edges and glossy highlights can go a long way too.

[Penry]

Re: Photo Realistic

Get good at photoshop

I am learning that VRAY is so accurate it is more science then art.

I am good at Photoshop....I just can't see the point in spending all that time getting a model right to spend loads more time messing with it post render. I bought Vray so I wouldn't have to do that. Fortunately, most of the clients I work for can't tell the difference so it doesn't matter to them....just to me-how sad! Spending far too much time staring at a monitor screen and not out drinking with my mates.

[glorybound]

Photo Real

I agree... fakiosity still works and is easy. Unless you get really good at VRAY it isn't easier, but isn't that true for about everything?

[travistlo]

The main thing you need is subtlety in deformations - your models, materials and lighting are too clinicly perfect, by the book if you will. Study the imperfections in real life and photography and dont be afraid to go nuts on your modeling. Chamfering edges and glossy highlights can go a long way too.

I agree 100% with this statement, this is what make an image look more realistic. Slight bumps to walls, glass windows are never perfectly coplaner with each other, and they are never perfectly flat.

Like the gangsta said, study real photographs.

[grasshopper]

I'd say your just about there. I think you need to work on your lighting. Look at where your light scources are and position your light coming form these area's.
On your internal shot you have down lights which don't cast any light but the light seems to illuminated the ceiling between the lights.

On your external try softening the shadows, Use a large spherical Vray light, or try some hdri lighting. Also turn down some of your bump/displacement map on your paving an experiment with you glossy reflections.

Contary to what was said before i found the moving to a LWF improved my renders greatly. It means you get more accurate lighting and don't have to artificially boost your light values.

Don't worry though, with every project you'll pick up something new that will improve your technique.

[studioDIM]

I'd suggest you to concentrate on good UV mapping first, and good rendering later.
If there's one thing that photorealism hasn't got it's patterns.
Tiled textures can give away the best of the lit scenes as a CG picture.
Use large size textures (compared to relative screen size, I'd say a good number is 2X), as that will provide more detail for the renderer to work on, and won't get your objects to look blurry.
If you cannot avoid tiling entirely, use a breakup map: mix and blend the main texture with a similar, secondary one, so that the two patterns will interfere and stop showing repetitions.

For lighting, i tend to light a scene with a mid-gray replacement material, and no textures.
This way i get a near BW picture and can gauge a lot quicker how good or bad i lit it, and how light distribution and overall contrast is working, without textures and colours distracting me from the task at hand.

Last but not least, whenever i can, i use references.
Possibly loads of them.
I heard somewhere that the best artists always do, so i thought it to be a nice habit to take on...

Hope it helps,

Lele

[Micha]

actually thats just a myth, you dont need to use that work flow to get photo realism you need to remember basic physical principles. basically the lights inside a building are no where near as powerfull as the sun, so if your exposing for outside then you wont see inside. your sky also should be whiter at that exposure as well. Most of my work is for print and printers dont care about lwf. thats only for monitors

If you dosn't use a linear or gamma corrected workflow, than you mix a gamma 1 light distributation with gamma 2.2 textures. This cause, that textures show the right contrast at your screen, but the lighting is much to contrastful and colorful, shadows to dark. Also it cause wrong fresnel reflections. My jump to gamma 2.2 corrected workflow cause, that my images get the feeling, that I like from Maxwell - light smooth lighting, contrastful textures and intensiv fresnel reflections.
The problem stay for prints, because the mix of gamma 1 and 2.2 looks wrong at every system.

Contary to what was said before i found the moving to a LWF improved my renders greatly. It means you get more accurate lighting and don't have to artificially boost your light values.

Same experience here.

[Da_elf]

who said i mix my gammas?

[Micha]

...Most of my work is for print and printers dont care about lwf. thats only for monitors

LWF means that all input textures and output textures are corrected for gamma 1. All textures (except HDRIs) I ever have seen are gamma corrected for computer monitors (gamma ~2). So, without LWF, you would mix different gamma values. What do you do with the gamma values?

[dlparisi]

Most of my work is for print and printers dont care about lwf. thats only for monitors

I don't think that's true. Although all of the implementations of LWF that vlado describe deal with calibrating the monitor, this is only so you can accurately judge textures, colors and renders in a calibrated environment. Depending on which workflow you choose, all you really might need to do to work in linear space is to set the MAX gamma to 2.2 (material ed. too) and pick colors/textures (maybe a few other things but that's the main thing). It gets more complicated when you have to convert scenes, change bitmaps etc. Regardless, I think the point of using LWF is in how light disperses through the scene and how it affects the end render. The final image, being viewed either in print, online, or TV should match this rendered image, regardless of whether LWF was used or not. Da_elf, I think you know this based on some of your other posts but I though it needed mentioning; or maybe I'm just missing the point of LWF (although it's helped my work a lot)