How to get rid of glare

[reyloads]

Hello Everyone!
My goal here is to get less of this white, washed out glare that is appearing on the top and sides of this table. I understand that it pretty much needs to be there to differentiate the top from the sides and such. And in the real world, there would be a glare that is on top. But still, I would like to find a better way of getting less of this glare.

So far, I have been selecting these areas in Photoshop and then adding more brown to it to make it less severe. But still, I feel that there is a better way to do it.

I have rendered this with pretty much all of the VFB channels on. I just dont know what to do with them. I am hoping that someone here would be able to help me out with this. If you need anymore information, images or anything, please let me know. I will be checking up on this post a lot. With all of my renderings being furniture in the same setting, The only complaint that I have been getting is the glare, so making is around 60% less would be great.

Also if any of you would like to critique the rendering please feel free.

Thanks again!!!

[reyloads]

Or perhaps this is more of an issue of the reflection layer in the material or something to do with the reflection of the GI...

[mgibeault]

You have to change the reflection map setting in your material.
You must have a Fresnel map right now and it makes the material behave like in real life; at shallow angle you have more reflection. You can keep the Fresnel map but change its white (100% reflective) color to grey.

[fooprobe]

And you could have that different material as mgibeault suggests just for the top surface.

also keep in mind that the reflection is a reflection OF something. so you can change that thing to be darker so it doesn't show up. the thing being reflected in the top surface must also lie above the plane of that surface, since it's a level plane. check your background (make it black) and lower the height of that wall in the background so it doesn't show up.

[reyloads]

Thanks for the comments guys!

I tried changing the reflective color to gray, then to black, but the reflection didnt change either way. Are you talking about the filter color, mgibeault? I changed that but it just make the reflection darker instead of less.

I also moved my studio all the way to the right and cut the top off, but the reflection didnt change either. So then I took off the L shaped studio and replaced it with an infinite plane, still no change.

Now I am thinking that this is an issue of the reflection layer on the material. The only way so far is to change the multiplier to .3. I took it off completely in the BELOW image, it did take it away, but it also made it look very unrealistic. (I also added the edge gleam like with Photoshop.



So now, I changed the multiplier to .35. It looks better, but Im not sure. What do you guys think? I feel like I have been looking at these too long.

[fooprobe]

Is your background set to white? If its set to black and it's not reflecting a light and you have nothing but the infinite plane, the top surface should have no glare.

For material settings, it depends on how this material is set up, but most likely: Leave the reflection multiplier at 1. The color doesn't matter because you have a map in the reflection slot. Click on that capital M and you should see that the material uses a Fresnel map. You will have options for perpendicular color - that is the one to shift darker. Alternately you could bring your reflection IOR closer to 1.

Can you post the scene?

[reyloads]

Thanks fooprobe. I played with the background and everything. The glare changes were very minimal. I realized that is has more to do with my lights than it does my background. However as far as things go right now, I have had more success with the way the lights are now. I will mess with them eventually, but have too many renderings to do and I dont want to change the lights and get into trouble.

I played with the perpendicular color and the Fresnel IOR. What do you guys think is the better rendering below?