Autumn Atmo

[Helldoor]

Hi mates,

it's me again, being not so experienced and asking dumb questions. So...

I'm currently working on a visualisation for an architectural contest. Fitting the current season, we'd lake to make it have some nice and smooth autumn atmosphere.
I use DomeLight with a HDRI map + Directional Light (light orange) for the Scene Illumination. You can see all the settings in the attached pics.

First Question : Do you have any suggestions how to optimize the Illumination for an autumn Exterior
(is true, a lot of atmosphere comes from the post production in PS, but I'm currently trying to improve the quality and atmosphere of my renderings).

Second Question - I'd be vary glad, if you dive me some advice on how to improve my materials. I don't find my Bricks very realistic and the Glass doesn't fully convice me either.


I'll keep in touch and post the results of your suggestions. Thanks in advance, I'm glad that I can learn from your experience and tipps.


Greetz
teo

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Software:
Rhino 5.0 (64-bit)
VRay 1.5 (64-bit)
Windows 7 (64-bit)

Hardware:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz
RAM 16GB (2x 8GB SODIMM 1333MHz)
AMD Radeon HD 6700M Series
Intel(R) HD Graphics Family

[fooprobe]

I always like to look at reference photos to try to figure out how to make things more realistic.

Glass is all about reflections. When you look at glass you don't see it, you see the reflection. You don't have a convincing environment to reflect on the ground level windows, you're going to have to build one or use a backplane behind the camera, or something in the reflection map.

you might also consider using a very slight large scale (xy) noise map for bump - glass is never really flat. But don't overdo it either.

[Helldoor]

Hi there fooprobe,


thanks for your reply.

The whole scene is not ready at all - these are just two of the surrounding buildings, I actually build up, so that they can reflect in the buildings we're planing. The whole plaza stuff and textures are also missing.
The material question somehow a bonus one - if you see something improvable in the textures - please, give me a feedback.
In this case - I'll try it with the noise map. How large do you mean should the noise map be?

And do you have any tipps about the Illumination?


Thanks in advance.

Greetz
teo

[fooprobe]

Well, i would avoid backlighting the scene, for starters.

[fooprobe]

If you post a photo of what you want this to look like it will be easier to advise.

here's a test of glass with some slight ripple:


i'm trying to mimic this effect:


but it's too uniform, because i'm just tiling the bump map so it's the same on each piece of glass. if you really want to do it right you'd have to create a non-tiled map where the bump is different on each pane. i didn't use noise, just an image. here's the vismat with images:
clear_glass panes refl back.zip

[Helldoor]

Thank you very much, fooprobe!


I'll try that material and post the results (I think tomorrow).

And attached are some visualisations with an autumn atmosphere, I find really nice. Edit: One more question - do you give your surface a thickness or do use a simple plane for your glass? I usually exturd to 5mm...


Thanks again and have a nice Sunday,
Greetz
teo

[fooprobe]

Those renders have had some post production done. You just need a pale sky and a warm sun in the render. All the flare and contrast is in PS. I personally prefer the sun over direct lights, but I suppose it doesn't matter. You can use a single surface instead of extrusion for glass, you won't see the double reflection unless you're close up and it will render faster. But watch the refraction IOR, sometimes it gets exaggerated with single surfaces and you have to tone it down. But if the glass has no frame you really should extrude. And I wouldn't bother with dome light if you use a sun or direct light - dome light is used to create accurate shadows from HDR, but your sun would be creating the dominant shadow so you're just slowing down the render. Put the HDR in the skylight instead.

[Helldoor]

Thanks, fooprobe.

I'll try that and post some visual.

The reason, why I'm using directional light and not the sun, is that I find the dir.light easier to control (color, direction,...).


Have a nice week,
Greetz
teo