Cabin Scene - Lighting Test

Hey Everybody

Here is a lighting test for a cabin scene

I am hoping to receive some feedback as to what you guys think. My goal is to achieve natural feeling for the lighting. I wish for the house to look like a real (i.e. full scale) house rather than a doll house. I know that there are some modeling details that would have to be added for achieve a real feeling for the overall scene. For example, a real roof would have its shingles slightly overlapping the roof’s sheathing layer. Additionally, some grass/landscaping and improved materials would have to be added. All C&C welcome as well as any advice since I am still new to VRay. BTW, the scene is illuminated with only a VRay dome light + HDRI. Additionally, there has been no post processing to these renderings.

Edit

I am also aware of the smoothing issue with the logs. Since this is only a scene for only testing lighting, I decided not to address the lack of tessellation by my architectural modeler.

Thanks

Marcus

If your aim is to test lighting, then I think you picked a wrong scene to start with. Why not pick a more simplistic / modernist scene, so you wouldn’t waste too much time doing environment modelling & finishing and put more attention to lighting?

This scene could be really great in final, but the credit would go more to environment modelling & composition.

Thanks for the feedback. I do not understand what you mean by this being a wrong scene. My only objective here was to see how effective would the VRay skydome + hdri technique would be at providing realistic lighting. I want to be able to render realistic scene no matter what type of building I am modeling (modern, residential, commercial, etc.). I will admit that I chose the cabin (which I had previously modeled) because of all of its interesting forms and shapes. I wanted to see how well this technique would reveal these forms.

Thanks again

Marcus

Not sure if it helps but I cant seem to render anything without using VRay sun/sky and physical camera. Having access to exposure is invaluable.
working with LWF I can get richness and depth that I could not seem to hit as easily before.

gl
-d

Yeah, from reading the VRay manual, it seems that the physical camera/sun-sky must be used in conjunction with each other. I may try a rendering in the future to compare this method with the skydome + hdri map method. BTW, I am using the LWF (as I understand it) with these renderings.

Marcus

Here is are a few additional renderings of the same scene. I rotated the hdri map so that the sunlight would come in at the front of the building. Please don’t ask me about the floating column :sweat_smile: For my next scene, I’ll verify that there isn’t as many faux pas in the model.

Marcus

Here are some morning shots

Do these look convincing?

Marcus

I think it will move along more once everything is in context, the clay
renderings help for setting up a baseline but may not reveall the full
feeling since the environment will contain more varied values such
as green grass or stones and what not.