I have not posted renderings here before but have been following the forum. Here are two versions of the same exterior scene. This was done for a developer who will build the house to be sold.
The daylight scene uses vray sun and sky. This is my first stab at dusk/sunset lighting using HDRI map in vray dome light. Altering the background/site photo was a trial and error effort involving about 4 adjustment layers like exposure, photo filter, brightness/contrast, saturation.
Any comments and criticisms will be much appreciated.
One more slight tweak. GF commented sky was too purple. I agreed and so here is a version with sky adjusted. GF also thinks lights in windows too strong, maybe yes but I would need to re-render to change and I’m not so keen on doing that. Wish I had it as a render element that could be adjusted but I have not yet incorporated that into my workflow. Plan to do so on next project.
I’m hoping I may get some feedback on this. Like /don’t like. I will not mind hearing I should to go back to square one cause the entire thing needs re-working. I place a high value on review and c&c’s.
It looks like you are talking to yourself. I know how it is, I do the same thing. I have learned that reference photos are king when it comes to producing something believable. Also, there are some basic composition rules that might help. Never, or at least I never, have the main light source behind the camera. We only have a few things that help us and light/shadow is a big one. The light behind the camera produces a very flat image. Like, you should never use your cameras flash. Overall, good job and I can see you have worked hard.
Hi and thanks very much for your helpful reply! Hoping you may not mind imparting a little more advice.
Regarding composition - It does seem a bit out of balance. This had to be photo matched and I will say I was somewhat limited by the surrounding buildings, trees, etc influencing where I could actually take the photo from. Regardless, any specifics on better composition are welcome.
Would you say that the daylight scene has a more acceptable light position? I may have the hdri map rotated somewhat incorrectly for the evening and could rotate it so the sun/bright point is more to the left/west.
I try to keep my light source over a shoulder about 45 degrees off the camera. Unless you have the opportunity to have shows from the environment, have the light source over your should gives you nice contrast. My rule is, at least 2/3 in sun and 1/3 in shadow. All this could go out the window if you have some creative reason to do what you want to do.
Thank you again! I’m feeling a bit of chagrin regarding light position. I typically avoid having light directly behind camera. I had inadvertently rotated bright point of hdri into a not so favorable position. that seems pretty self evident now that you pointed it out. I got too caught up in just getting the hdri configured and working and lost sight of the more important aspects. couldn’t see the forest for the trees sort of thing. Anyway that’s my (weak) excuse.
I rendered it again and here is the result. I hope it’s OK to have posted this WIP sequence here versus finished work.
OK. my thinking was for dusk, the front of the house that is shown is the South elevation, so West is to the left. If the light was coming from the other direction (East) it would be morning. Also the sunlight is coming from the West in the background photo which I shot at about 5:00PM MST about a month ago. maybe that’s not so important with the processing I did to the background photo.
I’m wondering if morning light would have been better for the original daylight scene I did. It’s pretty shadowed in that area in the morning and the mountains beyond aren’t lit as well. this is a very narrow and deep East-West valley at 8750’ with 13,500’ peaks/ridge crest surrounding
I’ll give your suggestion a try and thanks again for your time and review.!
Did you forget to texture the window frames or are they really going for pink?
And I’m just going to say it, the dusk shot isn’t working, I would suggest the white balance would look better in the blue. You probably need to do a little bit of filler inside the rooms also. IES inside looks better too.
Hi thanks for your comments! Exactly the kind of critique I am seeking. Yes the window frames are specified to be that color. It is a big deal to the developer who picked the color scheme and loves it.
To shift to a mare cooler white balance temp I am thinking that would mean using a different hdri in the dome light texture?
I did have a warmer filter color on the interior lights in one of the earlier iterations but toned it down on suggestion from GF. I will try to experiment with using IES. Currently I have a few vray plane lights with a warm orange filter. I think
They were set at 2500 temp and I changed to 3500 for the most current.
Hi and thanks to you both for your replies. Ha, no I’m not going for an end of the world bush fire look <g>.
I am ok with redoing lighting. this a test effort and (hoped for) skill building exercise. the hdri ski I’m using is this one: HDRI Sky 157 - HDRI SKIES. The hdri is causing the red/orange color of the rendering as compared to the daylight version. I was thinking I would try one that didn’t have the red/orange and was more overall a late day blueish, per comment above.
I am curious to try the white balance color picker technique. I have the phys camera white balance set to white / 1.0
I think your camera settings, that is, your White Balance is making those colors. If you are going to use the Exposure settings, then you should know what White Balance/Kelvin Value to set your camera at as if you were in real life. Here, I found a link to help you out with this:
Thanks for your reply. I have the white balance on the camera set to 100% white so that it is not affecting the colors of the scene but rather the lighting is doing that. The white balance and camera exposure settings (f-stop, shutter speed, ISO) are unchanged between the daylight scene (see at beginning of thread) and the dusk scene. For the dusk scene, I used hdri map render multiplier to control exposure versus changing camera exposure or white balance settings. So I believe that the hdri map is what’s introducing all that color to the dusk scene. That is what I expected it to do even though the result is not so good
Not sure if this is relevant but below is from a different thread that I asked this question in. I never got a reply and I am using the " from 3ds max" option because it made the map look the most “correct” in the mat editor.
The hdri map I am using is from HRI Skies and it shows a gamma of 1.0 when viewed from mat editor and sampled/right clicked on to show properties/image info. I am using the vray/max linear work flow set up. In the Vray HRDI map parameters in the mat editor is a Color space section. The default Type seems to be “Inverse gamma” with additional drop down choices of “None”, “sRGB” and " From3DSMax". Should I be using the “From 3DS Max” option or …?
I’ll reiterate to read that article I just sent you. The settings after that should make sense. The only thing I can’t tell you about is using Gamma at 1, etc., since I don’t use that workflow, use whatever works for you, that’s the motto. However, if you leave the day exposure camera settings the same at night, the answer is right there, you shouldn’t. And at the same time, please read that article I sent you, it should make sense why I say that. A photographer would never have the same settings in his camera for a day shot and then again for a night shot, neither should you.
Thank you for your reply! Please know that I am not trying to argue with you just putting forward my understanding so I can be corrected. I did read the article you linked to and I understand exposure settings for photography.
I am not sure in this digital simulation if it really makes a difference whether I slow down shutter speed or increase amount of hdri multiplier? My thinking was to keep the camera exposure settings the same between daylight and dusk so I could see the effect of the daylight vray sun/sky versus hdri in a more apples to apples comparison. The tutorial I started from used the hdri render multiplier as the way to increase/decrease light amount versus adjusting camera exposure.
I am thinking that white balance is separate matter. I keep the white balance at 1.0/white so it is not casting color on the scene. Same with vray sky. I use Overide and a filter color of white. I do this for a couple of reasons.
1) I semi frequently have clients supply sherwin williams paint colors with RGB values that I must match. Or I get photos sent of colors to be matched. I can match these using Vraycolor map as long as the lights in the scene are not altering the colors (of course always a variation that exists from sun to shade areas).
2) I’m also often directed to match materials on existing buildings. I often photograph such specified building to get textures, or the same are sent to me. These exterior shots of stone or wood siding or whatever already have the sunlight/daylight “baked” in , because they were photographed in daylight. So putting a daylight colored sun light, or colored white balance on that changes the appearance of the texture. I hope this is understandable and would be receptive to an explanation of why my approach is flawed or not good.
With this scene I am trying to experiment and build my skills so that I can make a variation of a daylight scene that adds the evening coloring and sort of atmosphere. For such a scene I would not attempt top match color specs as described above. For my immediate purpose I just want to be able to execute a nice early evening rendering.
I’m thinking I should be using an hdri that gives a nice effect versus using white balance to alter the hdri lighting. I’m also unsure if longer shutter speed/exposure is any different that increasing render multiplier of hdri.
No worries. Here is what I can tell you. I don’t do animation, so I can’t guide you there. But I know VRay’s camera attempts to reflect a real life camera. When you click Exposure, it will apply a real camera’s effects. So ISO, Shutter Speed, etc., will take on the properties for a Nikon, Canon, Fuji, etc. I want to give you more data on this, so I’ll send you a message afterwards and see if I can help you. The thing is that I’m full blast right now on a deadline, but I don’t want you to think I’ll not answer up.
Thank you. I’m not concerning with animation here. I feel pretty comfortable with the physical camera and exposure settings and how they relate my real world cannon digital slr camera.
In verifying what I am writing I need to revise a minor point I made above regarding the hdri map Color space setting. I said it looked " most correct" in the mat editor when Color space set to “From 3ds max”. That was not quite true. I was using the mat editor view image versus how it appears in mat edit slot. It actually looks more correct in the mat editor sample slot when I keep the color space at the default setting of “Inverse Gamma”.
Using that default Color space setting for the hdri map is having a major effect on the rendering appearance. The overwhelming end of the world bush fire color cast seems to have eased off a bit.
I’m going to post a revised rendering using the Inverse gamma color space for the hdri.
