Here is a Rendering I am working on.
I am using linear exposure, an hdri for fill and a VRAY sphere for the sun.
Aside from entourage and plants; This needs help…I don’t know how best to start. The client asked for the glass and colors, so please refrain from too much critic on that.
I would say you need a couple things.
1) Ground texture.
2) More contrast. The way I get this is to balance the HDRI multiplier and the sun’s multiplier. I’ll set the sun to 0 and light with just the HDRI. When I have the brightness I want out of the HDRI, I’ll start lowering the HDRI multiplier as I raise the sun. This will give you your shadow crispness as well as more contrast. Look out your window on a sunny day for comparision as to the contrast between sun and shadow.
There may be a better way but this has worked for me.
More stuff in the scene casting shadows, gi and reflections will do wonders for the overall image.
Good luck
Thanks! How do I setup reflection maps for the scene on the glass?
Here’s the manual for vray.
The reflection map override slot is in the vray render settings (F10) under environment.
Also make sure you haven’t got any default lighting going on(check under vray switches in the vray render panel).
Lele
http://www.joepizzini.com/VRAY/Tutorial.htm#1
turnoff default lights
a good idea is to use a mid grey material to get the levels of lighting that you want, then apply materials
Great Tutorials
Here is a link to a great tutorial on VRAY Materials (Basic):
http://www.aversis.be/extra\_tutorials/vray\_basic\_material\_settings\_01.htm
Hope that helps, 
Mike
P.S. There are some other tutorials on that site for HDRI lights and other VRAY stuff.
Where did I see a tutorial on VRAY displacement hedges/bushes?
Someone was using a chamfer box with it…?
www.vray.info
O.k. - Here’s an updated image.
A few problems I would like to fix; and I need help please!
I am using an HDRI in both environment and reflection slots.
If you look carefully at the image, once you get past the grass island out in front of the building, the reflection in the glass…especially the upper windows, just goes to infinity with a vray grass plane. I don’t like that and I have a 180 degree map from Marlin studios panoramica that I just want to use for reflection on the windows out front to provide more realism. I tried mapping it to a plane behind the camera but I couldn’t get the reflections to work in the glass. Any help with reflection mapping would be of great help. Of course any other comments welcome!
Looks alot better.
You can just use the enviroment slot in the vraymaterial for the glass. chuck the 180 degree map in there and set it to spherical environment.. should work ok.
you could always quickly fake reflections wsing Photoshop/paint shop pro, etc, (use the layer blend mode-thats what I’d do)
Tom
I like to use a darker diffuse color for my non-transparent glass to simulate the darker interior…but that is probably a personal preference.