Doing a lot of interiors lately and I am a bit struggling with a natural, light, airy look.
Just one example would be Bertrand Benoits renderings like this: Emma’s Place (V-Ray)
it seems like light is everywhere but still shadows are nicely defined.
Do I just open up more windows, so to speak, to let more light in?
Because right now I am going in and adding vray plane lights to fill up the dark spots, but that is far from natural…
Of course that is debatable when it comes to interior photography. I have never worked in that business, and maybe there is also a lot of artificial lighting going on.
But for a natural, airy look, what would you guys recommend?
In the old days I think there was the option to bump up the GI multiplier, but not with GPU rendering anymore (unless it is somewhere hidden).
Maybe just raise the shadows in post and then add contrast? But Bertrands images look really good raw already…I am a little lost, haha
Thanks you Bertrand. I read the post. And right now working with ArionFX and then brightening the shadows a little further in Capture One works pretty well. But my renderings are nowhere as bright and airy as yours. Either the sun coming in is burning everything close to the window out and then the rest is nicely bright or there is no burn and everything is dark.
here is a rendering (composed in photoshop of lightselects) and the edit:
lool I’m not Bertrand
Sorry but I should have wrote reply in a more clear way
I meant I would like to add to the Discussion here but I’m busy fightng with a tight deadline and messy project.
Sorry for inconvenience
Lol, but I’m am an idiot . 
Too much time Infront of the computer.. My eyes fooled me into thinking that the link description was your signature. Even though we already talked in another thread.
my apologies
Good luck with the messy project. Maybe you have time afterwards!
It’s a struggle for sure. I have been exposing with just exterior lights on and adding interiors with real-world power later, or vice versa. PS’s camera Raw Auto also help to balance the light, but usually at like 40%.
Camera raw is similar to capture one, right? No 32bit and it would brighten the shadows?
No, no 32 bit, which is lame!
are you using the burn value on the reinhard color mapping? To reduce the outside glare?
in Arionfx you mean? I am using the randomcontrol tonemapping and yes, doing a lot of tonemapping to reduce the burn. But I am just not content with my raw render.
ah no i meant the color mapping setting in vray.
oh yeah, using reinhard. although I read somewhere that linear multiply would help with the burns..havent tried it out. suggestions?
Oh you mean the burn value in the color mapping? never touched it actually…
This is an interesting one and I’m interested to hear how you get on too.
Try colour mapping burn value lower at 0.3 - 0.5 to reduce bright areas.
In reality, the camera sensor couldn’t cope with full sunshine coming in through the windows AND expose for shadows as well. You’d bracket the exposures and blend in PS (one exposure for the bright areas, then a longer exposure to capture the dark areas) Better still you’d wait until the Sun light wasn’t so bright, moving towards dusk. Only then can you get the scene in one exposure.
Well there`s your problem.
try lowering the burn value as mentioned above. sometimes i find myself lowering it to 0.05. the result will be Flat render without much contrast,same as for LOG-C footage.but you get much more light in without having burned pixels.
i usually grade it afterward in Affinity or just use the VFB.
I’ll try it out . Thank you!
If you take a look at his turbosquid site you will see the difference between his post vs raw render. That combined with a soft hdri and low burn value and then boosting the contrast/exposure/and a nice lut gets you a lot closer.
Keep your burn value at .3 and increase the power of the lights way, way beyond what you normally do.
Get in the habit of typing in huge numbers and dialing it back from burnt out, instead of starting dark and creeping it up. That’s the advice I give to new hires here and it seems to get them where they need to be quicker.
Almost every single person lights scenes too dark and i think it’s because when increasing the power of lights, something that is brighter than the last render looks ‘better’ despite not being objectively bright overall, causing people to call it done and not push it much further.
really crank those numbers up - make your first render totally blown out and white. fuck that scene up.
That cracked me up .Best advise ever!
thank you .I’ll try that too!
lol pretty much this
watch your white and black values as well. can also be useful to quickly look at the histogram of a ref image and compare to yours.
fuck that scene up agree.