levels, contast, Bloom, exposure etc. done in PS
original resolution 2800 x 1400 rendered in appr. 3 hours ( irrmap/LC)
coments are welcome
Andy
interior
This is a very nice render! Excellent job! How did you add the body?
Bill
interior
its just PS
we tried “real” 3d People, but it seems they are not very accepted among many clients, so we mostly do them in post…
Andy
interior
Very nice work. I like it. 
Is the woman post work in this image too? Looks great - so with the reflections. 
interior
thank you
yes the woman was added in PS, reflection is just a vertical mirror of her (lowered contrast and and made darker => gradient selection, then gaussian blur and at last erased the lower part with a very soft eraser brush…)
Andy
interior
Powerful PS skill.
nice
very nice render i wonder what was the setiings for sunlight???
thanks and beautiful woman 
interior
Thanks for the response Andy. I didn’t think it was real people so that’s why I asked. If you don’t mind telling me, where did you get such nice people images?
Also, how many test renders did you do before acheiving the final result? Setup time, was that intense or relatively easy in Vray?
The reason I ask is because I just purchased Vray and have only had 1 hour to play with it but have high hopes. Great image!
Bill
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Hi Bill,
has you seen Thomas sticky link list at the general section? Very useful.
I have started with Vray with:
you will find some good tutorials.
Be careful, some bugs are active, better you read the last bug reports too.
Good luck.
-Micha
interior
@edrock : settings for sunlight were multiplier 0.7 and a light yellow/orange as colour, skylight 0.55 light blue colour…
@broonzee : she is actually part of a collection (120 business people) from got 3D
http://store.got3d.com/products/120-business-people-textures/index.html
about setup, i am not quite sure how many test shots i fired before doing the final one, but i guess at least 8 small sized to test for good light balance and material settings.
Depending on your materials and the render methods(QMC, IrrMAp, photon map, LC) setup times tend to differ, for fast optical feedback during the try & error phase i often use ppt, for the final picture mostly IrrMAp as first and LC as second.
It is also a good idea to separate the things you examiningare during your tests (light, materials, antialising settings) e.g. first use only simple difuse materials to get a general feeling for the light situation while maintaining fast feedback. before going for the final shot i always render a few buckets with the final settings at potential problematic areas (glossy metals, transparet materials with objets behind them and so on )
a good tutorial can be found here:
have fun
Andy
at first glance all the many vray settings are a little bit frightening, but after a while when you understand (most) of them the can be used to significantly tweak your rendertimes.
interior
@ micha
… two minutes faster than me
time to go home now
Andy
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Andy, you are right. I’m at home and go to bed now.
Gute Nacht.
-Micha
PS: Danke f?r den Tipp mit Got 3D.
interior
Micha:
I haven’t seen Thomas’ sticky but will look at it.
vcube:
Thanks for the excellent feedback. What a great help and very interesting. I’m not too intimidated by Vray’s controls. I currently use AIR and have found coming from a Renderman compliant renderer, other applications are easy to understand. Like you said, I just have to get use to the settings.
vcube/micha:
Thank you both for the link! This is much more indepth then the current help files under help/plug-ins.
I can’t wait to start practicing.
Cheers!
Bill
NICE!
Very nice rendering, I particularly like the painting looking back at you. Kind of a meta-goof on the old painter trick of drawing you into an image by having someone in the painting looking out at you.
Was the exterior landscaping also in PS?
And are those really bench/ chairs at the far right or is that a trick of the camera?
Re: NICE!
well, thank you, though i have to admit it was not done intentionally but looking at it now i think you are right
Was the exterior landscaping also in PS?
yes exterior was edited in PS ( grass, trees, hedge…)
And are those really bench/ chairs at the far right or is that a trick of the camera?
yea, due to the wide angle lens they are kind of distorted, not so nice…
Andy
interior
may i ask how your entire light-setup looked like? as you mention that you used skylight, did you also put arealights into the windows, or is the scene only lit by sun/enviroment?
when i use enviroment for interior i always get splotches and noise on white untextured surfaces (especially ceiling) that i hardly can rid off. i assume it would be better if i used arealights instead of enviroment light, but as some of my scenes combine both exterior with interior at once i still have no idea how to deal with this.
interior
Hi Oluv,
I know you problem. For standard interiors are arealight recommendend, best in portal mode (GI and a GI environment map must be enable). If you need a mix from interior and exterior, than you could build a big arealight box around your scene. Here some more infos about lighting:
-Micha
interior
thanks for your tip. i always liked your example with the fireplace a lot and i was wondering how you achieved such a noisefree result. what was the rendering time? did you use irmap as first and lightcache as secondary engine?
how far away from the window do you put the arealights? and how big are they? are they about the same size as the windows, or larger?
when i was testing i got better results, when making the arealights the same size as the window and putting them slightly inside the szene. this way i avoided unwanted blurred shadows, coming from the windows themself, that ended being very noisy.
i have to try your setup with a large arealight-box around the scene.
interior
Rendertime approx. 1h, but I’m not sure. Yes, I have used IM+LC. If I remember me right, I have used the LC option “use for glossy rays” too.
The arealights are very big, approx. 2..3 times bigger as my scene. I have used 22 divs, the “store with irradiance map” light options and “ignore normals”.
If I would put the arealight in the windows, than I would get a break in the lighting between the balcony and the interior.
The background are textured lighmaterials, so that the background is visible in reflections.
For the metals I have used 20 divs.
-Micha
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Hi Oluv,
actually in this scene i have not used any arealihts, its just plain skylight + sun. Regarding the splotches, i try to get rid of them by increasing the samples of the irradiance map to at least 70 (irr-map at -3/-1), this works to a certain degree, but when adding contrast in PS, splotches will eventually reapear,i f you look at the right part of my picture you will see some splotchiness 
I always have to do a lot of “white boosting” in PS. I am using levels, gradient curves, match color etc. to whiten up my walls (clients allways want light rooms, no matter how dark they would be in the real world )
besides the splotches I ocasionally get “banding” problems, i think this is due to the fact that I am widening the spectre of certain areas e.g. the white(greyish) walls to get more grey areas into nuances of white. So this is limiting me a lot in my attempts to balance the lightning in post, the solution would be, to have better initial renderings, light but not burned…
I have not used portals so much, because i think i remember that they increased my rendertimes, especially when there are many openings, but they would probably tent to a better lightning solution as well.
@ Micha : interresting idea with the oversized lightportals, i think i will give that a try when i find the time.