Is it just me or do these images look “dead”? I cant put my finger on it, something just looks wrong. Maybe I’v looked at them to long. Any suggestions?
Nice images. I think your problem can easily be fixed in photoshop. Also add some people so it doesn’t look so empty.
This took about 10 mins in photoshop.
Specular bloom, lighten things up, and try to shift stuff away from the blue-green tint and you’ll mostly eliminate that “dead” feel.
ya, that bluegreen tint is a pain, but the client wants it. Seems way too cold for the warm dark feeling they are looking for.
I ran it through one of my usual photoshop actions that I like to use to enhance images. Here is my result:
I prefer the ‘percied’ version myself.
I like effect of the illuminated glass under the counter. What material did you use? I often hear everyone talk about specular bloom in Photoshop. What exactly is it? A filter?
It’s pretty much the effect where if you have a light source and the environment around it is either dusty or misty, the lgiht will catch particles of dust or water floating in the air and give your lights a soft glow around them. You can do this in photoshop quite a few ways. Mainly you duplicate your render in photoshop, colour correct it so that only the bright areas of the render are left, blur it and use a blending mode to lay it over the original.
Here’s a tut from neil blevins that shows a few ways to do it:
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg\_education/specular\_bloom/specular\_bloom.htm
Thanks!
cristoforo-
I would like to say I used a material to pull off correct lighting under the desk, but I cheated. The desk is using a Vray material with a Refraction of .65 and Subdiv=6. This makes a nice frosted material, but the subdivs are so low that the glass comes across very rough with a light behind it. Increasing the Subs only makes the render time go higher. So…I cheated by putting a plane inside of the desk with the opacity map below. It looks like diffused lights, and I still get the appeance of frosted glass.
I hate cheating, but it works.
flavrsaver-
I like the contrast you managed to achieve in that image.
By its nature, 3D is cheating. Everything we do is simply trying to fake a particular effect with a minimum amount of rendertime or effort. Speculars are faking. Irradience Map and LightCache are faking.
What it comes down to, is that whatever works and appears correct, works. It may not be an accurate representation of a physical phenomenom. But we aren’t modeling the physics of photons here 
aahhh…makes me feel better!
the percified version looks really cool
im more for the flavrsaver version…but its a matter of taste ofcourse
i think an ideal version would be something between both of ours. I cant help but think flavrsavrs looks a little too dark, but after looking at his, then at mine, I cant help but think mine looks a little too bright.
Yeah, I think mine might be a little too dark too and I have to admit that I think yours is a little too light. Ha, so yeah somewhere in the middle.
The action I ran I use mostly for enhancing photos/imagery for when I’m working on websites, which is about 95% of what my company does, so it’s not really a 3D related action. I just like it because it tends to add a little bit more contrast and give the image a more dynamic look. I’m still new to 3D and to VRay and really only use it for 3D elements I want to add to my designs or for the occasional animation I do, so I’m not the best judge at what would be ideal for architectural renders. I just thought I’d try it out on this image and see what you guys think.