I’ve rendered out an exterior - but I’m not satisfied with the results. I can’t seem to get this photorealistic like my interiors. I use IR/LC with high subdivs. One target and gradient ramp for the lighting. Post processing has been done in PS. Does anyone have any tips?
I’d look at changing your camera view mate, it seems too high. The rest of the suggestions I’ll leave up to the masters here
hmmm… I know you can do better then this.
1. what color is your sun? try making it more warm.
2. WAY too much contrast. whats your colormapping settings?
3. yes always use a camera at a realistic height (5’6" to 5’9") unless its specifically what your going for.
4. I would look again at all your brick texture scale. Generally a horizontal brick is 2.66" high
Is it for a professional job? If not I would highly recommend maybe posting the scene, getting some more eyes on what youve got there would probably incredibly worth it and would get you over that hump so to speak.
hope that helps
Also…
Grass is tiling, and the images is way overexposed (can’t see the louvers on the shutters).
Mmmm. Thanks for the extra sets of ‘eyes’ guys. 
Will be re-creating the scene within the next day or two then.
Hey Mate,
Mmm I think the grass needs to be redone, to me it looks tooo…well kinda fluffy i guess.
Also the roof tiles seems to be very blurry. You might need to turn off the blur in the bitmap properties, and made add some displacement to get the detail back or something.
And as percy said the contrast is kinda out of whack 
hey jujubee,
Just had a look at your site and you have some really nice images there, (especially the interiors) so please dont be offended with my remarks about the exterior. 
1) I agree with all of the above points by the others
2) Get rid of those trees, they are useless and I would only use them as far distant backgrounds (maybe with blur/out of focus)
3)the pillars at the front of the house dont touch the ground
4) the tiles on the porch look like bricks, and desperately need displ. or bump,
5) same applies for tiles on roof, there muct be better free images on the web, try the texture sites for free samples, www.got3d, merlinstudios, real world imagery, etc etc…
6) did you add some of those flowers in PS, they have no shadow and loof as if they are floating
7) I would mount htose lights/lamps that are on the grass into a gravel or give them a base. they look flimsly going straight into the grass. (IMHO)
8)get a better sky background
you can have the settings for this http://www.chaoticdimension.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=11117 if its any use, but will have to wait till I am back in office tomorrow.
The house is nice and sound in design and will look great when the CC is applied, and as I said earlier you are well able getting this to look sh1t hot. I do exteriors better than interiors and you are the opposite, but that can change
good luck,
keep us posted,
Tom
The color temperature seems off for a mostly sunny day background.
That and reducing the artifacts from the tiled bitmaps and the over exposure should make it look much better. Adding a bit of reflection and gloss to the shutters might help breakup their plainess, they are a bit blown out now.
Sorry for the lack of response. A week and a half later and I’ve learned an important lesson in outdoor lighting. It’s definitely a lot more difficult than lighting interiors.
Done - this made a big difference.
Bad lighting methods and using the wrong exposure levels - background gradient ramp with a sun - had to really tweak the colors constantly. I think it’s fixed now. Plain linear was finally used. And the bricks were 2.66" initially.
Yeah. It looked pretty sh**** in retrospect. I just settled on Metroberlin’s excellent grazing sheep mats. As for the roof, that and Catmull-Rom did the trick.
Not offended by anyone at this point. This is the the best constructive criticism lesson I’ve ever had. Thanks to everyone involved. But I’ll have to disagree with you about mounting my lamps on concrete though…
It was a bad call on the AA, lighting, and low min/max rates- also- the shutters were beveled geometry which severly spiked the render times. Last time I make that mistake…
Its look a hell of a lot better.
Good work mate
Yes, much better :!:
Slats on the shutters could be larger and the color of the paint darker along with some soft specular. Bevels aren’t bad for them at all.
I would also turn off generate GI for the grass. Or whatever’s causing the green on your sidewalk.
Your brick trim looks out of place.
The roof shingles could use an overlapping layer on the edges of the porch.
--Jon
hey Jujubee,
I know this is pretty late,but I really liked the glass of your windows. Can I request the material settings please?..if not a problem.
Thanks in advance.
I really like the grass…is that vray displacement or fur?
nice render dude
he used displacement. the one from the grass sheep thread
Hey, looking much nicer Jujubee.
One thing you might like to try is lowering the value of your white to give more definition to the shutters and gutters.
In general, I always use linear colour mapping for exteriors, much better contrast - exponential tends to ‘flatten’ things too much. I also steer away from LC, just stick to QMC and IR. Try getting the lighting good with your colour mapping at 1,1 - your balance between the sun and environment that is - I find it necessary sometimes to increase only the dark multiplier to lighten the shadows. A final point is to test out some different AA filters - I have found lately that rendering a ‘blurry’ image and sharpening post gives a nice finish.
A bit late I know but hopefully it may be of some use.
What I find kind of strange is that the light on the right of the building looks much dimmer than on the left of the building. Additionally the plant in front of the building looks overly saturated, while the tree leaves could use a bit more color. That being said, they look an awful lot better than the first you posted
Wow - its been a long time and this thread resurfaced - some things you’re afraid to look back at. I’ve made alot of improvement in methods since thse first ‘arch’ images. That being said…
Sure. Very simple but I would do it alot differently now. Falloff Fresnel in Reflect slot. .98 ref glossiness.
Pretty much yeah. I usually do a couple things differently such as mix up the maps/colors a little but I don’t stray too far from Metroberlin’s experiments. It works well and it works fast.
Good QMC/LC works great for all intents and purposes IMO.
Yeah there’s a light plane hitting it from an angle. Good eye.