Interior Family Room

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Hey guys I'm doing my first interior w/3ds max and Vray, which is also my first work with Vray. I am using the tutorial they provided for this image. This is a family room that I'm working on and I will probably add to my portfolio. I'm aiming for as much realism. What advice can you guys give me on the lighting or materials to make it more photoreal?

Also do you guys know any places that offer good FREE furniture models? I'm just a roockie making a portfolio and dont have much money to spend on models.

Also the vegetation do you guys usually do that with RPC's or do you actually model plants to put in interiors?

[Gus_Rayvus]

It's a nice start. The tile texture is a little large even if the slabs are that big, the joint and the stone material should be smaller. Maybe add some varied specular to your tile texture.

If you are making this image for your portfolio the first question they are going to ask you is did you build the furniture? It would be good to be able to answer yes. There are plenty of tutorials on the web and it's not that hard to learn. Anyway, then all the image is yours and you can take pride in knowing that it was completely created by you.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

You know I think you are right about the floor tiles being too big, although the wider-than-normal lens does distort the tiles closer to the camera. Question though, how do I add the varied specularity to my tiles using vray?

[marcdevon]

Hey guys I'm doing my first interior w/3ds max and Vray, which is also my first work with Vray. I am using the tutorial they provided for this image. This is a family room that I'm working on and I will probably add to my portfolio. I'm aiming for as much realism. What advice can you guys give me on the lighting or materials to make it more photoreal?

Also do you guys know any places that offer good FREE furniture models? I'm just a roockie making a portfolio and dont have much money to spend on models.

Also the vegetation do you guys usually do that with RPC's or do you actually model plants to put in interiors?

May I ask if your ceiling is the orange-ish color or if it is white? if it is white then you may wish to adjust the color bleeding (I am not sure how this is done with VRay) or try white balancing the scene in post production.

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Marcus

[marcdevon]

May I ask if your ceiling is the orange-ish color or if it is white? if it is white then you may wish to adjust the color bleeding (I am not sure how this is done with VRay) or try white balancing the scene in post production.

_________________________________________________________________

Marcus

BTW,

This is a quick result that was achieved with your render by white balancing the scene.

 

_________________________________________________________________

Marcus

[marcdevon]

May I ask if your ceiling is the orange-ish color or if it is white? if it is white then you may wish to adjust the color bleeding (I am not sure how this is done with VRay) or try white balancing the scene in post production.

_________________________________________________________________

Marcus

BTW,

Here are two more quick color balanced scenes.

_________________________________________________________________

Marcus

[Ray]

http://www.accustudio.com/

 

go to Exchange > Objects.

 

 

http://www.3dm3.com/

 

go to Models > Free Models.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

BTW,

Here are two more quick color balanced scenes.

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Marcus

Marcus thank you so much. That was precisely one of the things that I was worried about that the roof seemed not white enough. Can I ask what program did you use for this white balancing. Also if anybody knows how to do this withing 3dsmax/vray would be appreciated. Ray thanks for the link checking it out right now. Wow thanks alot Marcus that white balancing really improved the realism Thank you a thousand times over!!!!!!!!

[marcdevon]

Marcus thank you so much. That was precisely one of the things that I was worried about that the roof seemed not white enough. Can I ask what program did you use for this white balancing. Also if anybody knows how to do this withing 3dsmax/vray would be appreciated. Ray thanks for the link checking it out right now. Wow thanks alot Marcus that white balancing really improved the realism Thank you a thousand times over!!!!!!!!

 

Hey sancheuz,

 

No problemo. I know how hard it is to struggle to find out why something may not look as real as we would like to see. For the white balancing, believe it or not I actually used HDR Shop. I know this is software is not normally used to for any Low Dynamic Range (LDR) image editing but I came across its neat (both quick and easy) white balancing tool. You can download HDR Shop V1 for free from the following site:

 

http://www.hdrshop.com

 

To do this, what you will need to do is to use your cursor to pull a rectangle over an approximate 'white' section of your rendering. You were fortunate that you did have white section (ceiling) in your scene. Afterward, go to the menu bar and select:

 

Image -> Pixels -> White-Balance Selection

 

This will white balance the scene based on your selection area. This is the quickest way that I know how to do it. Photoshop CS or CS2 may have such a tool (I use version 7) or there may be plugins on the market that can achieve the same. For your scene, if you were select an area on the ceiling nearby the door where it is almost completely white, as you can expect the effect would be marginalized (See the second attachment that I posted in this thread). However, if you were to go further back where the color shift is more prevalent, the white balancing would be greater (See the first and third attachments that I posted in this thread). It is truly a judgement call as to how you wish to apply it. Attached in this message is one more that I white balanced by first performing some color balancing in Photoshop (I reduced some of the red) and afterwards I then used HDR Shop to do the final white balancing. All of these took less than a couple of minutes to do. The only downside is that this is a global solution (i.e. you can't white balance different surfaces separately easily). As such, sometimes while trying to get your ceiling whiter, you end up sucking too much color out of the other objects in your scene. Like I said, it's a judgement call. This is why you may wish to address this, partially at least, at the rendering stage. Although I own a license of VRay, I have not used it much. My understanding is that there are some issues with color bleeding. I think there is a global saturation parameter that can be adjusted but there are no adjustments that can be made on a per material basis. One thing that I have noticed in a lot of cg work by others is that many materials are overly saturated. What I would suggest for your scene is that you adjust your wall material. If you have assigned the material associated with your wall a solid color, in terms of Hue, Saturation, Value (HSV), I would leave the hue and value of the color the same but I would try reducing the color's saturation. Say if the color's saturation is 80 (on a scale o from 0-100), try reducing it to 40-60 and see what your results look like. If the material associated with your wall is an image map, try reducing its saturation by 25%-50% and see what your results look like.

 

OK, I have rambled on quite a bit here. I hope that I have offered you some good advise or at least I have led you in the right direction in your quest.

 

 

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Marcus

[Gus_Rayvus]

For color bleed in Vray you can put a material wrapper around the material that is causing too much color and turn down the generate GI. For the specular just put a map in the hilight glossiness slot. To tell you truth though, the color bleed doesn't really bother me and once you have some furniture and maybe a rug in there it won't be so strong. Colors bounce, there is no white. Also think about the mood of your scene. Reality is pretty malleable if you have the right feel to your rendering. I think for post most people use photoshop. Get everything in your scene before worrying about light and post though. Once you have a good rendering out you can put the gravy on it with photoshop.

[marcdevon]

Colors bounce, there is no white. QUOTE]

 

Physically true but our eyes do perform some white balancing. I had discussed the color bleeding phenomenon with two rendering programmers separately some time ago. Each of them said that in the physical world the color bleeding does happen however our eyes white balance the scene and that's why we don't totally perceive it as being so intense. However, this doesn't mean that there isn't any color shift. It's a matter of perception.

 

 

Just my $0.02

 

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Marcus

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Marc thanks 10million x for your advice. Gus I will follow your advice, finish the scene then worry about color saturation cuz I've noticed that adding any small object in to the scene can vary the color scheme wildly. I guess vray is just like that. Then I will do what you did Marc with hdrshop and I will post up hopefully by monday.

 

Let me ask you guys something. In this current scene I do not have vray skylight enabled only irradiance map and light map. Should I enable and overide max's skylight, or do you know if irradiance mpa and light map produce the results that skylight produce? I am obviously new to vray

[Gus_Rayvus]

vrays skylight is an actual environment light. Irradiance map is how vray

figures out how the light looks in your scene. Read this link. Not only will it show everything you want to know about vray, but it will greatly improve your ability to bore everyone at parties.

 

http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/VRayHelp150beta/

[Jonathan Sanchez]

I see. So I can get realistic GI environment shadows w/out using vray's skylight environment?

[Gus_Rayvus]

There is a million different was of lighting a room. I normally start with sky light a HDRI or just a light blue color. Then I put a sun in that creates interesting shadows in the room (vray light or a direct). I try to get as much light as I can in the room this way. Then I add other lights where I think they are needed. Right now with your rendering there is no direct sunlight coming into the room which is fine, but I personally like to have some strong light and shadows entering the space either from windows you can see or windows outside of the frame.

[Sawyer]

I didn't see if you were using vray advanced or not. As the tiles go - the door looks like it should be 6' wide then the tiles are 3'x3' thats pretty large typically tiles are 12" - or 16" sq. at least closer to that. Something to think about what is your window/glass mat? Are you going with a frosted glass or do you want direct sun eventually. The look of the room will change quite a bit with a new sun. Just keep that in mind.

 

Neat way to do this is.

 

1. Lighting first. Hide your glass apply a 50% grey mat to everything in material overides and get the sun light first.

 

2. During setup don't have the sun compete with the int lights. Work the sun first. Everyone works differenty and thinks differently about interior lighting but most interior photos use interior lights. (and flash and long exposure I know some photographers will hide fill lights into corners behind chairs or wherever it's dark to lighten it up. Much of this is done to mimick what the eye sees but you do have a bit of leeway with interior lighting the sun does not have to light it all but get it (the sun) done first).

 

Once it's lit or close aply materials.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Okay that's true I will add a sun. I had added one before applying materials but I removed it because I did not know how to soften the edges of the light passsing through the windows and landing on the floor. It was like a ray traced shadow. What can I do to soften those edges and make the sunlight shadow fade w/distance?

[Ismael]

Check these out:

 

http://www.seraph3d.com/BTS_RTC_recipes.htm

 

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7320&highlight=soft+sun+shadows

 

Ismael

 

Gee! Almost forgot that on this forum there are some excellent tutorials that shine light on your issue.

 

Merry Xmas!

[Lhanh29]

Thank you so much Ismael .It is a good website.

Good working Sancheuz.The first time working on Vray like that really good.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Okay Guys here's what I got so far. It's wip i will add lots more stuff like plants, vegatations, lights. I have couple of questions though:

 

1)I applied a displacement map to rug but obviously did not come out too good, what displacement map do you guys use and what settings to get better rug?

 

2) The floor's bump mapping fades away in the bottom right corner of the pic, why?

 

3) What do you guys think about lighting?

 

Thanks a million

[Yaseck]

What can I do to soften those edges and make the sunlight shadow fade w/distance?

 

Make a direct-target light with the vray shadows in it (from the outside of the room - through the window). In the vray shadows parameters choose area light and than play with the x/y/z size of the shadow.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Thans Yaseck. Yeah I figured that out eventually and posted up result in finished work. Here's link:

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?t=14034&page=2