Newbie - adjusting material color

[kyeric]

Hello all,

New to all of this, so I apologize in advance for the remedial question...

 

How do you change the color of a material? I have applied a Vray material for my roof, but the direct light seems to make it way too bright, so I thought to just adjust the original color to something darker?

 

Is this the correct method, or is there another way?

 

Thanks in advance,

-e

[jvlive]

adjust your lighting. your materials should look correct in your mat editor 1st. then when rendering, should your material look too bright or too dark, its the lighting you need to adjust. after gettin a bit of experience on this you should be able to decide whether to adjust your materials or your lights.

[kyeric]

That seems logical enough...

 

I am trying to use a HDRI background for an exterior scene setup and I am finding that it is a game of fine tuning and patient rendering. I understand that an HDRI may be overkill for an exterior scene, but everytime I try just a direct light with a vray dome the image just looks flat.

 

Does anyone else use HDRI for their exteriors? Or is it a balance of dome lighting and other lights with large decays?

 

I also understnad that their is no magic setup for every scene, but I am trying to just get beyond the old "look at me, I'm computer-generated!" bleakness of my past attempts of 3dsmax....

 

Thanks for the directions, guys, I know this stuff is hard to read for the tenured artists on this forum.

 

-e