Fairfield Inn and Suites - Rockford (VRaySun + Physical Cam)

[Chad Warner]

What if you used a falloff map in the reflection slot instead of using fresnel?That way you have control over the amount of reflection.

[RyanSpaulding]

What if you used a falloff map in the reflection slot instead of using fresnel?That way you have control over the amount of reflection.

 

Ok, I'll try that instead (tho again, I have to learn how to do this)...but still, why would the sky not reflect in the windows and instead return white? Crazy crazy VRay...

[Spooner04]

I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to reflect. The vray sky is pretty much just a gradient and I don't think it would show up much in your windows.

 

You can copy the vray sky into the vray:environment slot and then in your rendering:environment rollout put the vray hdri. turn the render mult. up. this will affect the brightness of the sky but not the lighting. I'm guessing that as this is the environment it will reflect in your windows. I'm not 100% sure though because we just recently upgraded to 1.5 and haven't run any projects using this workflow yet. If you're confused I can post a screen shot.

[RyanSpaulding]

I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to reflect. The vray sky is pretty much just a gradient and I don't think it would show up much in your windows.

 

You can copy the vray sky into the vray:environment slot and then in your rendering:environment rollout put the vray hdri. turn the render mult. up. this will affect the brightness of the sky but not the lighting. I'm guessing that as this is the environment it will reflect in your windows. I'm not 100% sure though because we just recently upgraded to 1.5 and haven't run any projects using this workflow yet. If you're confused I can post a screen shot.

 

Right, but shouldn't the gradient show up somewhat? Even though theres not much to reflect, I should get some sort of color...but it's pure white, as if the material is set to not reflect the environment.

 

Could you post a screenshot? I cant find even where I can select my VRay Sky to copy in the 1st place. Sun, yes...but I cant find anything to select the sky.

[Spooner04]

I think this is why the person was putting the vray sky into the material editor, you had mentioned that earlier I think. Not sure though. the vray sky goes in rendering/env by default. You can copy it into the material editor. Copy, not instance. You can then instance that material into the vray:environment rollout. Then in the Rendering>env select a vray hdri. browse to the hdri of your choice. Bump the rendering multiplier up by 10 or 20. This should increase the visibility to compensate for the difference of the vray camera, but as it's in the rendering environment slot I don't think it will increase the lighting. Like I said. Not 100% sure about the lighting increase. but I ran a quick test and didn't notice any change. Maybe a little affect, but if you tweak the multiplier correctly it shouldn't be noticeable.

[RyanSpaulding]

Hmn, I tried that and it totally messed my lighting up, so I'm not sure I'm on the same page as you.

 

Here is what I want, and it has nothing to do with changing the sky. I like the sky, so I dont want to mess with using an HDRI as lighting. I do not actually want clouds to show outside of my reflections.

 

I'm trying to get a good, realistic looking glass. I follow the tutorials to get good glass:

 

1. Set the diffuse to black

2. Set reflection to close-to-white

3. Set refraction to pure white

 

If I leave off fresnel, I get the building reflecting on itself, pure white where the sky-gradient SHOULD reflect.

 

If I check it on, it's not nearly reflective enough and ends up never reflecting the environment except from the most extreme of angles.

 

If I choose a falloff map in the reflection map section, set the falloff type to 'fresnel' and the direction to 'Viewing Direction (Camera Z-Axis)', and hit render, it's way to reflective. Changing the color values did nothing, nor did messing with the 'mix curve'.

 

I need to step away and take a walk right now. This has me crazy irritated.

[RyanSpaulding]

Arg. Well, here's where I'm at for the day. Spent it almost entirely on the glass issue and didn't even fix it. Getting a lovely grey color now *grumbles*

 

There's a real lack of tutorials on how to get good glass windows for exterior visualizations. There's a TON on glass objects, wine glasses, bottles....but next to nothing that indicates how to do it well in an exterior rendering...how to get nice clouds AND some of the interior looking nice.

 

Maybe I'll get it this weekend.

 

The below image is 3000px wide.

[RodT]

http://www.3dats.com/tutorials.asp#week14

If you haven't looked at these yet You'll likely find answers to a few ????

[Tommy L]

Arg. Well, here's where I'm at for the day. Spent it almost entirely on the glass issue and didn't even fix it. Getting a lovely grey color now *grumbles*

 

There's a real lack of tutorials on how to get good glass windows for exterior visualizations. There's a TON on glass objects, wine glasses, bottles....but next to nothing that indicates how to do it well in an exterior rendering...how to get nice clouds AND some of the interior looking nice.

 

Maybe I'll get it this weekend.

 

The below image is 3000px wide.

 

I think the best thing to do is to research outside of tutorials. A tutorial will tell you how 1 person solved 1 problem. But you really need knowledge of the properties of light and glass. Look at real life examples. Look at how painters have dealt with glass.

Glass is just the sum of its reflection and refraction. If your model has no environment to reflect (and I dont just mean a skymap in the environment channel) and there is nothing in the building, the glass will have no substance.

[Nic H]

hey ryan as far as your glass goes....

 

If the Fresnel Reflections tickbox isn't giving you satisfactory glass reflections (i never like the way it looks btw) put a perpendicular/parallel falloff map in your reflect slot and adjust the falloff curve with the bezier spline so its more of a exponential curve rather than the linear one.

 

Another thing to try is to put some subtle (like a value of 2-3) noise in your glass bump, this will let it reflect areas not perectly parralel to your windows (like the grass and background) .

 

Most of your windows seem about the same size so make a slightly 'bulging' gradient map in PS with dark around the outsides fading into white and apply a UVW mapping mod with 'per face' ticked.

 

You need a background image or plane with trees(diffuse and opacity map) on it in front of your building, Id make a plane and put it where the grass finishes and make it invisible to camera/shadows so it only acts as something to reflect in the windows.

 

I really think some blinds / subtle curtains in the windows would help add some depth as well, maybe even some very subtle ceiling lights as well?

[alfienoakes]

Ryan,

 

If you arent happy with the fresnel settings, just unlock the box next too "Fresnel reflections" and this then opens up the Fresnel IOR.. up this value to about 2 and render again. The higher you go, the more you will reflect.

 

And nice and simple.

 

I was using Lele's method with the vraysun and physical camera, but I think they changed the way the camera and sun works with the background, so with fairly simple settings, you can get a nice result using standard vraymtl. I would be interest to hear of anyone else who was using Lele's and has switched or still uses it.

 

Also, have a look into the "sunny 16 rule" to understand how the fstops etc work (Thanks to trevor for that one).

 

Have a look at my thread in WIP's section, its not perfect but that is a really simple setup that works.

[RyanSpaulding]

Thanks everyone for the responses. It helps tons.

 

I'll have a new WIP on Wednesday with the final building details.

[RyanSpaulding]

Update to the building geometry. Still have to add curtains, better glass, people, autos, and trees.

 

How's it look so far?

[Brian Smith]

Update to the building geometry. Still have to add curtains, better glass, people, autos, and trees.

 

How's it look so far?

 

I havent read all the posts in this thread, so it might have been mentioned, but just remember that the glass is only going to look good if it has something to reflect. I would populate your scene with other objects to make your reflections a little better. A few trees, cars, generic buildings, etc. Even if they are out of view, they can still help in the reflections.

[Ricardo Eloy]

Great improvement, Ryan. It's a lot, a lot better than the first rendering. Good job!

[RyanSpaulding]

I'll do that Brian. It's been mentioned and I've toyed with putting models back there, but for ram sake, I'm going to do some billboards of my renders and hide them from the camera. Might take some tweaking with the placement of it.

 

Thanks Rick.

 

How's the EFIS look? Is it too coarse?

 

How do I get the backside of my plane (it's not hit by sunlight) to show bright? The side with the sun facing it is illuminated, the side not is black....reflecting black.

[RyanSpaulding]

Yes. Nice glass. Finally. Thanks guys.

 

I didn't realize how out of scale my displacement grass was until I put people in there at true scale. Ha.

[Brian Smith]

Yes. Nice glass. Finally. Thanks guys.

 

I didn't realize how out of scale my displacement grass was until I put people in there at true scale. Ha.

 

 

very nice. honestly the thing i dislike the most is the sky. it seems to me to be out of focus, stretched, and for lack of a better word, weird. i would cut the strength down on the wall texture by about 30% because i dont think you could possibly see it that strong from this distance in the real world. maybe the same for the curbs. other than that, it's very well done.

[RyanSpaulding]

Ok, here's another try. Fixed the EFIS to not be so extreme, fixed brick size, added people, some trees. I'm missing some autos still, maybe a bush here and there.

 

Any issues?

[Vince Paske]

That looks great Ryan, nice job. Now all you need to do is add a foot of snow, lot's of slush and salt and a fender-bender to really make it real.

[Brian Smith]

Ok, here's another try. Fixed the EFIS to not be so extreme, fixed brick size, added people, some trees. I'm missing some autos still, maybe a bush here and there.

 

Any issues?

 

hmmm...much better, but i think 11 people is overkill. i dont think you'd ever find 11 people in view 99% of the time in real life...especially with no cars in the parking lot. if there's anyway you can add trees on the right it would help keep it from looking so open, although it may need to be that way i dont know.

 

also if you can use 3d trees in place of the 2d it could only help.

[Sawyer]

I think you may be off with your exposure. Everything looks too dark but the shadows are almost black and I don't think you want that.

 

Here I have played with the values and erased stripes to see the difference. I think if you just re-render with a better exposure value this will look better.

[RyanSpaulding]

vince:

Thanks for the feedback. Maybe that'll be v2. Haha. I cant imagine any client asking to see the building in snow, but it'd be good practice. Cant imagine it'd be too hard.

 

brian:

Yeah, I'm usually a big advocate of using 3d vegetation, however, I have ZERO experience bringing an ONYX or XFrog model into max...and didn't want to open that can of worms right now. Maybe I'll try getting ONYX and VRay to play nice tonight. Also, once I get autos into this, I'll have a better feel for the amount of people...11 may be much though.

 

Sawyer:

That may be. I'll look into this a bit...however, I dont want the efis fronts to be so washed out like in yours. I do like it a bit brighter though.

------------------------

 

I've added an AO pass to it and like that. Thanks all. Might have one more WIP and then I'll go with a final.

[Chad Warner]

Sawyer's brighter version is a little nicer I think. The original definitely has a bit of gloom to it.

[RyanSpaulding]

Yeah, I can see that now that I look more at it.

 

I guess more of the issue is that when I change the exposure of the camera, I lose the actual colors (that I have to match) for print. So I need to be able to set the colors and have the result show something close to the color swatch I have.

 

I have to figure out how to keep the light parts of the image close to what they are, and bring the shadows to a lighter level. And simply adjusting the ISO isn't doing it. In post I could likely adjust the levels in Phtotshop, but it'd be nice to not have to.