Exterior issue/comercial building

[Guest FlaviusC]

Hi there... I have a small local job(my first ) and I must make a nice render of this building.To be honest, I have done only interior renders by know and I don't really know how to set a exterior lighting. I'm using V-ray... the whole building is quite reflective. Could anyone please give me a link to a tutorial,or explain briefly how to set up exterior lighting with V-ray? and I missed the deadline...

 

(vray attempt)

 

( mr attempt)

 

Thank you a lot...

[malevy]

HI,

Try looking at http://vray.info its a very nice site with a ton of tutorials on vray. If you still need help let me know and ill see what i can come up with.

 

Hi there... I have a small local job(my first ) and I must make a nice render of this building.To be honest, I have done only interior renders by know and I don't really know how to set a exterior lighting. I'm using V-ray... the whole building is quite reflective. Could anyone please give me a link to a tutorial,or explain briefly how to set up exterior lighting with V-ray? and I missed the deadline...

 

(vray attempt)

 

( mr attempt)

 

Thank you a lot...

[SandmanNinja]

The Mental Ray looked more vivid for some reason.

 

I bought Chris Nichols' Exterior (and his Interior) lighting with V-Ray back in my brief flirtation with V-Ray. I learned tricks there that I still apply in Mental Ray today.

 

Interiors are all about bounces. Bounces, bounces, and more bounces.

Exteriors are about getting the Sun right.

 

In that mental ray render, if you scale the brick texture down a fair bit, you'd have a decent start right there.

 

And where you would add entourage in an interior to add realism (knives, forks, spoons, vases, plates, etc), you add exterior entourage (street signs, curbs, foot paths, bricks), and scale is very important.

 

If you want to stick with V-Ray, go to the shop on this site and buy Chris' v-ray tutorials. Hurry, I'll wait.

 

[Guest FlaviusC]

 

I have listened your advice about the entourage.I'm a beginner in exteriors to be honest...now i have to do the exterior lighting,gotta think where to put the outside lights.Any ideas are well appreciated. Thank you everyone!

[SandmanNinja]

Good start.

The one thing that jumps out at me is the windows - they look like mirrors.

In Mental Ray you would adjust the BRDF. From my notes:

* BRDF

BiDirectional Reflectivity Distribution Function

This lets you control the reflection based on the angle of incidence of the viewer's eye.

0-degree reflection is looking directly at the surface

90-degree reflection is looking parallel to the surface

If you wanted to look directly THROUGH the glass, set the 0-degree reflection to 0

If you want to get reflection when you encounter a sharp angle, set the 90-degree reflection to 1

A Daytime scene would have a higher 0-degree reflection value than a night time scene

A Night time scene would not have much reflection and the 90-degree reflection would be lower

 

Not sure how to do that in v-ray.

 

For your ground texture, what are you using? Search the site here for GRASS - it'll help a lot.

 

Just like you have a floorplan for interiors, you should sketch out a site plan when doing exteriors. You can put the 'big' items on it (grass, concrete, asphalt, curbs, etc) and then 'fill in' the little details (street signs, street lights, etc).

 

A tutorial on exterior modelling and lighting would help you tremendously. Let it walk you through a few times until you get your work flow.

[BrianG]

If you're under deadline consider taking your render into photoshop (or gimp if you don't own ps) and adding a few touches to increase the realism. You might try:

 

-Adding some reflections to the windows (go darker farther down the building and the let top open with a reflection of the sky.

 

- Using a photo background for the building. You could also set it up in your render enviroment but you'll have more control in an image editor.

 

- darking the foreground a little or cropping expanse of foreground in the top image.

 

Also consider playing around with your sun position. Some light onto the entry would help lead the viewer into the image.

 

Good Luck!

[Guest FlaviusC]

SandmanNinja : Thank you a lot about that info. You made me go and look at a modern building in my town,and I was watching perpendicular on the windows,and I could see what's inside,and I could see any reflection,then,when my viewing angle was increasing,the refraction dropped and I could see more reflection,until it was like a mirror!

 

BrianG : thank you for those tips. Client was ok with those renders,he doesn't really care about photorealism,he's more interested where to put his lights etc,he wants me to do it. But I really care about PR because i want to put it in my portfolio .therefore Thank you a lot for those tips.

 

Regards,

Flavius