Exterior view - lighting (etc.) critique

[nukegara]

Hi,

 

This is my first post, and one of my first arch viz projects, it's not what I normally do, but I think it's pretty neat and would of course like to improve. I'm using Maya 2008, rendering with mental ray, final gather. This is very much a WIP - no bg, etc. I mainly would just like some lighting and texturing tips

 

I'm using physical sky and sun, which I like but feel I'm not using to the best of its abilities. Things look a bit flat, but probably with an ambient occlusion pass things will pop more.

 

The things that bother me are:

- the copper roof

- the glass windows

 

I'm using mia material presets for both shaders. I never could get the glass to actually be transparent, and the copper looks really dull. Anyway, I'll leave the rest of the critique to you all - I look forward to your advice. Thank you!

[Dave Buckley]

ok so your sun seems pretty high (12 noon) take it to around 2pm so you get more angled shadows across your scene, that should give it some depth. i always have my daylight system pretty much between 70-90 degrees to my camera so my shadows aplay across the scene from where i'm looking at it.

 

also it seems a bit dark, i always find this with the daylight system presets, play with the exposure value, drop it down from the default daylight outdoors which i think is 15, change it to somewhere between 13-15, it should brighten your whites a bit and make it look a bit sunnier.

 

the glass will be fine when it has something to reflect, as you said yourself, there is no background yet reflections also depend on your camera angle.

 

then you need to play with the midtones/shadows not saying this is correct but i tend to up my midtones just a touch.

 

i also up my shadows to between 0.7-0.9 just to add more contrast, i also have a habit of slightly increasing saturation.

 

not sure if this next part works the same in maya but drag your physical sky from your environment to your 'hypershade' or whatever the material editor is in maya, then you can adjust the colour of that gradient background that your seeing, i try and make mine a touch more blue for day shots and sunsets i increase the amount of red its giving off. i don't like the default.

 

plus if everybody used the default then everyone's work would look the same.

 

hope thats a good enough start for you

 

but it looks ok so far