MRAY Lobby Lighting appears dark and washed out

[ostrak]

Good Day to all of you – this is my first post to this fantastic site (even though I have been reading and learning from the posts for some time).

 

I have been trying to improve my skills at rendering more photo real images (specifically interior shots) using 3DS Max 2010 and MRay as the renderer, however have run into some trouble that I think you fine folk can help me with.

 

Ok – so here are the settings I have underway:

 

Daylighting system with MR Sky and MR Sun set to a low value of 0.1 (anything higher and the image is a white-wash – could be the scale of the model is off – I will check)

 

FG is set to DRAFT with 5 bounces. GI is turned on setting at 1.0.

 

Everything was still looking very dark – as though there were no lights on in the lobby – so I added some non-shadow casting omni’s throughout to give a more distributed light level.

 

The pot lights are just a material with a glow setting – not actual lights.

 

As requested by the client, I have photoshop’ed out the company logos (hence the rough looking patches behind the desk on the wood wall).

 

There is a dark spot on millwork side at entry to carpet area – not sure why. Only shows up when I turn up the FG and bounces – not there when FG is off.

 

Red Ottoman furniture material is rendering as pink when the sunlight is on it – any tips on how to make this actually read as the red material?

 

The people are largely there just to give scale (as I have forced the camera focal point to 28mm vs the standard 35mm)

 

The brick surrounding the oval-head windows is still mapped as a “box” which does not look as it should – just not sure how to do a soldier course brick that follows an ellipse.

 

The model was built in AutoCAD and brought in as a Legacy Import (some of the curved surfaces are more facetted this way – not sure how to bring them in as true circles).

 

There does not seem to be any real type shadows from the furniture deeper into the model (once you get past the direct sunlight).

 

Lots of things I am not sure about here - any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated as I still consider myself a newbie to these types of renderings (basically just picking up stuff from this website and YouTube Tutorials).

 

Thanks in advance and I look forward to your comments!

 

Ostrak

[Matt McDonald]

I suspect the washed out part is due to your exposure control settings. I like the MR Photographic exposure control but typically I still find it valuable to tweak a little bit in Photoshop.

 

The washed out colors might be due to a mixed gamma environment. If you are working in gamma 2.2 and just applying color or textures to your materials you will have issues with things being washed out. You can apply a gamma/gain material to your diffuse value

 

For the brick arches, you need to model them flattened out, apply a UVW modifier and the a bend modifier.

 

I'd guess the reason you aren't getting shadows under your furnishings is because your lights have shadow casting turned off...that could also be contributing to the overall "washed out" look.

 

Its a pretty nice start. More things look good than don't!

[Lutz1973]

1 - Merge the model (without lights) into a new scene and save as a new file (just to ensure that all values are reset to defaults)

2 - Check your system units and model scale (important)

3 - Check your gamma settings (2.2? search for "gamma pipeline" in MAX Help)

4 - Apply a bright grey "material override" A&D-Material (diffuse color about 0.9, reflectivity set to 0.0), just to check illumination

5 - Add a daylight system and mr Photographic exposure ctr

Don't change any settings on the daylight system, default settings are photometric correct. However, you can switch your daylight system to "manual" mode and rotate the sun so that it fits your scene.

6 - Lower exposure value until your scene is bright enough

7 - If your scene is still too dark, crank up your FG bounces (increases render time, max. 6 bounces) and add mr sky portals

8 - When everything looks fine, turn off material override and check the settings of your A&Dmaterials

 

If your scene is still too dark, consider using artificial light instead of daylight. Remember that MrExposure reacts like a real camera, not like the human eye...

If you use artificial light, everything lit by sunlight will be "burnt out", if you use sunlight, artificial light will not be visible at all, it's just a question of exposure.

 

Sry for my english and good luck

[ostrak]

Thanks for the quick reply folks!

 

I see both of the replies talk about the gamma 2.2 setting / environment. Not too sure what this is, but I will trawl around some of the existing posts and sites to get a handle on it.

 

I think the scale of the model was not originally set correct, hence the reason I needed to turn the MR Sun wayyy down to get control over the "sun burn".

 

I get that once the model is to scale, I can use real photometric lights vs. standard omni's.

 

I will try each of the great suggestions to make this rendering sing and post back once I am done.

 

Cheers for now....

[postite]

Hi,

 

To understand the "gamma 2.2" problem, i suggest this site, it is for V-ray but exactly the same for MR : http://www.aversis.be/tutorials/vray/essential_gamma_01.htm

 

I suggest to use MR sky portal (lights) for each windows. You will have better shadows.

 

You can tweak the "midtones" value in the MR Photographic exposure control panel for better contrast. You can try values from 0.75 to 0.95.

 

And the most important: Photoshop. Why loosing 2h to tweak a render in 3ds when you can do the same in 10min in Photoshop. With curves, levels and sharpen, you can really improve you picture. Just a little test roughly done.

 

good luck

Edited April 1, 2010 by postite

[ostrak]

Thanks for having a go at the rendering to improve it - I do like the idea of using Photoshop vs using 3ds to tweak the settings.

 

Can I ask what filters and adjustments you used in Photoshop to tweak the image?

 

Thanks again!

[postite]

Adjustments in Photoshop are different for each projects. Here you can begin with:

 

1 Curves (automatic)

2 Curves (brighter preset)

3 Curves (linear contrast preset)

4 Accentuation (gain50, radius2)

5 Then brighten and darken some areas

6 Then ... and then ...

 

But if your are not a Photoshop guru, you can take a look at "Topaz Labs" plugins. It's very fast and not too bad.

 

Hope to see your singing render

Edited April 2, 2010 by postite

[wasteland giant]

re

: you need to post a plan view with all lights. If anything, doesn't look dark. Just looks like there's a bright ambient light.