Looking out a window, blown out or visible?

[acjwalker]

I was discussing with my collegue at work about internal animations. Now when you fly around the house and you look out a window what do you see. There are two options:

 

1) you blow out the exterior as if you are looking through a camera, the exposure settings adjust to he interior lighting but this means the exterior is blown out.

 

2) you are looking through the eyes of a person so in theory you see externally fine and also what's in the building.

 

Now I have done both in my time, finding option 2 is usally what he client wants, especially I there is a focal point out side. I suppose you could argue that 1 is photorealistic and 2 is realistic.

 

What does everyone else do, what is your preffered method.

 

I thought it would be interesting to see what people thought.

[mattclinch]

most realistic would be if the camera (smoothly, and almost unnoticeably) automatically re-exposed for the exterior, then reverted as it looked back inside again.

 

[acjwalker]

maybe that should be introduced in Vray 2.0

[alias_marks]

+1 vote for option #2.

[tcupp]

I vote #1 if you can pull it off. Less distacting of what you are trying to show off...your interior model.

[alias_marks]

I vote #1 if you can pull it off. Less distacting of what you are trying to show off...your interior model.

 

Interesting... I think you might be right if your animation is being presented... to... say... people looking at buying interior furniture.

 

However, if we're talking design and architectural visualization, I might argue that you are trying to show off an interior experience to help connect the viewer with the space. The more engaging you can show a space to be and connections to the outside you can show, the higher the level of connection a human can make. In my opinion...

 

this also begs the ever present question of should we be showing what a camera represents or what the human eye perceives things as... Hybrid of the two?

 

*going even further, every human eye sees things a little different.... so how do you draw the line there?

 

Good discussion...

[Tim Nelson]

You are best off trying to do #1 with a bit of #2 mixed in....(ok that sounded a lot different than how I meant it).... But anyways, I'd go for the brighter exterior, while keeping the most amount of detail in it as possible. Exteriors through windows that have the same exposure as the interiors look ridiculous in daytime conditions, and is part of the reason I hate this new wave of HDR photographic exposures. I think it can be done very well, but quite often they look unnatural and disturbing.

 

But of course your client is going to want to see the exterior if possible, and since we can do it, give them a little bit of what they want, but don't go overboard.

 

All the more reason to do dusk and night interiors. "Magic"

[Justin Hunt]

This is being done very badly on alot of real estate websites, the balance of light is so off sometimes that the exterior lighting comes out darker than in interior. It makes the photos look fake which then leads to questioning what else has been altered.

 

With animations it becomes more complicated when the camera moves from inside to outside then back outside again. How do you guys deal with that?

 

jhv

[Peter M. Gruhn]

While the first inclination is to think "what to people see; what do cameras see?" I think it is important to consider "what should the viewer know?" And take into consideration how they are to get that information.

 

When we move through a space we get little glimpses of the outside world; we keep ourselves oriented to the local and perhaps even regional context. The viewer should get that orienting information in a way that is not distracting.

 

When we cross the threshold we enter an enclosed sheltered space that is other than the larger world. Here is a comfortable refuge from there. That barrier, those senses of threat and shelter of otherworldliness need to be conveyed effectively without dwelling on the negative.

 

Due to differences in how cameras and people behave while touring about, I think exposure adjustment would be a bad idea. Just let the view be visible or burned even if that's "wrong."

 

The goal is not to perfectly model certain phenomena inappropriately and/or out of context, it is to create a feeling mood information communication without getting in the way.

[DanGrover]

Can you animate the exposure on a VRayPhysicalCam? I'm fairly sure you can on the MrPhotoExposure. So, whilst it might take a bit of trial and error, that's always an option.

[acjwalker]

It may well be a way but it means spending longer on a job. Also it would probably take a lot of tweaking!

[erickdt]

You could always render the view of the exterior through the windows as a seperate pass and comp. it in post. You could then tweak the exposure settings in real time. This would probably be the easiest to work with...

 

E