Simple interior lighting question.

[Roodogg]

Hi Guys, I have a simple-ish question to ask and would be very grateful for your help!

 

I am visualising a retail interior with Max and vray. The client has been very thorough and included the reflected ceiling plan and also the ies files that make up the downlighting in the room. I am using real world scale in terms of position of lights, lx intensity and exposure, photometric lights with a vray camera. There is no daylight entering the room.

 

The problem I am having is that vray's GI is not bouncing enough light back to the ceiling, just making the floor overbright and the plain white ceiling a dark pink (The floor colour).

 

I have tried various (What i deem to be innacurate) solutions such as setting the floor to be a vrayoveride material - GI lighter) / extra lights to boost the walls / ceiling and boosting the exposure / lowering the intensty of the downlights / upping the light mult in exponential mode / vrayambient light. None of these I am happy with as they look wrong.

 

I see many renders with beautiful ambient lighting and downlighting the only source of light but i'm getting too much contrast.

 

Am I missing something??

 

Thanks for reading. Any advice is golden.

[braddewald]

I run into this problem a lot even with lots of ambient lighting (vraysky or dome light). There are a million work-arounds you can use like using a "fill light" and excluding every object but the ceiling from it's illumination...BUT the best solution I've found is to just correct it in post. Use a mask and a "lighten" curve in photoshop and you're good to go.

[notamondayfan]

Also think about how to light the space too. A good photographer wouldn't just turn on all the ceiling lights, point the camera, and expect amazing results. Lighting plans are for when the space is being used, and being viewed through our eyes, not a lens. Our eyes see much more range of light than a camera, so lighting for the eye is totally different to lighting for a camera.

 

http://www.retailpunkt.com/retail-jewellery-shop-interior-design-of-bunda-boutique-by-snell-architects

 

Find a reference that is something that you want to achieve in terms of lighting and style, break it down and try and understand how it has been lit, then apply that to 3D. Once you start to analyse the lighting you will see how they have done it, and how different it may be to your original ideas and thoughts.

[Roodogg]

Thanks for your responses guys.

 

I actually rendered the interior with some more exciting lighting...

 

He then asked for the actual ceiling plan and more 'ambient light' (I think to show even light levels throughout) So it is literally 32 35w leds directly downwards... and no windows... boring!!

 

So I suppose I can modify my question...

 

If a client is specific about timescale (3 days), showing the actual (boring) lighting system and using a particular (bad) camera angle, then how do you make an image of essentially a white box-room sparkle!! (Because mine does not) I included as much detail as possible within the time i was allocated (In terms of textures and stock on display) but the image looks flat and lacking in depth...