Rendered Image Advice

[jojoduah]

Hello!

 

I'm relativly new to vray, and I am seeking some help into achieving more "real" like renderings. This interior scene uses a V-ray sun and sky with the default settings. The position of the sun is about 45 degrees. I'm using Vray light planes in each window with a multiplier of 20 and a bluish color. The image seems a little flat to me and also their seem to be quite some noise on the walls. If anybody could share some advice, that would be greatly appreciated. Also if you would like the file to look at I can provide that too, so you could further help. I've attached the image and settings.

 

[Cjmcphail]

Id Maybe look at your materials as a starting point.

[jojoduah]

Id Maybe look at your materials as a starting point.

 

Care to explain?

[johannestiner]

Is this from a real room or did you just wing it? It looks out of scale.

Like someone said, the materials isnt that good so that needs to be fixed.

[jojoduah]

Is this from a real room or did you just wing it? It looks out of scale.

Like someone said, the materials isn't that good so that needs to be fixed.

 

It's from a real file. I guess if might have to do with the camera settings. Can you elaborate more about the material? Also I really appreciate the advice. Like I said, I'm kind on new to the program so I guess a little more information would be great.

Edited January 14, 2013 by jojoduah

[johannestiner]

About the textures then.

They all look flat, no bump or reflections. Im not saying everything needs reflections but the wooden one should have some blurry reflections and have a bit more depth either with a bump or the best options imo to make all the planks separate(a plugin for that would be http://www.cg-source.com/floorgenerator.php , but you dont need to buy a plugin for something like this).

Seems like you have just slapped on a diffuse texture on it, same go's for the "metal" stairs, flat and no reflections. The stairs also needs to be uv unwrapped, this is a simple one to unwrap.

Thats a start i guess.

[jojoduah]

About the textures then.

They all look flat, no bump or reflections. Im not saying everything needs reflections but the wooden one should have some blurry reflections and have a bit more depth either with a bump or the best options imo to make all the planks separate(a plugin for that would be http://www.cg-source.com/floorgenerator.php , but you dont need to buy a plugin for something like this).

Seems like you have just slapped on a diffuse texture on it, same go's for the "metal" stairs, flat and no reflections. The stairs also needs to be uv unwrapped, this is a simple one to unwrap.

Thats a start i guess.

 

 

Thanks for the advice. I'll look into the script. As with the current wood flooring, I had a bump, diffuse, and displacement map. If I use the scrpit, would I still need all those maps or would just the diffuse be enough? In regards to the stairs, I tried using a Uvw modifier but had a hard time. Your saying a Uvw unwrap will work better? Thanks

[Jason Matthews]

Well to start, I like to set my camera white balance to pure white. Currently you have an artificial hue to the camera which will throw off the colors of your textures. As mentioned earlier, your textures need work.

 

You must have massive render times. Try the following adjustments. The splotchiness you see on the white walls appears to be coming from your GI. Try the preset Medium in the irradiance map. Set the Interp Samples to say 30 or 40. This should smooth out the solution a bit. If it does, try reducing the Hsph to 20 or 30. This will reduce render time. Setting this too low will lose detail. Your light cache is way too high. Reduce the samples to say 1200 or 1500 and the keep the size at 0.2 and change back to screen. As for the Adaptive DMC, change your min/max to 2/6. The min/max operates based on the clr threshold. Untick the "use DMC sampler thresh..". Then adjust the one in this box if you have noise in the image.

[jojoduah]

Well to start, I like to set my camera white balance to pure white. Currently you have an artificial hue to the camera which will throw off the colors of your textures. As mentioned earlier, your textures need work.

 

You must have massive render times. Try the following adjustments. The splotchiness you see on the white walls appears to be coming from your GI. Try the preset Medium in the irradiance map. Set the Interp Samples to say 30 or 40. This should smooth out the solution a bit. If it does, try reducing the Hsph to 20 or 30. This will reduce render time. Setting this too low will lose detail. Your light cache is way too high. Reduce the samples to say 1200 or 1500 and the keep the size at 0.2 and change back to screen. As for the Adaptive DMC, change your min/max to 2/6. The min/max operates based on the clr threshold. Untick the "use DMC sampler thresh..". Then adjust the one in this box if you have noise in the image.

 

Render time isn't to bad, at the current settings, I'm getting about 30 mins for a 2250 x 1950 res. Will reducing the light cache to 1500 take away the quality of the final image? I guess I'm under the assumption that higher is better. Also I think im already at screen for my light cache, unless you mean switch to world?

Edited January 14, 2013 by jojoduah

[Jason Matthews]

Render time isn't to bad, at the current settings, I'm getting about 30 mins for a 2250 x 1950 res. Will reducing the light cache to 1500 take away the quality of the final image? I guess I'm under the assumption that higher is better. Also I think im already at screen for my light cache, unless you mean switch to world?

 

Oh in the first image it said World. I see now that the second image shows screen. Yes reducing the LC samples will reduce image quality, however there is a balance between speed and quality. highly doubt you will see any difference in quality by lowering the samples. 30 minutes for this rendering is way too long. I would shoot for 5-10 minutes. There are very little reflections, glossys, etc. I could see 30 minutes if there were tons of glossys, blurred reflections, displacement, etc. This scene is really simple.

[Corey Beaulieu]

to avoid flatness, I would second the comment about your white balance. i would also add that it needs contrast. Outside should be warm and nearly blown out with the sun beaming straight in and the interior should be more contrasted the further away from the window that you get. You could also blue the interior up a bit and orange the exterior.

[heni30]

The main thing about the wood is that the seams are just black lines which makes the material look cartoony. Also maybe you have too much environment light (1.0 right now) which is making things look flat. Your camera is making things look too angular. These exaggerated angles make the image look unnatural.

[jojoduah]

Oh in the first image it said World. I see now that the second image shows screen. Yes reducing the LC samples will reduce image quality, however there is a balance between speed and quality. highly doubt you will see any difference in quality by lowering the samples. 30 minutes for this rendering is way too long. I would shoot for 5-10 minutes. There are very little reflections, glossys, etc. I could see 30 minutes if there were tons of glossys, blurred reflections, displacement, etc. This scene is really simple.

 

So a subdivision of about 2000 is good enough?

 

to avoid flatness, I would second the comment about your white balance. i would also add that it needs contrast. Outside should be warm and nearly blown out with the sun beaming straight in and the interior should be more contrasted the further away from the window that you get. You could also blue the interior up a bit and orange the exterior.

 

Regarding the white balance of the camera, would you also recommend a pure white or should I go with the neutral preset? Also any suggestions on how to achieve the effects that your talking about with the sun contrast in the interior and exterior?

 

The main thing about the wood is that the seams are just black lines which makes the material look cartoony. Also maybe you have too much environment light (1.0 right now) which is making things look flat. Your camera is making things look too angular. These exaggerated angles make the image look unnatural.

 

I've just downloaded the floor generator script and am going to give it a try to fix the wood. By enviroment light, do you mean from the sun? Also one thing I might of failed to mention is the fact that outside every window, I have a light plane with about 20-30 on the multiplier. Should I just use those as skylight portals instead of an actually light plane? Regarding the camera, that was actually my hardest challenge. I read on the internet that the human eye sees a focal length of 45mm, so that was recommended to achieve a realistic view. You could offer any advice regarding the camera that would be greatly appreciated. These are really good comments and I appreciate you guys taking the time to provide them.

[Corey Beaulieu]

To reply to your direct questions to me... Neutral is the option in my opinion. As to the colored effect. It is usually best to get a solid directional light from your render and then paint in color using photo filters and gradient maps over BW passes, but if you are trying to do this in Max you would just saturate the color of your light sources to fit your wants. The sun should be more orange and let it be a little over bright and then don't light as much on the interior. The bits you do light should be a white-ish yellow and I would use a Vray dome with a Map that is very blue or just choose a blue color. This blue will be the color of the less light areas and then the light areas will either be cancelled out or the color of the light.

 

It's a balance. I would setup the lighting with a dirt map into a diffuse of a vray material as your override. This will show the color the best.

[Jason Matthews]

2000 is probably good enough, but again there is a relationship between render time and quality. 1500 or even 1200 may work.

 

As far as the camera view goes, don't treat the camera setup like the human eye. The camera has real world settings for a reason. Don't get caught up with what the human eye can see. Frame the view like you would be photographing it.

 

As far as the lighting goes, if you want to setup the scene "correctly" then uncheck the exposure control button on the camera and check the skylight portal box on all of the vray lights. Then make sure all of the lights are placed inside the glass not on the outside. The multiplier and color of the light will be taken from the environment automatically.

 

If you have not done so already, copy (instance) the environment slot (which should be your VraySky) into an empty material slot and make sure you can adjust the sky independently of the sun. Then tweak the values in the sky to give yourself the ambient color that you want. The settings are similar to the VraySun. Refer to Spot3D for more info on those settings.

 

By the way, there are many ways to setup a scene and likewise there are many people who setup their scenes differently. Please take all comments here as a "method" of doing something, not the gospel truth. Not all methods will work for you or your workflow. It's like being asked what is the best paintbrush to use. It depends on the artist.

[heni30]

S

By enviroment light, do you mean from the sun? .

 

I meant the Vray: Environment ........... GI Environment (skylight) override ........ which lowers the contrast

[Mario De Achadinha]

In almost all cases.... post work can be 80% of the battle to photo-real!

[jojoduah]

Okay thank you. One question pertaining to windows, should I use a glass material or should it just be a void in the windows? If their is a glass material would it be better as a plane or something with some thickness. I'm most likly going to start this scene over again, but I think I'm going to start from figuring out the lighting be just using a material override set to default grey first. Also if anyone could recommend a good material setting for white interior walls that would be appriciated.