House exterior

[Sergio BarreraOro]

Studio/Institution: Freelance
Client: Anonymous
Genre: Residential Exterior
Software: 3dmax and vray
Website: http://www.realizar3d.com.ar
Description:

Hello i have this exterior

 

 

And i wanted to improve it, so far the criticism i've received is the following:

-Shadows too sharp

-Grass too big

-Lack of dirt

-Lack of bump materials

-Corners too sharp

 

 

So i've did some tests to try to improve shadows, dirt and bump:

 

 

I increased the size of vraysun(for shadows) and i think it worked ok, but im having problems with the vray dirt and bump maps.

 

1)Bump map on the walls: i think im doing something wrong, it's already set to 500 and its barely noticeable, except where there's dirt, there it's too noticeable.

 

2)Dirt map:Could it be that the algorithim that determines where dirt goes is not too good, i turned up the settings very high and as you can see my distribution of dirt is very uneven, some faces have no dirt and are next to faces with a lot of it.

 

 

Please help me by pointing out other things that you think could be improved in the image and if you can by answering my two specific questions.

 

Thank you all very much in advance.

[chrislittle]

The bump map appearance in the rendering really depends on what the map you are using looks like. Generally you want as much contrast as possible. Also the vraydirt material doesn't have an algorithm that figures out where an object should be dirty. With the default settings the vray dirt map will make areas where you would have ambient occlusion (corners, and tight spaces) darker. When people say there is a lack of dirt they mean that your materials look too clean and perfect. You need to use diffuse, reflection, and bump maps that have more variation. Cgtextures.com has a ton of free materials you can use. If you need help generating reflection and bump maps from their diffuse textures, let me know and I can give you some pointers.

[SkylineArch]

Get rid of the Depth Of Field... the trees would never be that blurry with real photography. It makes you house look like a miniature. And try to change the angle of the sun, having the two sides of the house you see with the same lighting makes the house look flat. Move the sun to the right, or more to the left and lower to light up under the patio roof.