WIP - advice on acheiving more realism on this interior

[Chog Burley]

Hi there, here's a final draft of an interior image I'm working on for a client.

I'm pretty happy with it - the image looks good and communicates the design well.  However I'd like advice on how to make it more 'photoreal' please?  By this I mean in terms of the 'look' ... so work to textures, lighting, rendering & post rather than adding plants, books etc.

A few points :

- image was done in Maya and rendered in Arnold as 32bit EXR.  Then processed in Photoshop using AEC LUT and other techniques

- there is not a lot of natural light, just from Physical Suna nd Sky through the window behind the camera.  I think it would look more real if there was more natural lighting, but this is the design

- I have made concessions to reality in balancing the lighting for client purposes. eg the back of the space should probably be darker and the sunlight brighter, but this is not so good for the client.

Also attached is a raw version of the 32bit render. 

Thanks in advance!

Chog.

[heni30]

Hey Chog,

Architectural photographers will take 2 different images - one exposed for overall lighting and another exposed for

overly bright areas . 

Then composite them in Photoshop.  It's almost impossible to do an image with 2 extreme lifgt conditions with 1 exposure.  Your wall light scallops are too distractingly bright.  The left wall shelves being bare and empty really affects the image in a negative way.  Table could use some more objects carefully chosen.  Cross lights look too low, like you might bump into them.  Dining table is too bright.

 

And look at pictures, pictures and more pictures.

[Chog Burley]

Hi Heni, thanks for the feedback ... much appreciated!

I did to two 'exposures' from the 32 bir EXR in the end, a darker one for the foreground chair and side table that were getting blown out.  Maybe I need to take that further and reduce the impact of the sunlight coming through.  

I guess a photographer's image would be quite manipulated as you say to balance the lighting, while I'm thinking to be 'realistic' the sunlight should be quite strong.  

Agreed, the space also need more inhabitiation.  Back to the model I go ...

[Chog Burley]

Final image for you if you are instested!  Went for a more diffuse light through the window behind the camera and took your suggestions into account re the downlights.

Thanks again!

 

[Francisco Penaloza]

When I read you asking  'how to make this image more photo real' I thought that will contradict with the expectation of your client. Usualy client regular people that ask for a rendering they don't want Photo real, what they want is a image that look believable but in a perfect situation. Photo real will show the raw stage of the room, building or development. And believe nobody like that. Even Architectural Photographer bend reality to make the image look 'nice'

Talking about Photographers and exposure, in the Photo world you only work with 12 or 16 Bit dept, that's why you need to take a few extra shots at different exposures to get more light information and then blend them as need it, this technique was used even before Photoshop was a thing.

Now in our 3D world we can get 32 bit dept images that is way more information that a real camera can get, and in top of that we can tone map the  image also, so we can compress the light even more to have more flexibility in post production.

Regarding your scene and final image, yet is looks nice, but a more balanced lighting overall can help to give more depth to the space. You are right, the back of your room should be darker, not much but enough to create a more natural gradient of lighting.  The final image has a better balance of white areas before they were too blown out. But a little more contrast would also help your image to fee more rich in tones.

Usually you want to light to accentuate the back of your image and use the foreground objects to frame the shot, but if you need your focal point to be closer to the camera then the lighting should be backward, and that usually doesn't work easily, then the shot gets tricky, so you could use depth of field instead.

I usually I am not a fan of cameras on the corner, I would rather do two shots for this room to focus on the seating area and the other on the Kitchen instead.  Maybe the Living room area now could show the window and that could make the space more inviting.

I know some people charge per images, but this space is small and think it would benefit the project in having two narrow shots instead single wide one.

My Two cents, not inflation adjusted