Interior rendering

[marko04]

Hi all.
This is truly amazing forum and I would really like to hear some constructive criticism from true experts.
I am one of those guys that can not see their own flaws...

OK, about this scene..

Difficult thing for me to achieve is good lighting in the room, because of dark wall on the right side.
When I put sun and sky to be brighter my curtains burn out...
Unfortunately you can't see left side of the room.
Whole left side of the room is made of curtain wall, so I have bright left side and dark right side...
And I really am no more than a newbie

[TheAllusionist]

Looking good for a start, knowing what software and rendering engine you are using helps people respond. For instance if Vray or Mentalray, are you using skyportal lights at the windows? Glad you like the forums

[marko04]

Ooops... sorry, I forgot to mention...
I used Vray+3dsMAX. There is no glass behind curtains and I'm using Vray sun and sky. Also i added some point lights with ies maps on ceiling lamps...

[Rod]

Very interesting ceiling treatment. They realy are an untapped resource. Nice looking, can't wait to see the finished work.

[TheAllusionist]

I would throw a skyportal light in a window and see if it helps and go from there, you can also use reflector panels behind the camera and increase bounces?

[d.sign]

There are several ways to achieve more light in the room.
First start by changing the sun direction. More sun hitting inside of room would increase the light bounces and ensure more light in the room. Also you can try with adding more direct fill light. That would be area light in the window, like Russell said.
If you want to avoid the use of area lights (might slow down the render a bit), use the physical camera and exposure parameters in it, like shutter speed and ISO, f-stop...
- than you may try to use color mapping to adjust the brightness and exposure in the room. You can use exponential and increase the dark multiplier value to about 2.0 or more and you want get any burn outs...
- Finally good trick is to use Vray override material preset and put your dark wall in it. Than in GI override tab create one simple Vray material with simillar color but much lighter. That would change entire GI solution of the room making it much brighter...
I think using IES lights inside should get you enough direct light for whole room, so the exposure and tone mapping along with material override should do the trick...

[marko04]

Ceiling here should be ordinary wall paper... Ceiling is very interesting field of research for implementing new ideas in interior design (sorry for my weak English)... I would like to mention that I only work arch. viz. for now, so this design is not mine, but I do have a keen interest in interior design, and architecture.
...
Render time is an issue here, because I need to produce about 10 hi res renderings in a short time, and my computer is preety weak for todays standards. Thus, I'll avoid putting area light behind windows...

Obviously, I forgot to mention (was very sleepy) that I used Vray camera.

...
I experimented in this scene with color mapping. I started this scene with default gamma settings...
After that I was reminded that I should work in gamma 2.2 instead. So I changed gamma, and tried various color mapping types.
In this scene CM is exponential. I will try increasing dark multiplier...
Also, override material is great idea.

Thank You very much

[neha]

You could use invisible planes assigned with vray light material to increase the lighting levels without increasing the render times.

Also remember, using exponential in CM increases the render times. What you should use instead with vray phy cam and sun n sky system is 'Reinhard'. Setting the burn value to something around .5 would give you similar results like the exponential setup, although the exact value really depends on your scene setup and you will have to find it out with a couple of test renders. If you need to make the room brighter, again without effecting the render times, increasing the burn value will do the trick.

The simplest way to increase the brightness while using a vray phy cam is to lower your f-stop or decrease the ISO.

Its a great start, very good work. Hope all this helps!

[marko04]

I never knew that Reinhard color mapping works faster with vray cam
Thats very important for me right now
I really have a tight deadline for this scene...
I'll try Reinhard right now.
Tried it just once with default settings, and the image was burned.
I have one more armchair model to finish, and it's really tricky...

I know that this work could be great render for my level of knowledge, but there's no more time for further lighting experiments.
Anyway
I learned a lot from this topic
Big Thank You guys for your help.

[neha]

Great to hear it helped!

Yes, having Reinhard burn value as 1 will give you the same result as having a linera CM. Since you were using exponential earlier, use a lower burn value, something around 0.5 and do the remaining adjustment with the camera parameters.