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Render interior

Anonymous
Not applicable
As you can see in the picture I am trying to render an interior from the exterior trough a curtain wall.
I want to have the more depth of field to see the whole interior that is quite transparent, made most of them with curtains walls. I set up some general lights next to the inner ceiling but the result it is quite dark.
I am rendering without GI for texting. The speed shutter is 1/125 the opening is 5,6 and the ISO is 200.
Ray threshold is 5, Ray depth is 12 and Reflaction depth is 12.

What I can do for having nice interiors with high depth of field.
14 REPLIES 14
You need to turn on the GI and also make sure the Secondary bounce is turned on as well (set to Irradiance Cache) if you want to get more clearer views of the interior through the glass.
And then increase the Secondary bounce intensity to get the desired brightness or adjust that using the physical camera (if you're using the physical render setting) ISO setting.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi,
Enabling Secondary bounce I got lighter interiors. Now I need to get rid of so many reflections and refractions that don't make clear the interior. I want to keep the transparency to get better detailed interiors. The effect I am looking for is like an OPENGL view regarding the reflections and refractions but with more smooth and realistic surfaces like a render view.
Thank you for all
Erwin Edel
Rockstar
If you into detailed settings, you can turn off reflections or have it only reflect floor/sky.

Options > General Options

Also look at Ray Depth and Reflection Depth. Generally set these at a high enough value to pass the layers of transparancy. One pane of glass would require a depth of 3 (2 layers and showing what's behind), so add 2 for each layer extra. If you don't like all the reflections, you could maybe change reflection depth too.
Erwin Edel, Project Lead, Leloup Architecten
www.leloup.nl

ArchiCAD 9-26NED FULL
Windows 10 Pro
Adobe Design Premium CS5
Anonymous
Not applicable
Finally I got this results.
I enclose the main settings in the render.
What is your opinion, it is a simple scene but I think the rendering is very "plastic" what can I do to improve my results. Specifically I am interested in achieving bigger depth of field.
Erwin Edel
Rockstar
There is a general light (sphere shaped) that you can drop in the interior and put it on infinite strength to flood some light in. Turn it down to something like 25-50% strenght, this means you can dial down the intensity of the sun to see inside, getting rid of the oversaturated look.

A matter of taste: but you could swap out the outdated 3D people (blocky weird looking?) for simple 2D silhouets or some of the lowpoly textured people that can be found on BIMcomponents.

I'm more of sketchy-look render guy. Keeps things fast, encourages client to talk about design (some people are afraid to comment on too 'final' render images in my experience). Again, a matter of personal taste.

Attached an example of how we present project to the client. Quick renders, takes less than 5 minutes to complete including photoshop tweaking.
Erwin Edel, Project Lead, Leloup Architecten
www.leloup.nl

ArchiCAD 9-26NED FULL
Windows 10 Pro
Adobe Design Premium CS5
First of all, a couple of points about your settings:

- You don't need to have such high intensity settings for your Primary and Secondary bounce (Intensity) figures in the GI rollout.
Basically, try to keep them between 95-105 or 110% at the most, and instead control the brightness using the Physical camera ISO number (use higher numbers if the image gets too dark).
Using the high figures you're using is not just unrealistic from the point of perspective of how light works (remember that this is a physical engine which approximates how light should normally work), but it also throws off all your reflections and colour-bleeding and ends up giving it that plastic, unrealistic, cartoon-ey look.

- Use another way of lighting your scene other than just a flat single color background. Physical sky is fine, but personally I find it more useful to invest in good HDRI sources since they provide great variation in color and light depth that give the scene more depth and realism than just a single flat color (which you never see in reality except in a studio) or even the physical sky (which is essentially just an almost linear formula for how the sky lights up but isn't entirely accurate enough).
The HDRI's and HDRI environment setting are also great for giving good reflections on your glass and other reflective surfaces so that your scene doesn't look like it's sitting in the middle of nowhere like in some sci-fi space or something that also looks unrealistic.

- Also make sure your 'Glass optimisation' (under 'Details', I believe) is turned up to max for better glass reflections and then also make sure your glass material settings are set to give you a good reflections and refraction since that's typically half your battle in making your scene look real and good.
Also try to have better reflections on other surfaces too (softer, blurred reflections, etc. Flat reflections or no reflections at all, also don't help in giving your scene a sense of depth).

- You also don't need to have such high Ray depth and Reflection depth numbers.
They just needlessly drive up your render calculation times without really giving you any more benefit or that much more benefit and also contribute to blowing out your scene. (making it too bright).

- And in the General Options rollout, turn on 'Blurriness', turn up Ray threshold a bit, and also turn down Global brightness (you don't need it that high).

Lastly, not settings related, but still...

Get rid of the "people" figures.
They're awful and completely take one out of the scene, if realism is really what you're after.

I would go the route of using silhouettes as someone else suggested (since then it's clear that you're definitely being abstract in representing people and are only using them for scale and reference) or if not then don't use any figures at all, or add them in post-processing in Photoshop using better sources.

Other than that, it's just trial and error, and don't go overboard with the settings otherwise you're struggling trying to find what's wrong and what's not working when everything is set to max or is set too high.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thank you very much for your answers. I agree with the human figures they are odd and horrible, but in my office ask me for scale, I didn't try the 2d silhouettes from archicad because they are few and also don't looks specially nice. When rendering I don t have the time of using them and as it was my first time rendering archicad I choose the figures, with such an horrible result. I also agree with using hdri images to lighting the scene, but never found a source for using. Referring to silhouettes I like the one you can have using VectorWorks, it have their own personality.
Could you please recommend a web page were I can get silhouettes and hdri images to use in archicad. I surf in the web looking for them and never found anything worthy.
Regards
Erwin Edel
Rockstar
We have an object that allows to use your own silhouets saved to library as custom part, though it might be something developed by the Dutch reseller for their subscription library. The trees you see in my sample are made this way. They are actually just made from the 2D trees in library (explode, magic wand a slab to the explode fill, save as part). You could do this without the custom library part, however this makes them face the camera straight on.

There are quite a few figures, at least in my library for the silhouet. You can change the material to something you like more: transparant, black... I make them white, just personal preference.

There are also low poly fully textured 3D people on bimcomponents that you can try. https://bimcomponents.com/Search/people
Erwin Edel, Project Lead, Leloup Architecten
www.leloup.nl

ArchiCAD 9-26NED FULL
Windows 10 Pro
Adobe Design Premium CS5
Anonymous
Not applicable
I am trying silhouettes and I am happy with the results. But regarding a HDRI sky I understand that you need for each weather and time condition, I asume that the illumination it is not the same between the morning and afternoon, cloudy and sunny day. I found a page but with low resolution 2000X1000, is that enough for rendering?