General light settings before rendering?

[Anonymous]

Hello.

I have used ArchiCAD 10 for about 6 months, and as I get better at it, I have higher expectations to my renderings.

Is there any general light settings you should have before rendering? Now I haven't changed anything with regards to ambient, camera or sun, and I think that my rendered images are a bit bright, almost over exposed.

How many % should my ambient be at? I have changed the color to yellowish.

I have the light at yellowish, warm color, and not at full light intensity.

Should the camera-light-thingy be on or off?

Thank you for your time!

[Dwight]

ju§titia wrote:
I understand that I might seem really stupid to you, and maybe I am.

1) The sun DOES shine through a window. It is set to an altitude of about 40.

2) The walls do have a bit of yellow in them.

I said I had only been doing ArchiCAD for 6 months, so I think it's actually not that bad.

But I will try moving my light cone down's further up against the ceiling, and change my wall "paint", and see if it makes a difference.

If i thought that you were stupid, I wouldn't reply to your post. If you think me unkind, you should read what i edited out from my initial post about lime green. But when you turn off the camera light and then post that the scene is too dark and ask does it need more light, how can one reply to that?

1/ make the sun penetration dramatic and obvious like my last example. Sunset.

2/ make the wall tint obvious - and add roughness in the Displacement Class.
Rough setting = .02, .02, 1,1.

3/ there is no measuring quality versus Archicad experience. A bad rendering is a bad rendering and LightWorks as implemented in Archicad is an invitation to bad rendering. It is sort of like when I was in France and sent the wine back. The snotty sommelier came over with his little cup dangling and announced that "This is France, we know good wine." I said: "I come from Canada where we know bad wine." It will always be a fight to make a fine rendering in LightWorks - as implemented in Archicad, not as seen on the website www.lightworks-user.com where they have good renderings.

[Anonymous]

Well, now i tried the following:

* Changed the sun to "sunset"
* Changed the wall-paint
* Added more general light
* Removed the camera light

It turned out better, but now it's a bit yellow.. I think I overdid the color of the lights a bit...

I also figured out what happened in the first rendering that I posted; When I have yellow-white-ish walls, and have light blue ambient = green... NOT nice! But when I keep the ambient white now, it looks okay...

I'm sorry I came out a bit strong, but a little piece of advice;
If you want to sell your book in here - which I'm sure is an excellent book - you might want to be a bit friendlier and more helpful in here. That way, I think a lot more people would think "Oh, he's really talented and great! I should get his book", and not the opposite... Just my two cents...

[Dwight]

Try a mauve ambient.

[Anonymous]

This is how it looks so far.. White ambient..

[Anonymous]

ju§titia wrote:
This is how it looks so far.. White ambient..

I like this composition better than the first one if you ask me. I'd second what DA recommended....go for an ambient on the more blueish purplish side, then see how it comes out. Just out of curiosity....are the mountains on the back suppose to represent the view outside or is it just a painting on the wall?
if thats the view outside, and if there is a glass window there....I'd probably give the glass material a bit of reflection and maybe 'lighten' up the background image (again, only if it were representing the view outside). I'd also try choosing a similar texture thats a bit more seamless for the flooring. Just little bits that could make a reasonable difference without much effort.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, it's getting better and better! Waiting for rendering of one with grey-mauve-ish ambient now.. Think it will look good!

The landscape is a photo-wallpaper. This is a business cafeteria for a chololate factory in Norway, whos slogan is "A Little Piece of Norway", with a similar kind of picture on their signature chocolate's wrapping...

The floor is supposed to look like silvered driftwood, so it's supposed to be like logs.. You still think I should change it?

[Dwight]

The flaw in the silvered [ha! "slivered"] wood image is the repeat of the texture map implies a large fake sheet rather than individual boards.

The solution is to actually model individual floorboards with slightlydifferent material darkness.

[Anonymous]

I see your point.. But the floor is actually fake... Vinyl-driftwood......

I tried your candle light... that was still a bit too advanced for me..

[Dwight]

The individual boards approach would still work - let it be our secret that it really is sheet goods.

[Anonymous]

Hehe, right.. I will have to see if I can do it....

Another image coming up soon, I think you'll like this one much better. I got the nice, warm, fuzzy feeling I wanted. Although I'm not quite sure how........