Need help with interior light sources

[Anonymous]

Hey Everyone,
I need some help making this rendering look more realistic. I have been reading the posts from muddasick on his "Take a look" post and taken some advice from that for this rendering. I have added window lights to the ceiling and just over these plexiglass cage units. I am trying to get a realistic looking 2x4 recessed light fixture and a realistic ceiling texture that resembles acoustic tile. Also any help to improve my lighting would be much appreciated.

Here is my current setup
Sky Object outside the window
int=78 lat=1 long=6
Sun object outside the window
int=82 #=14 diversion=5
3 Sun objects in the ceiling shining through a dimpled glass slab for the 2x4 lights
int=22 #=3 diversion=5
and the 3 window lights, one under the soffit of the window to the left, one for the whole room aimed at the ceiling and one floating a foot over the plexiglass cages to the left.

As you can see by the pic, I have direct beams coming straight to the floor out of my 2x4 lights, is there a way to soften this? do i need to use window lights instead of sun objects to achieve this? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Dave

[Anonymous]

If you want, save the file as an archive and send it to me and I can play with it.

Sometimes the slightest adjustments can make the most significant changes.

What material is your floor?

[Dwight]

please send full archive to me, too. Will be to big for email. We will ftp, so send private message and we will link up.

[Anonymous]

Hey Guys,
Dwight you were right about the file size being large, but I managed to zip it down. If you guys want to take a look let me know and I will email it to you. The file size is 2.4 megs when zipped.

The floor is going to be either sheet rubber flooring or some sort of epoxy flooring system. I took a wet asphalt texture and modified it significantly to come up with this floor in the rendering.

Let me know what you guys think.

Thanks,
Dave

[Dwight]

I must say that bleachmaking plants have never looked so fine. I remember that our neighborhood bleach making plant had this icky vat. And the corroded stirstick! Right from a horror movie!
1: replace tiedyesky with Lightworks graduated.
2: Four suns??? What kind of universe is this?
replaced three suns - used as skylites with windolites
3: Camera light 90%??? I will shoot the next guy who uses camera light.
Unless he is trying to simulate a flash picture. Then it is all right as long as it is in a bar and he is using the "Drunken office colleague group" bitmap archicad figures. Here you make the light white - BTW how do you change the camera light color? Don't waste too much time on it.
4:BuiltinSun off - this generally works counter to the sun object - pick one or the other
5: switch to "best" method ensures full raytracing calculation - see reflections in windoz.
6: used custom glow material for acrylic skylite diffuser- behind acrylic diffuser lens - debatable benefit.
7: put windolites at each skylite opening.
8: floor??? : water?? bleach? swine fluids? rubber? liquid rubber! My secret material - recipe found in book.
9: swung the sun down and around for sunset-like penetration
10: sun is always "warm." sky is always "cool." Like your nipple ring:"Cool, dude!"
11: wall blocks - increased ambient reflectance to 75 - many lightworks materials do not reflect enough ambient light.
12: made interior ambient warm
13: extended ceiling over room adjacent to prevent overexposure....
14: hate kawneer aluminum - find a brighter surface - selected white plastic like room adjacent - see - happier already!
15: should happyup guardrails, too - who cares what material definition is - make space and elements within lively, not deadly.
16: raised fluid level of boiling swine entrails for drama.
17: turned up left windo uplite to 80
18: pulled levels in photoshop since scene murky lacking real interior lite - want to consider that problem in design.
19: played Duane's viola.

[Anonymous]

Hey Dwight,
I might have to be the first person you shoot for using the camera light. I have been tweaking my lights to match what you said, but I am having a hard time getting that brick to show up. It is so dark even after lightening it in photoshop. What exactly did you do to the brick material? Did you change the reflectance to something other than matte and then changed the diffuse and specular properties? If I can't get this to work I might have to revert to the camera light.

[Dwight]

step 11 - ambient reflection to 90

[Dwight]

the problem is that many lightworks materials are expecting "Studio" lighting and appear too dark in nominally illuminated spaces. They don't reflect enough of the ambience.

[Anonymous]

Ok, I bumped up the ambient reflectance, and moved the sun a bit to cast onto the darkest part of my floor, and here are my results.
What do you think? Also what is the trick you use to make the people in your renderings look like the same style as the rendering? Instead of real photos of people just plopped in. How do you alter the photos of people to make them blend more in with the rendered surroundings.

[Dwight]

great floor shadow.

When you get peopple photos, they have several characteristics that make the stick out:

1: degree of detail: they have more sophisticated details, too - fabric folds, for instance, while the rest of the model is flat planes... solution: add noise and blur to figures. Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?

2: shadow cast angle: always be mindful of where the sun is in the shot and plan accordingly. Duffus.

3: brightness and contrast: also related to sun angle, the white t-shirt is usually too white and the shadow too dark. With the figure pasted in, adjust brightness and contrast to suit your eye.

4: color: the figure has too much color intensity so you desaturate it.

5: cast shadow: copy the figure in place, reduce levels to zero and transform it into place. make that layer reduce in transparency until it looks right - usualy it is going to be too strong so play it safe - to the weak end. You could merge all of the individual figure shadows and do them at once.