Photorealistic render

[Anonymous]

Hi!
I'm trying to make an exterior photorealistic render. I'm using AC10 and my settings for the rendering is:
- Sun 110%, low fog, shadow parameters are set very high.
- Skyobject, light blue 35%, quality is 400
- Sunlight object as "underlight" 30%
- No ambient light
- Original image is 2500*1875 and takes about 5 hours to render.

I'm trying to create a scene for a sunny day. Look at the attached file, i'm not happy with it. The background and other details will be fixed in photoshop. But i need a render as realistic as possible. Does anybody have suggestions to improve the light?

thanks

/Mikael

[Dwight]

1: Sun too intense. Set intensity in Photorender settings to 100 Pull back to 80 in sun dialog. Make sun yellow.
-- get better sun with "Realistic sun" shader.
2: Skyobject - reduce quality to 32 - 400 is too fine - takes time.
3:Undersun - no shadows, yes?
4: Always add ambient light - mauve - to mitigate shadow intensity.

But real problem is not light, but main wall material.
"There's NO such Thing as WHITE!!!!™"
Add roughness to walls with displacement shader.
Design note: Children's play area more fun when toys include flame and large dog on tether.
Ugly glass, too.

See below for "LightWorks in Archicad" book ordering instructions.
Book is specific to your issues.

[TomWaltz]

Dwight wrote:
"There's NO such Thing as WHITE!!!!™".

I don't know. Refrigerators are pretty white, especially the brand new ones with the gloss finish.

[Dwight]

It's just a slogan.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your reply. Dwight, there's no way i can use Skyobject - quality 32. It will look awful. Keep in mind this is a pretty big scene. Objects in a distance will not look real at all.

I agree with the materials..I have to do something about the white material. Also, I used standard glass-clear, which came out all wrong when i rendered it from a distance.

I used underlight because the shadows were too dark. Compensing with ambient light only made the scene look "washed out".

What is "Realistic sun" shader?

From my experience with 3d studio a great exterior render has to take time and i think it's the same in AC10. However, i will try to apply the settings you suggested and maybe i'll post the result. It would be fun to see an example of an exterior photorealistic render here. I'm beginning to think that this is not possible with AC10.

/Mikael

[Dwight]

How Photorealistic is Photorealistic?

Okay. Sky Object is bad at 32, but certainly anything over 128 is overkill and exponentially increases render time.


Glass isn't like that. Look to the LightWorks Archive for better glass. Lose the green, reduce the transparency.

My suggestions aren't prescriptive, but strategic:

You always use a little Ambient to mitigate the shadows: your shadows are dark.

To increase speed, use the plain Sun shader with hard shadows. At this distance, you don't need soft shadows, just ambient-filled shadows.

The overall scene will improve when you reduce the reflectance of the nosuchthingas white walls since they are the main source of grief.

[Anonymous]

I will try to fix the white and the glass. The scene will be completed in Photoshop - grass, trees, characters etc. I'll post the result soon.

Hmm..back to the drawingboard..I'll try to add roughness to walls with displacement shader...if i can find it..

Thank you for your comments.

[Dwight]

I DID write a book about this, so maybe I can guilt you into buying it with one more tidbit:

For any material, there's a shader called roughness that keeps walls from "glaring out" in renderings. See attached.

[Dwight]

And reduce reflection to prevent glare.

[Anonymous]

Hey! I'm actually making progress with the glass and the white..who could have thought that! Will still take a whilte to get it right before i can post a pic. Just wanted to thank you for pointing me at the right direction! If i get the contract this sample image is for, i could use that book!

*edit* saw you posted those settings when i updated the page. Great stuff!