Great Room in the Wine Country

[Frutiger]

Hey Guys, just thought I'd share this final render from a few days ago. I started using sketchup a little over a year ago and started experimenting with Indigo a few months after that. Indigo is well designed software, and it has a fantastic community backing it. Thanks for all the help!

[zeitmeister]

Nice scene!
Did you try Reinhard tonemapping for getting rid of the overexposed windows?

[dcm]

Nice scene!
Did you try Reinhard tonemapping for getting rid of the overexposed windows?

reinhard s*cks

overexposed = physically correct . if you want to get rid of overexposed windows, use 2-3 images with different exposures and merge them in PS.

[Frutiger]

Yeah, the overexposed windows were a conscious choice for that very reason. I've done interior photography of finished projects and that's what it looks like.

[zeitmeister]

Hehe, I don't use Reinhard ever, too!

[Pibuz]

Hey, Frutiger, nice scene!
I think first thing is: why don't you use bumps?

No, jokes apart: the rock wall in front should be displaced to look like rock: at the moment seems more like a rocky wallpaper The floor has a good reflectance, but I think you can make it more interesting if you add a bump and a subtle specular map. The tv and armchair models are too lowpoly for the quality of the rest of the scene, and if I were you I'd change the model of the chairs on the near left, also the wooden chairs on the far left seems a little..chubby: check their proportions. Adding an overexposed background would enhance the final result even more.

Hope you don't take my suggestion the wrong way: I wish every render to be always better!

[StompinTom]

Yeah, the overexposed windows were a conscious choice for that very reason. I've done interior photography of finished projects and that's what it looks like.

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/4350/campoo.jpg

[Frutiger]

Hey Pibuz. Thanks for the feedback. Good advice in there. Much of the furniture is placeholder as we work with the clients to pick out actual furniture. The couches on the right are a failure though. I've struggled to make them look better, but I can't quite pull it off. Seams and stuffed upholstery are tough! Anyone have any tips or models I can steal techniques from?

One question about displacement maps. I've messed around with them before, specifically with the stone wall you mentioned, but I always get this problem.

This is way exaggerated, but even when I use a more sober displacement amount, I get the same sort of voids showing up on corners. Any idea of how I can avoid that?


Haha, okay fair enough, StompinTom. It is situationally dependent. This render was supposed to focus on the furniture and lighting fixtures, so I didn't want to blow too much time on it.

Here's two shots that show what we're talking about. The first is metered on the exterior, the second on the interior. You can still see the exterior on the brighter one, but I always just felt like it distracted from the interior when it's just barely got a few details.

Underexposed

Metered on Interior

TBH, I'd love to have stuff showing outside that window. The site this is representing has a remarkable view out that window and I'd have to replicate it if I wanted to do that. I've tried but never pulled it off.

Site!

I tried earlier to make a custom HDR map of the entire site with a super wide fisheye lens, but I couldn't make it work. Anyone ever successfully managed that?

Thanks for the critiques everyone!

[Zom-B]

Any idea of how I can avoid that?

This is related to normal smoothing, the mesh gets cutten where edges of the orginal mesh arent smoothed.
Simply set Normal Smoothing to Maximum and it shouldn't happen anymore.

Your displacement map also seems quite "bumpy"... try a denoised and smoothed version of the map for displacement and use bump for details. Creating a displacement map isn't done by converting the texture to black & white...

I tried earlier to make a custom HDR map of the entire site with a super wide fisheye lens, but I couldn't make it work. Anyone ever successfully managed that?

doing a full 360° HDRI is quite some work. Why don't ya try to do some flat HDRI (panorama) first, that could be use for the window on a outside plane?

[Frutiger]

So where exactly is this "normal smoothing to maximum" button?

Also have you seen any good tutorials on how to make panoramic HDRi's?

[Zom-B]

So where exactly is this "normal smoothing to maximum" button?

Just next to the "Generate Awesome Render" Button
But seriously it depends on your 3D app. In C4D its controlled by the phong tag with a value for degrees.
Maybe in your Application its called even different...

Also have you seen any good tutorials on how to make panoramic HDRi's?

Haven't seen any, never searched for any:
- generate X photos like for a panorama on a tripot and repeat this with raising exposures.
- Auto generate a panorama for each panorama set
- use the HDRI merging tool to generate 1 HDRI image
- if your HDRI merging app doesn't fit slightly moved images to same position do it by hand before merging HDRI
- You also could merge a HDRI for each of the panorama "stages" first, but maybe the panorama tool doesn't support 32bit images

[StompinTom]

Just saying

With HDR photography and Photoshop and God-knows-what-else is coming, it's very very hard to say that something is NOT photorealistic because even photographs are starting to lie!

[Pibuz]

So where exactly is this "normal smoothing to maximum" button?

I kinda think you have to soften the edges of the colliding corners in Sketchup. Use the eraser tool while pressing Ctrl to have maximum smoothing and displ should work.

[CTZn]

Keep also in mind that it is normal that displacement pushes the surfaces away.

Beside the texture gain (b) parameter is the offset (c) parameter (sorry about the rough naming). It will shift the displaced surfaces forward or backwards. You want to reduce the gaps between walls this way before just soldering them.

Additionally that would preserve more of the original volumes boundaries.

[Frutiger]

With HDR photography and Photoshop and God-knows-what-else is coming, it's very very hard to say that something is NOT photorealistic because even photographs are starting to lie!

That's the truth. Was that image you posted earlier and HDR? The ones I posted were different brackets for an HDR shot that didn't end up looking so hot.

I kinda think you have to soften the edges of the colliding corners in Sketchup. Use the eraser tool while pressing Ctrl to have maximum smoothing and displ should work.

Ah, I'll give that a try. In Skindigo there is an option for "max subdivisions" under mesh subdivision, but there doesn't seem to be a maximum. I'll try fiddling with that and see what happens. Thanks again, PIbuz!

You want to reduce the gaps between walls this way before just soldering them.

So would I solder the walls by smoothing the edges like Pibuz mentioned?