Interior Help for a Beginner!

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k3nn13
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Interior Help for a Beginner!

Post by k3nn13 » Thu Jul 11, 2013 10:01 am

Hi Friends,

I've spent the past day trying to figure this rendering out, I know it looks unrealistic so I am hoping someone can provide me with a few tricks (hopefully in layman's terms) on how to make it look a little better. I would really appreciate the help! I'm running sketchup 8 and indigo 3.4.19 on windows 32 bit. If you need any more information from me please let me know! :)

Thanks!
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Sparling Tech 7-10-13 copy.jpg

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cotty
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Re: Interior Help for a Beginner!

Post by cotty » Thu Jul 11, 2013 6:43 pm

The image looks "flat" (too few shadows,...), did you use Reinhard tonemapping? If so, you can try to switch to camera instead to get a more realistic lighting...
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Re: Interior Help for a Beginner!

Post by Zom-B » Thu Jul 11, 2013 10:33 pm

For Indigo All rules and tricks about modeling and texturing kick in, same as for other renderer engines.
In your scene there is a lot of room for improvement here!

regarding light, you can use Light Layers to check the effect of each light source for them self on the scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyiPtWeo ... E1&index=5
(LightLayers are not available for Indigo RT, but only for the full version!)
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k3nn13
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Re: Interior Help for a Beginner!

Post by k3nn13 » Fri Jul 12, 2013 3:22 am

Thanks for the replies! I did use reinhard just to get the back hallway to be a little lighter but I can play around with the camera settings! (attached image is the Advantex 100 camera) I imported textures in the materials editor and applied them to my jpegs of finishes, but it doesn't really look like they are showing so well... does that mean I should play around more with the bump/displacement? I have some light layers on and I have an exit portal on the ceiling of the front room and the back hallway, is there more I should do? Sorry if that seems like a vague question, I just don't know what to do next haha

If I'm building my own furniture in sketchup are there ways to make it look more realistic instead of kind of cartoony/blocky? Is that just softening edges?

Thanks again for taking the time to respond! :)
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CTZn
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Re: Interior Help for a Beginner!

Post by CTZn » Fri Jul 12, 2013 4:42 am

My first reaction was as cotty said, a lack of shadows to underline the volume. A quick fix could be to put a plant or some art beneath the ceiling's portal; or, change the sun orientation for a less vertical one.

Just in case, what renderingt mode is this ? Bidir is to be preferred with portals, because PT (GPU or not) may block the direct sunlight through them.

on realism: dig exponent maps, they will reduce the flat shading some lots.
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k3nn13
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Re: Interior Help for a Beginner!

Post by k3nn13 » Fri Jul 12, 2013 5:14 am

Hi CTZn, thanks for your reply! I am rendering in biodirectional PT and I have my environment map set to sketchup background color. If I changed to sunlight do you think it would render more realistically?

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CTZn
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Re: Interior Help for a Beginner!

Post by CTZn » Fri Jul 12, 2013 12:38 pm

More dramatically rather than more realistically, in my opinion yes :)

It's just about the contrast that will be introduced, and the indirect lighting. Try it for yourslef !

Other options would be to tweak the exr map's alpha/"texture A parameter" to kick more contrast out of it, of mix it with the sun (not sure how depending on your exporter).
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Pibuz
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Re: Interior Help for a Beginner!

Post by Pibuz » Fri Jul 12, 2013 10:10 pm

Hi k3nn13 and welcome!

Here I offer you my 2 cents: first of all, for a render to be realistic first thing to take care of is lighting. Try using a EXR map if you have openings to the outdoor space, and use IES light profiles if you can. Second thing is DETAILING: drop the convinction you can model EVERYTHING: fon an architectural visualizer it's basically a loss of time, even more if you're a sketchup user (sketchup doesn't help you when modeling complex geometry) Try to focus more on the applied materials and most of all on the so-called composition of the image, that is the geometric and optic balance of the elements of the scene. There are a few composition rules (as the one of the "thirds", simmetry, and so on..) but you'll definitely need to build your own sensitivity about that time after time. In your image the zoom is too low, for example, so the room seems too axonometric to be convincing (hey, that is only MY opinion, don't take it too seriously).

k3nn13
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Re: Interior Help for a Beginner!

Post by k3nn13 » Sat Jul 13, 2013 11:43 am

Hi Pbuz, thanks for your tips! I am starting to think with a "rendering" mind haha. I didn't really understand that my materials would actually reflect light so I added some phong textures and it's turning out a lot better. I turned on the sun/sky environment and it definitely is looking good with all the shadows! I also increased the "viewport" of the camera so it's reading a little bit more realistically. Here's what it looks like with the little bit of tweeking! It kind of got a little noisey with the reflections and rendered lots of speckles so I did a little clean-up in photoshop but I think it's getting there :)

Thanks all for your replies, I really appreciate it!!! :)
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Pibuz
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Re: Interior Help for a Beginner!

Post by Pibuz » Sat Jul 13, 2013 8:22 pm

Much much better than the first shots!
Next thing: mapping and detailing. In archviz it's really important to know how things are actually done, so you won't get an unrealistic effect because there is no gap between separate parts or there is no joint between attached parts.. Most common thing to model carefully is the windows: take some time to study how they're done, and then try to reproduce them, taking care of the mapping too, it's very important.

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Re: Interior Help for a Beginner!

Post by Headroom » Sat Jul 13, 2013 11:49 pm

Much better than before!

As Pibuz already emphasized now focus on details and materials. For both of these topics you want to first focus on the largest surfaces in your scene.
Windows and are usually relatively large structures. If they are framed in wood, then familiarize yourself with frame and panel construction as a lot of windows and furniture is constructed that way. In your scene this particularly also applies to the huge wooden wall panels. They now look like they are Mande from one huge panel. That would not exist in reality ;-)
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Bosseye
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Re: Interior Help for a Beginner!

Post by Bosseye » Mon Jul 29, 2013 11:08 pm

k3nn13 wrote:Hi Pbuz, thanks for your tips! I am starting to think with a "rendering" mind haha. I didn't really understand that my materials would actually reflect light so I added some phong textures and it's turning out a lot better. I turned on the sun/sky environment and it definitely is looking good with all the shadows! I also increased the "viewport" of the camera so it's reading a little bit more realistically. Here's what it looks like with the little bit of tweeking! It kind of got a little noisey with the reflections and rendered lots of speckles so I did a little clean-up in photoshop but I think it's getting there :)

Thanks all for your replies, I really appreciate it!!! :)
Looks a lot better :D Just on the speckles and noise, make sure you're using the correct tracing method (under the 'advanced' settings in the Indigo render settings menu in Sketchup). Your scene looks to have a fair bit of reflective material so stuff like path tracing (PT) won't do a great job. Try BiDirectional with MLT which should resolve cleaner with less fireflies and white errors.

Using de-noise filters in Photoshop or whatever to clean up this sort of noise always blurs out the details no matter how hard you try which also hurts realism I've found. Also make sure you leave your renders running as long as possible - noise and grain in an image also hurts realism. Appreciate this may not always be possible as it can be a long process and we don't all have long deadlines!

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