Beautiful Computer Generated Images I. - Giant Simplicity

[husherson2]

My main question here is regarding lighting of your scene.

Whenever I see those realistic 'photographic-like' renderings, their creators says that the lighting was really simple, maybe Corona sun or HDRI with some tweaks, but I can never achieve the same look no matter what I try (even if I copy the settings).

Could you share your approach when it comes to lighting, and maybe your settings?

AWESOME work by the way.

[petrorosengren]

I love this!
The scene is great and the materials is fantastic. Very inspiring!
Awesome light.

[marcuiz77]

Hi , really impressive images!! I also like photographic composition, very professional!!

Cuold you give some info about wall material and structure? Are they planar surface? And do you have only smoothed edges o something more?

thanks
M

[JakubCech]

My main question here is regarding lighting of your scene.
Whenever I see those realistic 'photographic-like' renderings, their creators says that the lighting was really simple, maybe Corona sun or HDRI with some tweaks, but I can never achieve the same look no matter what I try (even if I copy the settings).
Could you share your approach when it comes to lighting, and maybe your settings?
AWESOME work by the way.

Thank you husherson2! Well regarding your question - you opened a huge topic here. Simple lighting is always the best IMHO - even from this project I think its quite obvious I believe in simplicity. Though - not every shot has simple lighting here - the sofa shot has quite complex lighting scheme - including/excluding objects from some lights (you can see sofa is "separated" from the floor). Though lets talk about simply lit - photography-like renderings.  The main goal here is NOT to obey settings, but obey your EYES - whatever looks good - keep it, even if the settings are whatever. Settings are here for us to control - not them to control us. The attached bath rendering is the simplest in terms of lighting and settings from all the others - its lit by one HDRI with tuned saturation and gamma (usual approach) and then there are attached settings of color mapping - totally crazy uh? These settings are not here to be copied - they worked for me here, and might not work in any other scene - but the idea is crucial, what you see with your eyes is important - not settings.
Then, it really matters what "talent" you have in your eyes - you can be good at materials, at concept? maybe in artistic lighting - but to make the picture whole, you need all aspects to somehow work together. So for lighting - and all other aspects actually - if you make something, and dont like it - redo it - relight. Some shots here were relighted like 5 times. Regarding lighting itself - I usually have some idea in my head of how I would imagine it to be lit - and try it. If its not working, I try different HDRIs (my favourites) and then maybe rectangular lights - just watch what happens, and stop where I like it - a very basic usual approach.
Also then - here are aspects I usually find very important - if you do not have these right, your picture is going to look bad, even if everything else is okay:
1. Background in the windows / or overally background - it really needs to be the right lighting orientation, contrast and brightness - if its not, it breas everything
2. I think many renderings are good in terms of contrast and lighting, but what breakes them is saturation distribution - try to desaturate the image - or some elements - one by one - and you can find something that really breaks everything - or has a wierd saturation distribution.
3. A very important property of the rendering guy is to judge the textures - and be able to throw something away that is just not right.

And of course - some LUT can help the photographic lighting.

There is much more to say here - feel free to ask - and you can also meanwhile check the reading from Bertrand Benoit regarding photographic approach - ita really good http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/the-photographic-look/.

I love this!
The scene is great and the materials is fantastic. Very inspiring!
Awesome light.

Thank you!

Hi , really impressive images!! I also like photographic composition, very professional!!
Cuold you give some info about wall material and structure? Are they planar surface? And do you have only smoothed edges o something more?
thanks
M

Thank you Marciuz.
Regarding walls material - see attached material - pretty basic - diffuse+reflections, some bump however there are quite many CoronaAOs - I placed CoronaAOs everywhere as I wanted to add extradetails. There is quite a lot of reflection - probably overkill but it worked here just okay.
Regarding structure - wall were planar surfaces but I used Deformed Edges script (http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/deformed-edges) againt to add extradetails and uneven structure (again, overkilled probabaly)

[husherson2]

Thank you husherson2! Well regarding your question - you opened a huge topic here. Simple lighting is always the best IMHO - even from this project I think its quite obvious I believe in simplicity. Though - not every shot has simple lighting here - the sofa shot has quite complex lighting scheme - including/excluding objects from some lights (you can see sofa is "separated" from the floor). Though lets talk about simply lit - photography-like renderings.  The main goal here is NOT to obey settings, but obey your EYES - whatever looks good - keep it, even if the settings are whatever. Settings are here for us to control - not them to control us. The attached bath rendering is the simplest in terms of lighting and settings from all the others - its lit by one HDRI with tuned saturation and gamma (usual approach) and then there are attached settings of color mapping - totally crazy uh? These settings are not here to be copied - they worked for me here, and might not work in any other scene - but the idea is crucial, what you see with your eyes is important - not settings.
Then, it really matters what "talent" you have in your eyes - you can be good at materials, at concept? maybe in artistic lighting - but to make the picture whole, you need all aspects to somehow work together. So for lighting - and all other aspects actually - if you make something, and dont like it - redo it - relight. Some shots here were relighted like 5 times. Regarding lighting itself - I usually have some idea in my head of how I would imagine it to be lit - and try it. If its not working, I try different HDRIs (my favourites) and then maybe rectangular lights - just watch what happens, and stop where I like it - a very basic usual approach.
Also then - here are aspects I usually find very important - if you do not have these right, your picture is going to look bad, even if everything else is okay:
1. Background in the windows / or overally background - it really needs to be the right lighting orientation, contrast and brightness - if its not, it breas everything
2. I think many renderings are good in terms of contrast and lighting, but what breakes them is saturation distribution - try to desaturate the image - or some elements - one by one - and you can find something that really breaks everything - or has a wierd saturation distribution.
3. A very important property of the rendering guy is to judge the textures - and be able to throw something away that is just not right.

And of course - some LUT can help the photographic lighting.

There is much more to say here - feel free to ask - and you can also meanwhile check the reading from Bertrand Benoit regarding photographic approach - ita really good http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/the-photographic-look/.

I agree completely with you. Most of my renders I try to keep it simple, which for me means using Corona Sun+Sky, that always seemed to give great results to me.
But when it comes to HDRI, my mind just crashes.

When you say "one HDRI with tuned saturation and gamma (usual approach)" I do understand that you change the output of the HDRI. What I cant understand are those settings, what they cause when I change them (the image is just to illustrate). I mean, how can I create soft shadows with an HDRI for example? With corona sun this is so easy to achieve/understand.

Anyways, big help so far from you. Great to learn from such talented artist.
Nice to re-read Bertrand with more knowledge now - had totally forgot about this text.

[JakubCech]

I understand your point, HDRI took a lot time for me to understand as well. First things first - HDRI is not as adjustable as sun&sky - from sun&sky you can replicate any time of the day, any sharpness of the shadows - in HDRI you can not. Its important to understand that when the HDRI does not produce soft shadows you want, or effect you want, its probably not going to do so by adjusting the settings - you just have to replace it. If you dont like HDRI with basic settings, you will not like it with adjusted settings in 99% - so replace it, find your favourite ones that have the "soft" shadows feeling you want.

Regarding settings - I see you adjust HDRI with the Output tab in 3ds max - its totally okay - however, I encourage you to use this dialog to adjust textures in your materials (mostly in reflection and reflection glosiness) maps to understand what the controls do - and in meanwhile use ColorCorrection gamma setting (attached) to adjust your HDRI - it gives you "less" control but until you understand, its better - as I dont think you will ever want to use Output settings you attached which lifts (gains) the hdri only.

Now the settings themselfs - HDRI is just a map wrapped around and every pixel has its color and intensity from HDRI, you know that - and all pixel light up the scene. When you adjust gamma, look at the curve, you are basically saying - hey top 10% of the brightest pixels - be much more brighter and hey 90%  other (less bright) pixels, be much less bright. So what it means? You are going to produce few super bright points on the hdri - and making other points dark - which is like putting few super bright hard lights - which is going to produce hard shadows.

There are more settings you can adjust, like adjusting color cast in photoshop, doing some custom curve stuff (youtube.com/watch?v=zo8uxUDC29c) BUT you need to start with the hdri you like first - this is the most important thing to do.

You can imagine what setting will do what - just see the HDRI preview and think yourself of what is going to be the scene like if you light it with your adjusted hdri in preview - and you can understand settings from there.

[husherson2]

That's the answer I've been looking for all this time.
Thanks Jakub! now I have a new path to go through, and finally start to feel a little (very little) more comfortable with HDRI rather than just dragging and dropping them there, tweaking some settings.

[lasse1309]

looks very good!
looking forward to the next series :)

[Correntes]

Wonderful set  Jakub...

Upon a comment of rawalanche about the brightness of the walls on my last set of images what is the albedo value on your white walls ?

Thanks.

[JakubCech]

Hey Lesse thank you so much :) Next series is already out - https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,15592.0.html - check it out! haha.
Correntes - thank very much for your apprecaition. Regarding the wall albedo - for me, white wall is something like 180RGB + some reflection, some walls have even lower albedo. If I see my wall looks too bright/dark, I change the lighting (its important to have correct materials, if you have correct materials and the scene looks bad - change the lighting).

[Jacinto Monteiro]

Hi there,

Love the images!

Can you talk a bit about the texture maps (size? custom made?) you used for the main materials, like walls and floors.

Thkx,
Jacinto

[JakubCech]

Hey Jacinto,
thank you very much!
Regarding textures - well here is the thing. What I did is that I run trough all the textures I have (all texture from evermotion collections, just everywhere!) - and selected those I visually liked - walls, floors, whatever. Then when creating for example wall, I picked lets say 10 textures from those I liked - and started putting each on the wall - and see the result. Then I started mixing these 10 best ones in "composite" mode with different modes (multiply etc.) to add some detail/new texture. Then I mixed in some details (scratches, holes) and Bercon Noise.  So the walls and floors are a mix of textures I liked + holes scratches + berconnoise + there are CoronaDirt everywhere. Hopefully this helps!

[Ałtaj]

hello Jakub, i am trying to achieve marble from your tips. Could you post reflect and refract maps from your renderings? Do you have them still?

[JakubCech]

hello Jakub, i am trying to achieve marble from your tips. Could you post reflect and refract maps from your renderings? Do you have them still?

Hello,
unfortuantely I do not have them rendered - but you can make your own taking the previews I posted as a reference :))