I agree with James that getting a tutor can be a good thing but there might not be a shortcut to learning photography fundamentals.
Besides Stefan’s great feedback about your materials and lighting, the most important advice he gave is the one probably easiest to be overlooked.
try to think like a photographer
At the end of the day we are all just photographers that use a mouse instead of a camera.
Mastering a render engine is only half the battle. Photographic composition, lighting, etc are equally if not more important.
@kmwhitt
Ditch your mouse for a day and use your camera to photograph your own kitchen like a pro photographer would do.
What time of day do you get the best natural light? What is your main light? Do you need fill? What’s the most interesting angle? Etc…
The importance of real life reference images can’t be overstated. Don’t look at renderings as a goal to achieve, look a real life images if photorealism is your goal!!!
Many years ago I came across Peter Guthrie’s website and his scrapbook section was a real eyeopener.
http://www.peterguthrie.net/scrapbook.
Collect every amazing real life kitchen photo you can find and really look at them and find out why you like them. Look at appliance manufactures images - sorry, probably mostly renderings ;-)
Look at your reference collection before starting every job,,,,
Back to Corona:
Materials: Less is more! Don’t get distracted with a gigantic material library. Concentrate on building a few great simple everyday materials. Forget about substance, get some hi-end pbr textures and find out their real world scale. When I get material samples from architects or manufacturers, I always ask that they place a ruler next to the sample so I get the real scale. In C4D you can put a placeholder plane with the exact material sample dimensions to judge how your real life material sample maps in the scene. Makes sense?
I use a furnished/ lit room to test out new materials to get some “real” reflections.
Test your mat on the real object, a cube tells you very little how a material behaves.
Render closeups, but be aware of the blur scale issue when further away.
Great textures make a HUGE difference.
Geo: Bevel everything!!! Where not possible use rounded corner shader.
Build your most used floors in real geo, bevel and space for grout etc. Use a couple of great wood/ tile textures, randomize and rotate for variation. It’s worth spending time on key objects to reuse in future projects.
Lighting:
I see a couple of (windows/ area lights?) reflections in the island lamps.
What is actually behind the camera? Make sure the room is always “complete” - bounce and reflections are very important.
I would:
- Delete ALL lights in your scene.
- Use material override in render settings to clay render the scene (preserve window glass)
- Use sun and sky for simplicity.
- Place sun to shine into window on the right, in a nice and realistic angle. Adjust sun size for softer shadows.
- Render and tone map to find your exposure value. Adjust EV, highlight compression, contrast/ curves till you have a good overall exposure just from the sun entering the room.
- Add lights that exist in your scene as 3D models (
no “invisible” fill lights). Adjust their brightness to fit your established exposure. The under-shelf lights are too bright!
- If the scene is too contrasty, create masks for elements that are blown out / too dark.
- Map your new materials, turn off mat override and test render.
- I save out several exposures EV 0, EV+2, EV-2 and use the masks, brush, etc to combine in Photoshop. This gives me better control than placing a bunch of fill lights into the scene. If you really need fills maybe lightmix could also give some flexibility…
Some tips you might already know:
I sometimes use ray switcher on wooden floors to control color reflected back into the room/ ceiling.
Use legacy mat for glass to be able to control reflection strength if necessary
Important! NEVER use fill lights to just throw more light into a room. If absolutely necessary use fills to model edges / shapes.
Instead of just watching 3D YT videos, watch how photographers light rooms and apply that in 3D.
Most important: Look at your REAL LIFE reference images!
Hope this helps.
Post a update when you made some progress!