Hi guys, I am very glad that you all enjoy the images.
JakubCech Hi there, I really enjoy your visuals as well, especially that Piaulin´s Interior project that you have on Behance. You've got such a great light in that one. To answer you Gamma was left at 2.2 at its default value and since I used the dump file that stores all the passes in just 1 exr file at double the resolution (Internal res: 2) I had to manually increase the highlight compression in Photoshop using that 32bit exr. I prefer this method over the usual saving out from the frame buffer since I get that double resolution which I quite enjoy. I have done a couple of tests just to compare the sharpness of that double resolution and I must say that overall it looks very nice and the edges are still quite sharp. There is only problem with the exr file, unfortunately it can't be imported in Photoshop so I had to Render-View Image File in 3ds Max and save out the passes that I needed from there, quite a slow process but it worked ok. Keymaster said that this will be fixed in the future and the exr with all the passes will open in Photoshop just fine.
As far as the lighthing goes I have only used an HDRI from Peter Guthrie and corona portal planes at the opening of the windows and that was it. Obviously I experimented with it a bit but mainly it was nothing more than that. I usually try to keep the exposure in the render settings to 0 and just increase the intensity of the HDRI and scene lights if I need to, I found that this is a better way to organize your lights rather than doing the opposite thing which is keeping your hdri to 1 and increase the exposure in the render settings.
The postproduction consisted of mainly using an adjustment layer on soft light and another one on screen. I prefer this to the curves adjustment because it keeps my darks in check and they never get over the limit. I also use the curves adjustment from time to time but haven't for this project. A part from that I have used a Colour Balance adjustment just to get some more red and yellow in the overall image, but that was only ever so slightly. What I also do is get a bit of glow in the brightest spots, such as on the highlighted golden bits and bright reflections, desaturate-levels-blur and put to screen mode.
nehaleThe golden material was quite simple, I had used some maps in the reflection and bump slots for the scratches but mainly this is the way I have created it. I will post a more in-depth explanation tonight after work.
http://imageshack.com/a/img841/6475/gaq8.jpg
