Help me achieve a realistic look!

[springate]

Hi guys, thats my first topic here.

I've been using Corona for a while now and it looks that i can't move forward to achieve a realistic look for my renders. So i'd like to know your opinion about the following image and how could i improve it!

Cheers!

[Nejc Kilar]

Well, I think we all hit a wall sooner or later so...

I think it is looking quite nice already but as always there is room for improvement. My first suggestion would be to start playing around with the lighting, create a bit of a mood (sunset, midday, early morning) with the shadows that depend on the strength, position and direction of the sun.

If you feel like going for this neutral lighting type of look then I think spending more time on the reflections might be the first thing to go. Now, you don't want to make things reflective like it just rained but just putting a barely visible reflection and breaking it up with glossiness / reflections maps might make it a bit more interesting. The trees especially might look a little more cool with a little more glossy reflections on the leafs - I might be wrong though.

Also, for this types of renders you can play around in your image editing software a lot (PS for example). You can consider adding chromatic abberation, clarity and maybe even some LUTs.

What I think you could also use is a bit of a stronger bump or displacement on those tree trunks. Maybe the composition would be slightly more interesting if the wood area behind the house would be a bit blackened out by the shadows.

For material creation you have so many resources online that its kind of hard to start listing them all - you can check evermotion tutorials, viscorbel's website, grant warwicks lessons, I mean the list just goes on :)

Sorry if this isn't too helpful but I just wanted to sort of start you off. I think checking out some How To tutorials might give you a good idea on how to advance this.

Hope someone else chimes in too :)

Keep it cool dude, great stuff!

[fellazb]

Hi,

Use a better composition, it needs more space

[romullus]

For me the scale of house and its elements looks somehow off. You might want to check if everything is correct. Also, put more stuff behind camera, as reflection in that big window reveals little bit too much :]

[springate]

I appreciate your help! Currently i'm trying to do what you all said and i hope i can post a better version of the same image anytime soon so you can evaluate it!

[mferster]

Hey there,

I raise your first topic with my first post! :D

I think as a raw render it works well enough.  However, these are the things that immediately jumped out at me that didn't look correct or detract from your image:

-your sky looks a tad underexposed
-generally speaking for shots like these you really shouldn't have any tilt in your camera, your verticals lines should be perfectly straight
-add some subtle depth of field, so the trees in the background aren't in perfect focus

I hope you don't mind, but I have attached a version I came up with after 5 minutes of quick and dirty post production.
-I fixed the perspective lines
-increased exposure on the trees and sky
-cropped a little bit from the right so the spacing between the image boundaries and the building are consistent on both sides.
-added some curves adjustments
-blurred the background elements a bit
-subtle sharpening on the main elements
-accentuated some of the coloring to match the time of day.

Let me know what you think!

[springate]

Hey there,

I raise your first topic with my first post! :D

I think as a raw render it works well enough.  However, these are the things that immediately jumped out at me that didn't look correct or detract from your image:

-your sky looks a tad underexposed
-generally speaking for shots like these you really shouldn't have any tilt in your camera, your verticals lines should be perfectly straight
-add some subtle depth of field, so the trees in the background aren't in perfect focus

I hope you don't mind, but I have attached a version I came up with after 5 minutes of quick and dirty post production.
-I fixed the perspective lines
-increased exposure on the trees and sky
-cropped a little bit from the right so the spacing between the image boundaries and the building are consistent on both sides.
-added some curves adjustments
-blurred the background elements a bit
-subtle sharpening on the main elements
-accentuated some of the coloring to match the time of day.

Let me know what you think!

Actually, i appreciate your effort!
-Agreed, the right perspective is a must
-i didn't notice the exposure was somehow odd on te sky, still dont know if i agree, overall
 Image looks good tho
-totally agree that post production isn't something that i pay much attention on and still have room for huge improvements on that matter, but i'm looking for the best raw render as possible because i noticed that even with lots of post production an average render still looks a render.

Once again, i appreciate your help and advices!

Keep saying stuff people!

[maru]

My quick thoughts:

lighting:
-the image appears to be slightly underexposed
-changing direction of sunlight could introduce some interesting atmosphere
-the image lacks contrast

models:
-trees aren't very realistic
-pebbles in the gaps and by the curb look kind of unnatural

materials:
-trees are a bit too green for me, but not really unrealistic
-grass is very green and uniform
-looks like the texture of the tiles is applied incorrectly - there is a small "cut" by the pebbles
-material on the door looks very artificial, I think it's too reflective/mirrory
-some materials like the tiles or house "bricks" lack details like reflectivity/bump

misc:
-you can see a reflection of huge plane with a repeating texture and some trees in the reflection in the glass
-cropping isn't best - maybe a horizontal frame would work well?

[springate]

Hi everyone!
I changed things a little bit. Let me know what you think!

[mitviz]

i think the trees are too big and also the camera angle, try to shoot from a lower angle

[FrostKiwi]

Hi everyone!
I changed things a little bit. Let me know what you think!

All Trees are the same height and are way way too high, they are all bigger than the house.
This warps the perspective and makes the house appear too small. When have you ever seen such a forest near a modern building?
Also do no use depth of field in such strong and unreal ways.
It makes the house appear miniature.
It's almost like tiltshift miniature photography from the way it warps the perspective of scale.

Edit: actually stop for a day, I had major color fatigue when color correcting a whole week and all my work came out under saturated and green shifted.
Take a look at photos of modern houses and try to emulate what you see tomorrow. Out right copy it. The bushes, the stones, the benches, the scale, how much dof, all of it. Might be more worth your time that way.

[Nekrobul]

Edit: actually stop for a day, I had major color fatigue when color correcting a whole week and all my work came out under saturated and green shifted.

This is a good  thing when it comes to printing.

First of all CMYK eats up alot of green by default, and mostly printed versions come out undersaturated so for printing it is better to keep images slightly more greenish and little more vibrant than for web.

But more less contrasted.