In a nutshell, you're doing things that compensate for gamma and turning on gamma correction. Compensation and correction can both go in the same direction. If you do both, you get overexposure.

You'll get more realism, and have an easier time, if you do everything with physical correctness.

That means less ambient lights, fewer fill lights, use IDL, use scatter. Realism lighting, based on bounced light levels, will not be executed properly unless you deal with actual light levels, instead of inflated or deflated levels, both of which occur when GC is not part of the rendering equation.

IDL and scatter are the realistic way to reduce harsh shadows. Exploiting lack of gamma correction and adding fill lights is the old way.

 

 

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)