Hello I am working on a project with interior images. I am trying to achieve a real crisp and clear look like this:

forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php

My results are OK but not overwhelming. 

Any advices, tricks and tips?

Cheers Oliver

There are lots of reflective surfaces in these renders, and radiosity no doubt. I don't see why Vue wouldn't do it. It's just a question of where to place the main area lights ( in the windows), and fill lights. One thing though you won't be able to recreate in Vue is the special highligts on the back wall. This is a function within Cinema4D that is't implemented in Vue ( yet?), called environment. What it does is use an image map ( preferably HDR) and use the image in the highlights of the surface, thus recreating the illusion of a window behind the camera. Your only solutiobn in Vue would be to create a highlight function in Vue, and paint a window map in a paint program, load it in the variable highlights function. A lot more fiddling.
Also, Vue uses atmospheres for diffuse/ambient light balance. I suggest you start with a back atmosphere with no sun, no fog and no haze, and build your duffuse/ambient balance using main and fill lights.
Would be nice als to see one of your wips.

Thank you Bruno for your input. Silly swiss man has to ask you, what is a wips? ;-)

Work In Progress. Renders you show others to get advice or opinion. And it's not a silly question, or I was silly once too when I asked the same question!

One trick is to render a scene as a huge image and then shrink it down to crisp it up.  If you render normal size like I do, just sharpen the image later using a photo editor.  Not by too much though.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

Oliver,

Is the above image yours? I see the link to the CGSociety image and understand what you mean about 'crispness.'

If the above image is yours, and you're looking for a way to make it crisper, then there are certainly ways of taking the grain out of an image...if that's what you mean?

-Chipp

 

Yes, I rendered the image. And I like to have this rather cold and clean look of the image that I have linked to.

Remove the bump from your floor.  Add lighting coming from above/behind you aimed at the scene.  Brighten the shadows a bit.  Move the camera up a bit so that more edges/surfaces of the furniture can be seen.

You may have to brighten the lighting outside as well.  Add more reflection to the floor to bounce light under the walkways.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

Oh, right, I hadn't understood this was your work. Removing the bump from the floor is a very good idea. Also, there is a strange green-bluish ambient lighting in this scene that doesn't look right. Change the ambient colour in the atmosphere editor to a whiter colour. I think also the shadows under the mezzanine material are too dark, same for the upper level ceiling. You may want to brighten this with fill lights that cast no shadows and no speculars. More radisoity samples are needed too, use a custom photon map, and add more photons ( maybe 300000), up the tracing level, and the photon gathering levels too.

Another WIP image. What really bothers me is the fact that I can't see the sky outside because I set up a volumetric spotlight in front of the window. Even though I set all colours of the lights to white there is a strange blue tint on the floor. Not happy yet :sad:

More to come....

I think the strange blue tint is the colour Vue tints the sahdows with, and it must be related to the overall sky colour, this one must be a light blue. Change it to someting whiter.

Remove atmo and any haze/cloud layers.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

Don't forget the blue color from the transparency of the glass material if you used it for the window. Set it to black to remove the effect, or replace the glass material by a plain transparent one.

• agiel - www.linfa.net

Thank you guys for your advices. I'll give it another try and post the result during the day.

Here's another attempt. Took away the fog and haze and used GR. Still not happy....arghhhh.....

Increase photon count?

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

I used the Broadcast settings for the render. I assume I can find it somewhere when I use "User Seetings", right?

User settings, advanced effects quality tab, click edit, and increase the number of photons .

I increased it to 20. Let's see what happens.

Oliver, 20? No, the photon map start at 50000, go for 300000 if your machine can handle it,  and double all the other parameters.

Thanks Bruno. I am renderning with these settings now.

Maximum gathering radius value looks very strange, have you noticed?

To me every think look a little bit strange on this screen   This value was allready set like that. What would you recommend?

Hang on, maybe it's me. It looks like your real world units are set to imperial (english) units, like feet, right? In this case the value is correct, it's in yards, mine are set to metric, so it is expressed in meters.

I see. 9 minutes left until the render is done (over one hour). Looking forward to the result.

And here's the result after almost one hour of "anti aliasing". Hmmmm....

PS: The reflection map sucks big time ;-)

The AA seems strange, you can see some aliasing here and there, very noticible in the creases of the furniture, and also on the window plane. 
What are your AA settings?
Also, it could be that the objects are quite low poly

Yes, it is, if the AA settings for min & max are set identical and very high.  Example 128 min -128 max.  And the Advanced EQ slider is set at 100.

Oliver,

If you post your scene file, I'll be glad to take a stab at doing an indoor render for you.

-Chipp

 

OK - here's my next WIP Image. I think It's getting a lot better. Vue generates sometimes weird colours. The plant pot for example is brown but appears bueish...strange.

I will post my settings as well. Any forther tips are very welcome.

And here are the settings:

Wow Oliver, that looks really good! Looking at your settings, it must have take quite some time to render! I'd also like to see your atmosphere settings as well, and tell us how you have lit the scene.

best, Chipp

 

I'd like second both Chipp's congratulations, and his request to see the atmosphere and lighting settings!

Do you find that setting the quality to 62% helps?  Everything I've read says that above 46% the benefit is minimal.

With the latest updates, you can set the Advanced qualiity setting to as low as 30% (and yes, anything over 46% is a waste of time).  It will save a ton of time and make little difference in your render.  The biggest improvement to the render is setting the quality threshold slider in the AA setting to 75-80%.  Go to 100% for really fine details.  Don't add more subrays until you max out this slider first. 

LVS - Where Learning is Fun!  
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Thank you guys for your tips. I'll check it out. Here are the athmosphere settings.

and here are the lights

The Advanced Effect Slider has has made significant improvements to my renders when it is past past 67% Problems with shadows, grain, light, water and clouds are gone when this slider is set to 100% The least benfit I see from your settings is the texture AA which I leave completely off. I would definitely use AES at 100% and up the object AA if you really want grain free renders. I strongly disagree that 46% is all that is needed.