Modern Bathroom

After receiving good advice in this thread https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?432925-Bathroom-scene
I think it’s time to declare this project “Finished” at last. All credits to @SunBurn for being really helpful and willing to share his knowledge and experience.


Of course, there is always room for improvement, but since I’m not a pro artist and I’ve been working with Blender for only 4-5 months now, I think it’s time to move on and start a new project in order to gain more experience and learn new things.

I’m open to any suggestion, critique and advice.

I would also like to hear any suggestion/idea for a new project. Should I start a nature/environment scene? I really like old buildings and medieval architecture. Is it too early for me to concentrate on something like that?

I’m eager to see any suggestion from you guys:).

2 Likes

Great work here! :yes:

Thank you!

really nice stuff! My only suggestion: render in 2.79 and get rid of the noise with the denoiser! :smiley:

Thank you!
As for the denoiser, I did some testings in simple scenes with the denoiser. I don’t know exactly how to adjust the settings to get an optimal result. I think it makes some spots quite blurred and I’d like to know how to preserve a good amount of detail in these areas. I don’t know if there is a good tutorial about the denoiser. I’d like to learn more about it for sure.

I love those I just work with Blender for shot period amount of time and do outstanding work - so time to move on hahaha

pretty fantastic work - looks like you had some good experience gained with your previous software

Nice work.
What a huge bathroom, I would like to have one :smiley:

Good job !!

Can i know how did you do the celling lights i have struggle do to something similar Please ^^

Stunning work. Really, really nice job. I’m going to give you advice from the perspective of a photographer - once you get to this level technically, really the easiest way to improve is take inspiration from other related fields.

If I was shooting this as a real bathroom, the camera position and field of view is perfect. The amount of ‘clutter’ is just right, enough to make it believable. The depth of field is about right, maybe marginally too open (this looks about f/8 if the scene scale is correct) since the bath is noticeably soft, but for a render, the extra softness doesn’t hurt.

Which brings me to my final point. The biggest giveaway for all interior renders like this is the impossible ‘quality’ of the lens. There are so many things going on in a lens to try simulate them all, but in a contrasty scene like this, there’ll always be some flare or ‘bloom’ as it is called in CG. This can be combined with a tight but strong blur as well, to give a much more realistic (albeit less punchy) image. The best way to do this is to export your render in an HDR format like EXR, bring it into photoshop as 32bit, duplicate, Gaussian blur the duplicate layer by an amount, then lower the opacity (optionally change blending mode to Add for a slightly different effect). If you do that, the presence of the lights will stand out much more.

One other minor thing for post processing, as mentioned in the feedback thread, it seems too dark - this is because most interior photographs are brightened after the fact. Bringing the midtones up a notch will give you a more clean and pure look more like many bathroom photos you’ll see.

But, truly outstanding work. Great job.

1 Like

Note about the denoiser: Yes, you’re right, it will ruin the quality if there isn’t enough samples there. It really shouldn’t be used to reduce the time of your final render, but instead to clean up any minor noisy patches you have in an otherwise clean render - if so it has much more information to work with and won’t take out any detail you want.

Thank you very much!

Since you mentioned it, allow me to say something about my learning path: The truth is that I’ve had a good experience in modeling with 3ds max (some years ago) and mostly Rhino, which until recently was my basic tool for modeling (I’ve studied Civil Engineering many years ago, so I felt more like home with nurbs modeling), but almost ZERO experience with Rendering (materials, lighting etc.). Blender with Cycles was a true revelation for me in this field. When I first started working with Blender (4-5 months ago) It was really hard for me to get used to the node’s system of Cycles and learn how to think in order to produce a realistic material (it still is for more complex stuff), but after watching “infinite” amounts of both free and paid tutorials (Blender Guru, ChocoFur, CGCookie, Gleb, CG Masters, Rob Tuytel, just name it…) I was able to produce some, more or less, decent materials. Credits to Blender’s huge and welcoming community for that. It’s the only software I know with this kind of support for almost anything you can think of. It’s amazing!

Still, my main issue was proper lighting and composition. If it wasn’t for @SunBurn (who’s a Greek guy and he was easier for me to understand :)), I think that the result with this bathroom was going to be worse than mediocre. That’s why I’ve joined this forum. It was impossible for me to improve my work without some serious help from Blender users with greater experience than mine.

Anyway, Blender and Cycles is just a hobby for me. My occupation has nothing to do with CG etc (I don’t work as a Civil Engineer either). As a multi-child father I have a very little free time (1-2 hours per day and not every day) and Blender is a good way for me to relax and be creative. So, I’ll keep playing around with it and try to fulfill some old dreams about Greek medieval architecture and naodomy Visualization, which is an amazing subject.

Sorry for the long post and for mentioning things about me. I could be more laconic in Greek :evilgrin:!

Thank you sir! I know it’s huge, too huge for me, that’s a given :)!

Wow! First of all thank you for your kind words. I don’t know If I fully deserve them. As I said in previous posts, if it wasn’t for @SunBurn I wouldn’t be able to have this result. All credits to him and this wonderful Blender community!

But what can I say about your advice? Thank you for sharing these techniques. The truth is that I’m a noob in photo editing and able to perform only basic stuff. When you say “export your render in EXR and bring into photoshop as 32bit”, I guess that this is only possible exactly after the rendering is finished (before exiting Blender) and not afterwards. Right? OK, the Gaussian blur technique is a “sticky” from now on. Much obliged for that.

Not a problem! After reading your previous comments just now I’m not sure if I’m qualified to give you advice! :wink:

As for the exporting thing, yes, unfortunately once you close blender, there’s no way to get that data unless you’ve saved it somewhere… :frowning: That’s why I always recommend exporting at least a 32Bit EXR, if not a MultilayerEXR (which contains all your render passes, but is a bigger file) plus whatever you want to use straight away. Anyway, as you said, you’re new to blender, so it is all a learning experience!

I have done a very quick example of what I explained above - too strong for a final render, but shows you the effect quite easily - hope you’re okay with that!


Note: If your export still has the colour profile attached (unless you’re a photo geek it’s hard to know) you can still get a very close effect by converting the image to 32bit in photoshop. That’s what I did here - not perfect but quite close.

Oh, this is amazing! What can I say? Thank you for taking the time to improve this image!

Now I think I can see what you were talking about. There is a subtle increase in the bloom effect everywhere and I see some areas better highlighted than before (the towel immediately caught my eye). Am I right? Even the wall tiles look more shiny and vivid somehow.

This is really great advice and feedback @smilebags. 1000 thanks!!!

You’re right. So what is happening is that any bright areas are also making the surrounding areas brighter. As for the tiles, that means the small (but quite bright) reflections are also making the whole area slightly brighter making it a bit more vivid. This effect will pull the viewers attention to larger regions of the scene and makes it easier to take in the scene as a whole since the fine detail is a bit less visible.

Just be careful not to overdo it, especially if the blur is large (I used only a few % opacity) otherwise it’ll be distracting.

May I ask: did you do that with Filmic Blender?

Yes. If I recall correctly, I’ve used Base Contrast and I think I’ve cranked up the final Exposure by a bit.
This technique was used for lighting the scene with the correct amount of light https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?413815-quot-L-Appartement-quot-(Filmic_blender-Denoise)&p=3156033&viewfull=1#post3156033

Nice job, very solid, but it is easy to see that this is basically your version of that Blender Guru tutorial from Andrew Price. It would have been easy to make it your own, no need to follow the tutorial so closely.

Thank you for your comment. You’re right. My attempt was based on two of Andrew’s tutorials. I’ve already mentioned it here https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?432925-Bathroom-scene&p=3209517&viewfull=1#post3209517.
I’m relatively new to Blender, so I feel more comfortable and secure to have a good starting point (mostly tutorials). In this case I used Andrew’s bathroom as a reference and, to be honest, I don’t feel bad about it. Besides, I’ve made so many changes to materials, assets and props that I somehow feel that this bathroom is unique in a way.

I’m certainly going to be more creative in the future as I gradually gain experience, but I’m not in a hurry:).