Office space

The ceiling didn’t look funny until I applied denoising. but without it the image is very grainy even at 2000 samples. Any suggestions? Comments or criticism? The scene is an office that I intend to use in a video scene. I tried to put some clocks in it because the previous owner invented time travel.

The lights are nice, the models lovely, but the entire scene is much too dark to really make out what you’re trying to get people to focus on. As bright as those lights are, and as much a shine on the side of the desk there is, the floor should be reflecting it a lot more. I understand your concern about noise. Perhaps playing with lightpaths would help you on that score. For example, you can mix the diffuse rays with a transparent shader, using the camera rays as a mix value, and that should throttle some of your noisier bounces.

Thanks for your reply. I cant say that I know how to achieve what you are suggesting. “For example, you can mix the diffuse rays with a transparent shader, using the camera rays as a mix value, and that should throttle some of your noisier bounces.” can you tell me how I would go about achieving this?

I do many interiors for clients and personal projects.
The first question you need to ask yourself is “do I want to sit in that room?” I don’t. It’s too dark and depressing.
I guess your going for a moody room, so that might not apply.
I would study some reference photos. Dark, moody and good to look at is a hard to do.

My apologies, I should have been more specific. In addition to your current material, you will need a diffuse shader (found in the shader section under the add menu), a mix shader (found in the shader section under the add menu), and a lightpath node (found in the input section under the add menu).
Add a mix shader.
Connect your current material and a diffuse shader in the bottom two input slots.
Connect the Is Reflection Ray in the top slot.
Instead of the texture and glossy set up, you would have your current material. For better affect, if possible, also hook your texture up to the diffuse node.


This was an older example, I couldn’t get the right one up, but the only difference is I added a noise texture hooked up to the glossy shader, so I could demonstrate the point in color.

Before:

After:

What this does is tell Blender to treat what isn’t defined as a reflection ray (that is, those bounces the camera actually sees) as a diffuse material. Instead of diffuse you could put in transparent, but this will keep it from casting shadows.

Is Reflection Ray might not be the right choice for your scene, depending on your material set up, but one of these lightpaths are bound to help a lot.

thanks I have actually been trying to lighten things up. but at the same I have been having issues with fireflies and render times. I was also trying to only derive the light from the existing lamps. but when i turn up the brightness on the lamps I loose the marbled look in the lamps. so I think I’m going to have to add some alternative lamps in the scene. Thanks again. I will try looking up some references.

Thanks Artistic lee I will definitely try playing with this.

This one from Blender Guru I think will really apply to what you are doing.

A good material setup for glass is as follows:

Mix a glass shader with a transparent shader. Use the ‘camera ray’ as the factor. Transparent should be in the top slot of the mix shader. This will make the glass look like glass, but the light will ignore it. Youll get more light throughout the scene, with less noise. If you still get fireflies, try clamping the indirect light