Thought I would share some of the renders from my first indoor scene created and rendered in Blender. I’ve usually done architectural projects in SketchUp before, and smaller projects in blender (typically one item scenes). I wanted to see how the outcome would be on a different platform. I am pleased to say that I have enjoyed making this in Blender, much thanks to modifiers which simplified the modeling a lot. I initially thought the rendering would be the difficult part, in particular getting the render close to noise free. The denoiser has definitely helped in making that happen.
I believe one thing is still missing, however, and that is the ceiling lightning. As is evident, I tried different things, but the plain emitting faces gave the best lightning in my opinion.
Hope you liked it! All critique is of course welcomed!
If you don’t mind longer rendering times, you should try to get it so the light from the ceiling is coming from actual fixtures rather than basic emitters (you will also avoid the strange juxtaposition when combined with the light models like in the second image).
Also, a hint about using the denoiser, the Branched Path Integrator will give you better results at higher radius values.
I’m sorry I don’t have much criticism. Maybe add some seams in the carpet, and some protective rubber on corners of stairs. But its really odd to see something so mundane in CG. It captures most american churches pretty well.
I have never used the branched path tracing before, but I set AA samples to 700 and kept the rest at 1. Denoiser radius was set to 10, but this was perhaps to low? I reintroduced the light fixtures, and made sure no light was leaking on the top (although this was a feature I initially wanted to try out). I think the curtains at the baptistry look cleaner in this render.
I do feel, however, that the scene is underlit, and wish to replicate the lightning in the first image, but with more realistic fixtures. There are panels in the fixtures which prevent the light to spread to all angles, as seen in the viewport screenshot. Maybe layers are the solution to this?
UPDATE
Changed the denoiser radius to 30 px and increased the emitter shader in the light fixtures. The render was silk smooth. Thank you again for the tip @Ace_Dragon.
