Andy. I went on your website. You have some nice stuff there. The small cuisine. Was that done in blender and rendered in cycles?
Correct, it is useful in some cases where you want to increase the ‘ambient’ light.
Bizarre I wrote a comment and its gone.
I went and had a look at your website Andy. You have really some great stuff there. Are you specialised in sculpting?
I also seen the kitchen you made. Its really a nice piece. The lighting is just great. Is that cycle?
Thanks for the Tips about the sun I’ll test that tonight.
thanks:)
yes its all cycles. I rarely use BI now. The kitchen scene has a light bulb where you would expect to find one and a plane [the size of a wall] off to the left. The exterior image has a low level emission to keep the color from fading.
I have 2 more exterior shots to be done for the project I am working and I’ll have to do 4 interior shots. I’ll surely ask for advice.
I’m working on another project tonight its an exterior too, less complicated than this one. I’ll surely post the render tomorrow, I hope.
Take care, need to finished to work on a sound before going home.
Have fun, I’ll help if I can.
what type of sound…?
I am a sound editor for a company. Mostly voice for video or cd or the internet.
Bizarre I wrote a comment and its gone.
If your log in ‘times out’ then you will need to refresh the page before commenting.
Hello. Here is another scene that I’ve worked last night. Its still a wip. Only 1000 passes. Many stuff may change in that picture, but tell me what you think.
The car is from blendswap site, thanks to David Nyul for that great car.
No direkt light (sunlight) ?
There would be more contrast in the picture if you use sunlight.
Mapping of the bricks is to big.
Bricktexture under the roof is missing.
The resolution of the Texture of the wall right is to small.
Go a bit lower with the camera to see a bit more of the ground.
Do camerashifting (vertical lines have to be parallel to the imageborder).
…
Kind regards
Alain
Hello Alain, thanks for the comments.
Actually I’m using only a sun as source light. Learn a trick with Andy yesterday to scale the Sun to get a brighter scene. Its works fine but to you are right the scenes lacks contrast and the picture is not warm. I’ll have to get a good balance.
True the textured needs more work.
The camera position was a calculated thing as I had to make a render proposal and time was lacking to create a nice ground texture.
the scaled sun does not give a nice harsh shadow line 
you may need to have a smaller bright ‘spotlight’ for shadows and a large sun for overall light- to brighten the whole scene generally. Only trouble with that set up is fireflies…
or you could go for ambient occlusion and a spotlight?
I’ll try some different settings tonights
You need to make the color of the sun to a yellowish/orange color and then set the size to something like .050 for sharp shadows
Hello Rich, thanks for the Tips.
I have used a setting a bit alike. But my scene was really too dark. But I also found out that some of my problem was with Blender 2.63 version. I have came back to 2.62 for the moment. As it handle scenes with a large amount of details and do not crash with AO turn on, which is the case with 2.63 for me.
I have to add the final details on the project with the car in front today. Hope I’ll be able to add some more details and make a quick and good render as I also need to finish work on the other project I talk at the begining of this thread. I will post my renders when I’m done.
Hope you guys are gonna help me. I really want to produce great images with cycles as I saw so many do.
Have to go now,
Thanks and take care everyone
All you need is this: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Sun_Position
I guess it’s in the newest Graphicall. You just have to activate it.
Kind regards
Alain
Hello.
Big thanks Alain for that help. I’m going to test it and from what I saw this is gonna really be of great help.
On the other project I’m working on, I still need help. Here is the best I did until now. But its not enough. I have been given white card to make changes and to push the picture to its best. I know Cycles can do it but I need some help.
I am going to add details to the picture I’m gonna try to put as much work as I can in the textures. But after that I am limited.
Whats the best exterior render with cycles you guys have seen?
some depth of field would help add to the realism of the image.
Your sun light shadows are way to soft. The shadow cast from the umbrellas would be much harder. Check the internet and real life for references. You also might consider actually modeling the rock wall as individual blocks and not just a texture. A nice sky would also add a lot and increase the realism…although its not impossible for the sky to be clear. I just find using a nice sky texture helps a lot:) Other than that its a cool sceen:) I’ll keep watching this thread to see where you go with it:)
Happy Blending!