I created a scene with objects I made, but it looks very flat and uncanny to me. I want this scene to look more “realistic”, or at least better? (I’m not sure how to word this I apologize).
What are some things I could do to improve it, as far as lighting goes? Or does it have to do with the materials themselves maybe?
Any help and tips is appreciated greatly thank you so much
Well you already mentioned two thing that would greatly improve this scene. The lighting and materials. If youre wanting a more natural light try adding an HDRI and create windows or open the door to allow light in. If youre wanting an artificial light then that is pretty easy to replicate. Though if the light is artificial, then instead of simply adding a plane light on the ceiling, I would suggest modeling some lamps and placing them around the room for diversity and to keep it from looking flat.
Second, the materials. It seems that nothing right now has any texture. If you want some quick materials I would suggest installing the BlenderKit addon. Its great for dressing up your models quickly.
Third, I believe part of what is making your scene appear flat is all the void areas in it. To solve this I would simply make the room smaller. So the furniture fills it more.
Fourth (and this doesnt contribute to the flatness of the scene much but would boost the scenes appearance) is I would rearange some of the furniture and work with the composition more. For instance, while one wall has two paintings and a clock the other walls have none. And that umbrella seems a bit misplaced in the center of the room.
Hope this helps and I hope I didnt over criticize but there were a few things I thought were worth noting 
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Your lighting is very flat, you have no major contrast between lit areas and shadowed areas. You very clearly have a lot of lights here- get rid of all them and start from fresh with just one light. Once you get good contrast with one light, then and only then can you consider adding more lights.
Also, your scene is “pillow-shaded”; you’ve got a circle of lit areas around a dark area in the middle. There’s no clear light direction, and so it looks fake. See above.
By moving your image to a photo editing software and reducing the colors to grayscale (turn the saturation all the way off), you get a sense of your values and contrast. I’d recommend it, no amount of color can fix an image if the grayscale values are flat and un-contrasted.
Fixing the lighting will make a massive difference. Start there- everything else at this point would just be a distraction
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Another way to look at is - Whats the story…
At the moment this seems to be an image of an umbrella in a stand.
Add an active lamp on the desk or above it to highlight the desk. Or do the same with the coffee table.
Find a pro photographer (or several) on YT and watch their videos. Do you need your camera lined squared up with the room and centered ? Would it be more interesting at an angle over the table on the right? Consider the Rule of Thirds.
Notice those purple highlights in the top corners. Lots of ‘media personalities’ at present have a purple light behind the desk (or other background item - plants etc), shining upwards. It creates rim lighting for the desk and emphasizes the rooms depth. You having those highlights in the top corners makes my mind more interested in what is just out of sight…
Randomize the rotation of the furniture a bit. Everything is still perfectly aligned to the X and Y axes. That is part of the ‘uncanny’ you are seeing. The desk being so tall disturbs me more than the umbrella stand being where it is.
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Thank you guys so much for the help so far!
So I made some changes to the scene.
-I made everything a bit more closer together/the room smaller.
-Added new materials from Blenderkit onto respective objects.
-Removed all previous lights.
-Added an Environment HDRI.
-Adjusted furniture slightly so it isn’t perfectly straight.
-Made desk a bit smaller.
Now what I am having trouble with I guess is still lighting-
I currently put in a point light at the front of the room (as if there were a window right there and the daylight was shining through). However it still looks kind of dark and shadowy in the corners.
As for the Environment HDRI I am a little confused what Strength is it supposed to be at? I remember back when I had tried studying about Lighting a bit more turning the Environment/World down to 0 Strength and then adding the lights to make things visible again (Im not sure how to word that sorry if that sounds confusing)
The current light source’s Power is set at 20k W and the Color is light blue.
I think the lighting in the first picture might have looked a little better- as I was mostly concerned with starting over from scratch as far as lighting went in this new version.
Also, is Ambient Occlusion relevant in this scenario as well as (other lighting/shadow settings in the Render tab)?
I see a few problems in the new version
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The light source is coming from behind the camera. This is a sure way to flatten an image. Rooms tend to look better with light sources coming from the sides.
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You have used a blue light, but the shadows are sharp. This is unrealistic, because sharp shadows mean the light source is small, but I would expect blue light to come from a wide window which means it would produce soft shadows. make sure you have “soft shadows” active and you give the light source a certain amount of width. You might need to increase the render samples depending on how soft the shadows are.
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The HDRI is going to be problematic for an interior scene. Eevee doesn’t have shadows for lighting that comes from the background, so right now you have a bunch of light coming through the walls. If you are going to light an enclosed room in Eevee, you should use an irradiance volume. Those do bounce light and they can also shadow the light coming from the background, so it only comes in though windows. Scale and place the volume so it’s inner bounding box is just outside the walls of the room. Then, go to the render settings, to the indirect lighting tab and press the bake indirect lighting button. Even with the default settings, it will probably make your lighting more realistic, though you might want to go to the probe’s settings and try increasing its resolution (you will have to redo the bake each time).
Yes, it’s going to be very relevant. However, the way you have used it in your first image will have to be adjusted a bit. You should adjust the distance so the AO is only adding that little bit of shading in cracks and in between close objects. The more general, wider shading of the room is the light objects and irradiance volume’s job. Also, I can see the AO come to an abrupt halt at the edge of the image. This happens because Eevee can only shade what’s visible on screen. There is however a setting that can help with this problem: “overscan”. It’s in the “film” tab of the render settings. It renders a little bit wider than your camera and then trims the result so the AO and reflections don’t have such obvious artifacts at the borders.
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