How do I achieve the same quality light/rendering as shown in the photo below?
I am trying to achieve near-perfect photorealistic outdoor lighting. (the model isn’t finished yet, but from what I can tell of the materials, they don’t look realistic because of the light). What am I missing? I do use HDRI.
The render looks flat/CGI-painted (it is, but it shouldn’t look like that).
you can add a little bit of contrast in post/compositor
another thing is the cg render is to sharp
you could also lower the bump/displacement a bit
Lighting is good enough, what needs work is the compositing side. Matching black/white levels, midtones, contrast, tonality and softness to BG image, add light wrap and bloom, lens artifacts etc. A lot of what makes something look real has to do with what people think reality looks like, not what reality is.
BTW, that big grey plane on the ground is not helping 
Also you may want to soften your lighting a bit? As seen in the photo, given there is clouds there isn’t usually a strong sun light with sharp shadows. Does using a HDRi help at all, or even increasing the sun size?
Well, first of all, there’s really nothing “realistic” about a “photo.” The image that you see in any sort of film or printed media is a product of a very constrained color-capturing and color-rendering system. (Video, and semiconductor image-sensors of all sorts, are similarly but differently constrained.)
The first thing that I would consider is which renderer in Blender you want to use for this shot. Do not “automatically assume” that Cycles is the only or necessarily the best technology to use for any particular shot; nor that you are constrained to use only one system in the making of any shot.
Next, let’s take a look at the light in the reference photo. Notice how different the color of the sky is, versus the color of the parking lot. Notice how reflected, bluish light is bouncing off the lot and illuminating the building’s walls. So, there are at least two primary light-sources at work here, at very different angles. Also notice that the sky color is not “blue.”
There is also much less specularity on the reference shot … in fact, there is almost none at all, except in the upper (but not so much the lower) windows. Perhaps there is a building behind the camera.
The position of the camera, its height from the ground, the f-stop (zoom vs. wide angle) of the lens, and so on do matter in a shot like this. You need to replicate that in your camera positioning. (If you know the actual dimensions of the building and of the site, this will help enormously.)
You need to know whether the reference photo was taken on digital or on film. Every image capture technology (and film type) has a different color-response curve, which influences every image that it captures. Likewise the technology of your video screen. You can choose either to produce an exact reproduction of a film-captured photograph of a real-world scene on a cloudy day, or an interpretation of how that same scene might have been seen, on a different day and/or (say) with video.
First, in the Scene tab and the Color Management panel, you want to set the “Render View” to “Film”. This produces a more film-like color mapping.
Next, your textures appear to be purely diffuse. They should have Fresnel reflections. Notice how much specular light is being reflected in the photograph. This is very noticeable on the roof and the left side of the building. Cycles doesn’t do Fresnel on its own, and the Fresnel implementation is hacky since Cycles isn’t a bidirectional path tracer. But, you could at least improve it. I have a WIP/test topic about it here.
Lastly, you need to try to match the lighting. The sky is much brighter in the photograph.
There is more to it than this, but these are the basics. And, remember that you don’t have to replicate photographs. You can do anything in the PC, so feel free to push artistic expression. For instance, you can use any lighting that you want.
A few issues that I can see:
The photo appears to have been taken on an overcast day (no sharp shadows) whereas your model is lit by a HDRI with direct sun + clouds. Use an overcast HDRI instead.
The building in the photo sits amongst other buildings - therefore accentuating the shadowing/ambient occlusion effect in some parts of the building. The building in your image sits alone on an infinite plane and is therefore lit much more evenly from all directions. This is especially true in the left part of the building - which in the photo is shadowed more heavily by the building close by.
Your perspective is completely different, making your image look flat and unrealistic. Try moving the camera closer, lower and reduce the focal length of the camera.
Add some depth of field. Your entire image is in focus, whereas even though the photograph doesn’t have dramatic DOF like a macro photo would - the furthest parts of the building are nevertheless slightly more out of focus than the foreground.
Your exposure is wrong. In the photo - no detail can be seen in the sky as it is overexposed and blown out. In your image you can see the detail in the sky perfectly.
Add a little glare in compositor. The light from the over exposed sky in the photo spills over the building and trees somewhat due to glare.
All of this of course assumes you are trying to make your image match the photo.
