I am trying to make lighting for my bathroom scene, bright without sunbeam, glare. The most info I have looked up suggest hdri through a window. And make use of a portal area light. I have done all that but still come up with over bright sunlicht on the floor walls, or to dark.
I am missing some realisme. Any tips? I need it to look photo-realistic. Accesoires will be added later.
The shadows from the lamps and the console are quite soft even with their short distance to the wall. That to me indicates a soft diffuse lighting - the whole window surface acts like a light rather than a 0.5deg sized sun which would leave a much sharper shadow. So you could use a no-sun HDRI or Nishita Sky (no sun) for that soft lighting, and possibly add a diffusor (say a bright curtain) in the window itself. It not in view, might be better to fake this indirect lighting with just adding a window sized area lamp in the window itself. Depends a bit on how the rest of the space is illuminated. Then it’s “just” a matter of setting the exposure. Using Nishita (no sun in this case), I would consider adding an actual outside to do a ceiling bounce.
Had a look at the file. There’s a few double objects in there you might want to clean up.
