Lighting for Realism

Artwork Focused Critiques
#1

Hello,

I am having some trouble lighting this scene to make it look more realistic. I was able to get an okay looking image after tweaking in photoshop but does anybody have any suggestions for getting a better looking result straight from Blender? The image looks “soft” and cartoony to me which is not what I’m trying to go for.

1019_2020_Test 1_200 Samples_Denoise Node
1019_2020_Test 1_200 Samples_Denoise Node1920×1080 402 KB

1019_2020_Test 1_200 Samples_Denoise Node_Photoshop
1019_2020_Test 1_200 Samples_Denoise Node_Photoshop1920×1080 885 KB

The scene is being lit with an HDRI.

Thank you!

#2

I don’t understand the background, what is it what I see?
Back to your question, one thing is that most likely you have loads of bounces, 128 maybe? Try it with 6
It looks like a very diffuse HDRI to me with not that much contrast. Maybe look for a more an HDRI with a bit more contrast.
Other ideas:

  • Place some objects that cast shadows on the house, like trees.
  • Try other textures. The texture of the roof, doesn’t match qua contrast with the texture of the wood.
  • Some sharp edges reveal that the geometry is to perfect. Do something with it, like add details, or add some randomness, etc.

And what do you mean with soft: lack of contrast, or that the HDRI is in lower resolution than the scene (hdri looks blurry, and gives gives a kind of DOF effect making the house look more like a toy?)

Cartoony? I think those are the shard edges I mentioned earlier.

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#3

Thank you very much for your comments I appreciate the effort. I’m still pretty new with blender and 3D modeling/rendering in general so any advice is great.

I’ll play around with the tips and settings you mentioned to see if I can get a better result. The background definitely needs work as right now it is basically a wall of low poly two-plane tree images. I was playing around with some techniques to save on render times but its probably worth sticking some higher fidelity models in there.

Best,

Collin

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#5

Edit sorry I replied to the wrong post. In addition to the other suggestions you can adjust contrast, exposure etc with the colour management settings in the render properties.

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#6

Good suggestion! I’ll give that a go as well.

Thanks!

Collin

#7

You also have a strange lens setting which is causing a lot of distortion. The “vertical” walls of the house converge strongly, and the camera itself is on the ground.

Consider using an orthographic projection. Many real-world architectural photographs are (still!) taken with “old-timey” bellows cameras for precisely this reason.

The scale of the various elements are also working against you: if those wall-boards are made of (say … 1x6" lumber, how big is the moss on the roof? Or that chimney-pipe? Or those trees?

Play with camera positions and settings.