Render Sharpness and Contrast

[Bo2101]

Hello, so I’m trying to reproduce the following image:

But I’m stuck at getting that contrast/ white shine/ sharpness. Also, the environment is looking a bit washed due to the high exposure (I think this is normal?):

about the setup:

• For lighting I only have a 8k HDRI map and portals at the windows. (The strength of the world was set using Multiply and Add nodes from the HDRI map, as in blenderguru’s tutorials)
• Engine: Cycles
• 2048 samples
• 4.000 Exposure
• View Transform: Filming Log Encoding Base
• Look: High Contrast

So, my questions are:

1. What am I missing? If I let the exposure at 0, the room is very dark… :-?
2. If there was post processing involved, do you know what kind of post processing was made and do you recommend some tutorials for that?

[CosasM]

something like that?

grade.psd (1.8 MB)

[Bo2101]

That’s awesome! Thanks! I always forget how important post processing is and I’m always trying to achieve the end result by just rendering the image…

[Pastean_Narcis_Dan]

check out this tutorial, on how to disable glass from cycles pass and add extra bounces and effects to your hdr.

[Bo2101]

Multumesc!