Simple Loft Office corner


Task was to make some non-bright semi-fancy office atmosphere.
Somehow I am still not satisfied. What could be wrong?

Self-made brick diff/bump/gloss textures using GIMP,
Everything else only blender.

Thank You for suggestions, critique!

  • It is bright. Bright overhead light, and there is more bright light on the left (outside the pic) so that desk lamp wouldn’t be used much. Indirect lights would give less bright and warmer feel
  • Way too much depth of field
  • Materials are too diffused. Almost everything is too blurred and DOF and noise amplifies that. The window is the worst because it’s darker on the outside than on the inside, so there would be clear and sharp reflections on the window
  • Pencils on the desk have no shadow
  • Black column on the left sinks in the wall. Could be intentional, but doesn’t look right from that angle
  • No clear sense of scale, it’s confusing. Probably because of DOF and camera focal length

This has real potential. I have to agree with JA12 on those elements. Also walls, floors and ceilings generally don’t just meet like that. Some molding and mop boards will (I think) make it more interesting. Keep going, you’re almost there.

The left wall and window is very unrealistic - it can quite obviously be seen as a flat plane with a texture laid on top. Try adding a normal map and a specular map, that is probably the single most important thing you can do to improve any textured surface.

Edit: Just saw in your post that you have used your own bump/diff/gloss maps so I’m quite surprised at how the wall looks. Perhaps the strength of your maps needs to be increased?

Apart from that, I’m liking the overall feel of the render.

Out of interest, what engine did you use to render this?

Did you mean for the table to be made from glass? It’s one of the focus of the image and it doesn’t quite look like glass. The default Cycles glass node would give you quite a good effect without much modification. (That’s assuming you’re using Cycles, though I doubt so since the shadows don’t look noisy as Cycles’ shadows does…)

Parts of the image look very nice; in particular the furniture and the curtains. I would add a skirting board to the bottom of the plasterboard wall to cover the joint with the floor–those help to protect the wall from shoes and vacuum cleaners. Also, the joint between the plasterboard wall and ceiling is unclear, so you might emphasize that a little more. Finally, the glazed reflection on the window seems incompatible with its transparency.