i have a question regarding materials. in a my scene i have objects (wall panels) with a pure white colour. with one sun lamp and ao the material in the picture looks grey.
why is this? any tips on how to make this whiter?
i tried setting the ao energy to a higher value but then the rest of the image becomes too light.
First of all please use one of the support forums to ask such questions.
Now, do you have something white near you, a sheet of paper maybe. Notice how it is not white but a shade of gray depending on how the light falls on it. There’s your answer.Our eyes and brain adapt so well to the changes of light that for us white is always white. When we see an objective rendering, either a photo or a render, of the reality though we can’t compensate and so we wonder why there aren’t any true whites anymore (or why there is a color cast or why our nose is so big… it’s all about our brain not being able to compensate anymore 
)
The only way something can always look white all the time is if it emits it own white light instead of just reflecting some. There is a Ref slider in the same panel, beside the name of the diffuse shader (Lambert, Oren-Nayar and others) that will help a bit and that you may want to use first.The ultimate weapon is the emit slider in the Shaders panel of the Shading context (F5) to simulate self-illuminated objects. With is you can eliminate self-shadowing completely but be aware that it’ll make your textures look flat.
Hope this helps.
Jean
thanks for the quick info!
and regarding
First of all please use one of the support forums to ask such questions.
isn’t this the support forum?
anyway I’ll help you …you could apply the vertex paint and press vertex paint in your material box near the main buttons somewhere lol so it will render with it also that’s in your panel of object mode edit mode sculpt etc in there somewhere ha ha …or unwrap your mesh and apply a picture onto the UV ?I don’t know …never go for white on my models ha ha grays fine with me.
Also, you’ll want to turn up the REF value in the shader. It’s default is 0.8, which means that the surface only returns 80% of the light that hits it. So, a truly white surface (RGB 1,1,1) will view as RGB .8,.8,.8 under a standard intensity of light.
here is a little trick - set the emit with a little value on it (play till you get what you want)
this will make your grey appear more whiter
salutations
Wo! My bad navigating.
Sorry
thanks all for the input! after adjusting the emit value (the ref slider was already on full 1) i got this result which i am happy with.
Another way to get a more controlled result might be to have a Sun on a different layer set to like 10 power and have Layer set on it. And they just have anything that you want pure white on that layer. Whichever is easier, I think they come out as the same results.
