Rendering Critique

[alobartn]

OK, this took a long time to render because of its size. It has to be 9 x 6 @ 300 dpi, which equates to 2700 x 1800. I'm posting a smaller version here, but I'm sure George will be able to improve upon it, so we can compare. All I did in PS was to blur the fabric edges and add a touch of highlights. By the way, the white ceiling is at 100% emissivity. Something really needs to be done about that.

[ChiefChris]

I think that looks great.

What did you use for the blinds?

[alobartn]

Thanks. Jeez, I can't remember. I'll check and get back to you.

[alobartn]

I guess I drew a ">" shape in elevation and extruded it to the width I wanted via converting to polyline solid, then multiple copied to the height I wanted. Saved it to my library. I'd post it here, but how the heck do you copy something out of your library?

[Larry Kumpost]

Very nice Adam. A major improvement over the first one.

How did you deal with the lighting? Did you just turn the levels way down?

[ChiefChris]

I guess I drew a ">" shape in elevation and extruded it to the width I wanted via converting to polyline solid, then multiple copied to the height I wanted.

That's kinda what I thought. What is the material texture?

[alobartn]

I lowered the lighting a bit, and changed colors. I had a yellow tint on some of them before, which colored the cabinets a bit too much. There are 8 light sources including 3 under cabinet lights. Only 2 with shadows.

The material on the window shades is called Paris6, which is in the Textured Fabrics library. Its bump map is the same image, height of 3. About 55% transparency. I wish I didn't have to say "about!"

[jsimanyi]

Adam - to copy it OUT of your library, name a new library (Adam's Shade or whatever) and drag it over. Then it'll show as Adam's Shade.alb and can be zipped and shipped over here.

If you had to modify a material, I might suggest saving the "new" material in that library as well. It'll save the next guy having to play around too much to get the right look.

John S.

[alobartn]

OK, thanks. Here's that shade.

[HARRYBSTANFIELDJR]

Adam, That Looks Great. I Like What You Did To The Floor:d

[ChiefChris]

OK, thanks. Here's that shade.

Thanks ADAM

[George Godwin]

Adam, - The attached adjustments lighten the scene with a little more contrast overall and bring out the floor and stools etc. It is always a matter of taste.

[alobartn]

Did you do anything individually as well, or modify the entire image? Looks like you used brightness/contrast to liven things up. Would you recommend more than that? Looks good, by the way. Wish I knew how to brighten the ceiling and add a little yellow to it.

[George Godwin]

Adam, - I used a lot of selective adjustments as on the floor and the stools which takes me a matter of seconds due to using the program features for over 20 years. I have brightened the ceiling and added a little yellow (maybe too much) to this second version. I edited the selection a little for a better result.

If you read my earlier post on what tools I use in Photoshop you will note the main tools that I use. But it's like playing the piano for 20 years, there are a lot of moves that I make in a very short time using various selection tools, layers with various blending modes applying masks and opacity levels on numerous layers, filters eg. blur and unsharp mask, levels adjustments, and hue and saturation adjustments. I adjust selected areas until all parts look right. On these small (less than 100k) files, the changes are less refined obviously than on a large file. I only rarely use Brightness/Contrast because it is less refined than using Levels which can focus on light, middle and dark tones in the same dbx with preview.

[George Godwin]

The attachment is a side by side comparison. I added some hot spots on the lights and some highlights on the counter below the lights.

Keep in mind that these are small images and are not of high quality. Adjustments on these images are not nearly as refined as what can be done on a larger file with a larger volume of pixels.

The original render at 300 dpi resulted in a 14.2mb .bmp (bitmap image) which is a lot easier to do good detailed adjustments on.