Some general tips for doing interiors.

Here some tips to get decent results for interior scenes when using an unbiased render engine like Fry.
The original text came from a Maxwell wizard:


Your render engine is a light simulator, and a camera simulator... with a real camera I can't do what you are trying to do... not easily anyway.

the same rules apply here. Correct me if i'm wrong but noise is the inevitable result of not enough information per square 'whatever'.

The solution in the real world is to cheat. No good interior shot is completely free of some fakery, whether it's a reflector hidden from the camera or a big strobe... its there. You need to do the same thing with your render engine, it's not the renderer's fault, any more then it is the film's fault. Equalize the dynamic range and noise will go away (more)

General rule of thumb, outside only 2 stops brighter then inside. Thus, DON'T USE THE SUN. It's THOUSANDS of times brighter then a 400W bulb or emitter. The don't do it in films for the same reason. More control, more limited dynamic range 'friendly'.

Pump a lot of light into your scene. More then you will need. You will then be able to 'stop down' your aperture and get better depth of field.

Put the emitter planes pretty close to the window about 4 feet large enough to not go out of sight from the inside... about 2x the size of the window. This will produce the 'light being thrown in from every direction' feel, like a real window does. You can also map a simple color map to it.. very subtle to simulate the blue on top, warm on bottom nature of window light.

Use interior window shaped planes positioned off camera in the same direction as a window would point. Use other 'theoretical' windows to light your scene, you can literally move the 'wiindow' around behind the camera to get the right look, pre-render.

Point a warm reflector from the ceiling, aim at dark shadow areas. The tone of the room can be controlled with these lights to fill shadows with cool or warm light. warm light will give the feeling of a cool overcast day outside, and cool will provide the bright summer sun feel. If you are getting uneven lighting, you can make larger slighting curved (convex) shapes which will simulate light bouncing of the ceiling/wall corner. Wall color can be added to this light to help sell the 'wall is actually behind the camera' thang.

It's very interesting.

I've got to make some tryings...In an unbiased render these advices will improve the results...Many of them can be used too in a non-unbiased engine render like I've been making in Vray.

Thank you again!

intersting...i used to use the sun for interior lighting all the time.. I'll run some test to see how big the difference is, and post the resoults

I am about to do some interior and have some doubts:

1. What is faster-HDRI or just white colour in the environment mapping slot?

1. Do i need to use environment light if i decide to put some plane emmiter near the windows?

Ok, here is my test. About lighting: HDRI + 2 planes near the windows and those lamp inside. Nothing special.. Render time was around 6h on dual core.. Also one thing i noticed is that when i turn of plane emiters, than the scene is noiser, because the hdri seams to produce more noise(cleans slower) than the emiters...

Good lightning, now it needs some sweet materials
And HDRI produces much more noise than emitters, if you realy do need HDRI use a combination

Hi!

The yellow omcponent of your ilumination has been obtained thanks to the HDRi or thanks to the planes near the windows?

This component gives to the image a warmer ambient and a more real ambient.

As Stromberg90 says: add materials and we will see a great result!

Thanks for posting here!

thx for comments. The yellow light is from emmiters. Do i need to change it to the wip section? anyway, here is small update:

Looks nice, the floor could be more reflective......
I would change it to the wip section, easier to keep track of it there

hi,

i have see the finish work on the fry forum, and it's very very good, the light is beautifull
congratulation

hehe, I'm afraid that is not my work )) Thx anyway

sorry, I thought that it was your scene

Yes..Indeed I've seen this scene before in a chinese forum...I would say it's a classic but I like it!

It's really interesting that we can see this scene rendered with Fryrender and it's been used for tests.

Thanks for your contribution whatever the scene that has been used for.

Keep posting!!

Regards.