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[JCA131]

This is my first post, so be gentle...

This is from a series of sketchy renderings I did a few months ago. I had some free time so I re-rendered and tried to make the image more realistic. I'm having trouble getting convincing lighting and shadows for an exterior scene. Any comments/suggestions to help improve the lighting settings and materials?

[flipya]

Very impressive mate, great job on the postpro grass! Reflections in the window are good, sky seems suitable for the lighting, attractive image overall.

Few pointers:
- resolution of the tree top-right
- shadow from the tree seems a little out of place (and needs some blurring)
- a lot of white (default?) materials, like windowsills, gutters, drainagepipes, chimneytops and door on the right
- curb and sidewalk/paving need some more detail
- sidewalk ends very abruptly (on the right)
- birds would better balance the image if they were more to the left
- maybe some small eyecatchers, a few shrubs or flowers

But I'm nitpicking, overall I really like it!

[Fletch]

JCA131, it's an Excellent Start!

Try lowering the power of the sun to be 4 instead of default 5.
Try also changing exposure and gamma settings in the Camera tab of the Render Dialog.

The Outdoor Easy 08 render setting is best, looks good after 60 passes with this much direct light.

The stone will take some work to look good... a special bump map you create using the original photo can help... which material template did you use for it? If the stone texture is of equal resolution width as your final image, it will be a good resolution for stone wall texture. You can check out the free stone wall texture here for an example.

Also, take a look at this thread about the sky.

Also, try this post-pro trick, it will work magic.

[JCA131]

Thanks for the comments, that's exactly the kind of help I was looking for. I'll try out the new sun settings and try to improve some of the materials, as well as some of the post-pro comments. I'll post the changes when I have some time to work on it. Until then, here's a watercolor version of the unedited image, it helps hide some of the imperfections...

[Fletch]

looking good... get's the point accross nicely.

[Pg09]

Lovely!!

Did you do this with Photo sketcher? Would you mind sharing the settings?

[JCA131]

Thanks.

Yes, this is in FotoSketcher... but to be honest, I normally just set it on watercolor and play around with the sliders a few times until I'm happy with it. I don't change the default settings too much, but I usually increase the color intensity and decrease the image simplification. I played around with the brightness/contrast and applied a warming filter (or maybe sepia) in Photoshop when I was overlaying the lines.

[Pg09]

Thanks, i forgot the line overlay, it makes a big difference...

Looking at it again, those people are a bit photo real for this shot, no?