Third Attempt

[Wingnut]

Hello Everyone;

I'm resonable happy with my progress in Hex And C5. I've still got a lot to learn, but I've got the rest of my life to learn and improve. The main thing is that I'm having a lot of fun and that 's what this is really about.

The painting was done mostly with the preset shaders of C5, and a few texture maps I was able to get from some Digital photos I took around my house. The Doorjam on the bathroom was a nightmare for me, It seems I tried everything to get this to look realistic but failed miserably. If anyone has some tips(not too technical please) I'de appreciate it.

Having fun with Eovia in Canada
Wingnut

[LoneGunman]

Lightning is everything, try to never texture your scene before lightning looks good with just plain white or gray texture applied to everything

Lightning in your image is rather flat, you need multiple light sources, more subtle and with different intensities, in other words, needs to be more dramatic. Place them where they are expected, around the mirror in the bathroom, inside of the lamp, and at the place where other lamp is (but not seen).

I do not see any use of bump mapping, specularity or reflections in your textures, also a major factor in realism.

Models are nicely done.

Hope this was helpful enough, good luck to you !

[Couerl]

Good comments and suggestions, I'd add that using the procedural wood shaders, while temptingly easy is not easy to make look good. The wood shaders are hard to scale right and texture maps always seem to come out looking better unless it's for a toon like style render.

Overall it looks very good and I can't see the door jam problem you mentioned. Is it the floor height where the two floors intersect?

[Wingnut]

Thanks for the constructive criticism. I added aditional lights as mentioned by Lone and it seems to have improved the oveall realism. I added anything glows to the lightbulb in the lamp and a bulb above the vanity in the bathroom.

Couerl, I'm just a beginner to this digital stuff, I don't even know how to scale a preset shader, I just drag and drop. If you have time maybe you could explain this procedure to me.

I'm certanly happy that some of the more advanced eovia users take time to talk to us rookies. Untill now I haven't been able to afford any of the 3D programs and my only experience was with downloaded demos and old obselete programs. Thanks again Eovia.

So here is my latest render and I appreciate all the tips.

[Couerl]

Looking good, the shader editor is almost a program by itself and lighting is always hard to get right no matter how good you are. I've been messing around with Carrara for almost 3 years and I'm still bad at both of them.

To scale the wood shader, in the properties panel on the right, click edit on the shader and in one of the shader channels you'll see "lumber yard" and a ton of little settings in there. One of them is scale.
Keep it up!

[AWBenson]

Well of the things that can further improve the realism, is the lack of "dirt" to the scene. Objects always have some grunge and/or wear and tear on them. This makes creases look brighter or darker than the rest of the surrounding model. Without plugins, this would mean that you would need to UV unwrap your models. The Anything Goos plugin can help you make procedural grunge without the need of UV unwrapping.

UV Unwrapping is something of an intermediate skill level, but is usually, really important in making things look real. I have tutorials on my website about this, but for being new to 3D, I wouldn't worry overly much about that at this point.

Lightning is also really bright. Do you have any ambient lighting in your scene and if so, you might consider decreasing it or removing it altogether, unless you want to render with ambient occullusion, which would also help with some realism issues.

The lamp's shadow looks strange, because the light isn't going through the bluish glass. You can fix that with having a transparency setting on the glass while having the "light through transparency" option check-marked in the render room.

[Aunty Betty]

Hi Wingnut your latest addition is looking much better.

Why not post a screen grab of your scene with light positions + your rnder settings?

[Wingnut]

Thanks a ton Aw. I was wondering why the light didn't go through the glass on the lamp, but didn't know how to fix it. Here's what I come up with after the changes and the ambient occlusion feature set at it's default. It splatters green light all over my wallpaper.

P.S. Dear Aunty Betty I don't have a clue what a screne grab is.

[tonytrout]

A screen grab is when you capture your monitor view. In a PC you press the keyboard key Prnt Scrn, this captures what is showing on your computers monitor at that moment and stores it as an image in the clipboard. Open your graphics programme and paste as a new image or similar and you will have your "screen grab". You can then crop it and draw on it if you wish and post it on this forum.

I think AB is asking for you to post an image of your assembly room with the lights showing, and an image showing your render room settings

cheers