I thought it was a proxy based system?

What exactly are you needing to know and do you have any images to support what you are trying to achieve?

@unknownuser said:

the man said he wants vray, so let him have vray, sheesh kerky bashers

Arf arf! glad someone said it!

Perhaps less light from the window's - maybe even keep them dark so that the neon's light is the only light source. The sign needs to 'glow' a bit more methinks.

The moulding geometry shouldn't cause vray too much of a problem with speed if its only got a simple diffuse colour, the wallpaper map and floor and surfaces with reflections in my experience are more likely to take time due to the way the sampler operates. Care to post a screen dump of your settings?

The cupola / roof light at the ceiling looks a bit faceted to me. Is this meant or something you could smooth?

The composition looks odd to me at the moment but perhaps a single door in one of the foreground wall's and a sideboard with appropriate clutter on the opposite, pictures on walls would bring it to life a bit more.

All depends which direction you want your side project to go.

2 accounts per site is a common annoyance so perhaps the following could be installed to save 14,000 people needing to create a separate account.

http://www.wp-united.com/

Just a suggestion...

For me they are just minor additions that add more realism to images which are in the photo realism category. As your render and post work is so good, the more geometrical details you have the closer it gets to asking the viewer - Fake or photo?

Very nice work as always Free Agent. Definately one of the top VfSU images I've seen of late.

Its always strange to give criticism on such an image but here's what I think anyway.

The exposure of the model and RAW render is too bright for the photomatch

A few things I noticed missing that would complete the image for me are,
[]Rainwater downpipes
[]Lead flashings at chimney/roof & Roof/ Wall interesections
[*]Better roof tile map as its clearly banding

Nit-picking perhaps but its a fine image nonetheless and I only wish that more contributions made here were off this standard.

Without knowing what style you are trying to achieve in these images I could be easily too critical. If its photo-realism then you have a long way to go. As many others have said the textures need a LOT work as does the UVW (texture alignment) mapping of your textures. One aspect that I see in these images (and also in many others in this gallery) are flat surfaces with a texture applied and the user expects the texture to make the scene look realistic. This simply doesn't cut it and there's no replacement for additional geometrical detail to make the scene more believable.

Here's what I recommend you look at to help improve the scene:

Roof tiles: I'm pretty sure it wouldn't take to much time to make a component of a tile and to array that along the roof surface.
Grass: This would benefit from some displacement.
Lights: Turn them off. Having them of on such a bright day looks plain wrong to me and I think your images would have better contrast if the shaded area was unlit.
Water: Lose the fake baked caustic map and creat a shader that uses transparency in combination with reflection & refraction.
Arches Recreate with a greater number of faces to lose the faceted look.
Woman Lose the woman as Jason suggested as she becomes the focus of attention when its the building and landscape you want the viewer to explore.
Trees I cant see these ever looking realistic so try and find a better one or try using a suitable clip-map

I've never used Podium so I dont know what texture modifiers it has so you may need to try an alternative renderer to get more realism into your images.

It's quite simple,
In the options box go to Environment and click the letter M next to the GI swatch. On the new window that appears the pull-down menu on the left should say sky and all its details should be on the right hand side. To soften shadows all you need do is increase the size value from 1. try increments of 1 or 2 at a time, render and see how you like the look. Also you may need to refine the physical camera settings as the exposure may still not suit the background even though the shadows are softer.

Although I'm not a fan of unbiased renders this is very very nice work Pibuz

Congrats

Pete, thats a very god start. If you want your verticals to go perpendicular to the horizon, you need to adjust the len shift value in the physical camera. When I was using VfSU, I would start with about 0.1 for a shot from ground eye-level. Quickest way to get this right is to tick the material override and reduce the render output size whilst you test out which lens shift value gets your verticals upright.

Solo,

The blue shadows problem is something that cant be cured as unfortunately VfSU doesnt have the flexibility that Vray for Max has when it comes to being able to add a vray sun/sky - it uses the SU sun and gets its skylight from this as well. What this means is that in VfSU the skylight contribution bleeds onto the scene whereas in max we can counter this via an vraysky in an output map.

In addition to what Thomthom said

@thomthom said:

Primary Engine: Irradiance Map
Use default settings for OK final results.
For testing:
Min Rate: -3
Max Rate: -2
HSph. Subdivs: 25
Samples: 10

Secondary Engine: Light Cache
Subdivs: 250
Num Phases: 2 Set this to match the no. processors on your CPU
Ticking "Use For Glossy Rays" might help if you have a bit of glossy reflections.

The Irradiance Map (IR) might be a bit blotchy some times. Ensure that DMC Sampler's Adaptive Amount is set to 0.85. (Makes things slightly slower, so for very quick and dirty renders you might want to increase it, but 1.0 is never a good value.)

Set Image Sampler to Adaptive QMC for final renders, Adaptive Subdivisions for tests.This is a generalisation as it depends on the type of scene and its geometry for what image sampler is best suited.

Reflection/Refraction Max Depth will affect the speed, but also impacts the light and transparent materials.This setting = no. faces that light is permitted to pass through as seen from the camera

As for your blueish colour caused by the sky, it'd be good if you could post and example here.
But you could try to increase the Turbidity. Lowering the Ozone might help a little as well. See the examples at spot3d for a visual reference: http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150SP1/examples_vraysun_sky.htm

Indeed and I'm more than happy about it! I havent used it since November IIRC when I got a job role switch to an Arch visualiser

It wont be coming out if SP3 but it will be out after as Vlado has confirmed that they are still working on it.

@unknownuser said:

What can MAX do natively that the masses would use that Modo can not? That is a tough one as I do not know of anything that Modo can not match MAX on.
Scott

For a start, Modo doesnt have a modifier stack which is quite a deficiency.

Max is eternally frustrating seening as its incapable of performing simple transform commands like 3point rotation that is inherent in most CAD programs but then again it isn't a precision modeller. Is Modo capable of such things?

Earthmover, whats the problem with Modo's splines?

It is achievable in VfSU however its not achieved as easily with vray for max. In max you just select the physical cam and go to its properties and hit guess shift. In VfSU you need to edit the lens shift values till the image has the vertical lines completely upright just as the human eye perceives physical geometry.

Earthmover, I hope you dont mind me taking the liberty in amending one of your raw attachments.
Here's something along the lines of what I was trying to describe in my previous post. Just a 2 minute tweak via gamma increase and a touch of magenta taken out of the image. To me the lighting propogates through the image better though this is just my opinion and of course may not be how you intended your images to feel whatsoever.

The modelling is quite good though the images are way too dark for my taste and look like they were rendered at a gamma of 1.0. I tested a simple gamma adjustment of 1.8 (making the midtones much brighter) and all the images were much improved upon IMHO.

Just my (devalued!) £0.02 worth...

It would help if you posted your vray settings and told us which release that you are using.