Figured I'd post this here as it's definitely not a finished render. Put this scene together to try some lighting I haven't done much of. Like where it's headed but need to tweak a few things. Got to change out the pillows, the two button tufts look waaay to much like eyeballs looking back at you . Have to play with the textures on the Brutalist wall art. Their just not giving me what I want. Last but not least I have to find me some better images for using outside the window. I just grabbed the first one I came to..... Make a few adjustments cook it again and I'll post another pic for comparison. F.Y.I. Rendered in Twilight and all the props are my models except the curtains, their out of solo's curtain pack. Thanks solo ! :fro.

Added an updated image. Tweaked materials and light settings. I think I improved it ?

garystan, the scale of the piano is still bothering me. did a quickie search. The measurement from the floor to the bottom of the piano "case" is approximately 28 1/2" ( where your knees go when playing ), from floor to the top of the "lid is 40".your bookcase/credenza seems to dwarf the piano in size. most low bookcases and credenza's are usually 28" - 30" high on average. the next thing is just personal preference. I'd move the camera position to the right where you would have a more raking view of the wall with the bookcase. I'd rotate the piano a little clockwise so your not looking so straight on at it. It would also bring more of the sofa into view. All that said" by george your standing at the plate swinging at the pitches". Keep it up it's how you learn and get better.

Dave, I'm going to sneak in here and try to help you out.
First off Twilight won't render proper with the camera outside a wall that has a solid material on the front face and a transparent material on the back face. if memory serves Twilight only reads materials on front faces. Actually did a quick test, you only get a screen full of weirdness.If you have to render "looking through a wall" to get the scene set up you want. hide the wall or make it transparent both sides. Render with the sun disabled or light will pour in the open side. Use your interior lighting ( invisible emitter in ceiling or point lights ). position a plane outside your window and make that an emitter to give you light coming in the window. You can apply an appropriate image to the plane outside the window and then assign your light emitter properties to it.

P.S. I think your getting the hard light and shadows in the image you posted because you have shadows enabled .

garystan, try searching the internet for real world dimensions of the various objects. check them against the models dimensions. scale up or down as needed. one more thing , having a corner so close to the center of the scene rarely looks quite right. play around with your position in the scene until you find the "sweet" spot.

David, Just one question , where's the seat belt and airbag ? Don't want to get sued when baby has accident.

Thomas, Geez I feel like I'm turning into a pain in your arse. Started to get this load error tonight. Only pops up if I open a fresh SU window. Tried a few times , the error popped up every time. Opened a couple of existing models and didn't get the error? Any idea what this is about ? What did I break ?

It's all good Thomas. Amazed you do all the stuff you do. You must have some hidden super powers ! Definitely making progress with your tools. Heck messing about late last night and figured out how to get rid of the triangles I always end up with in the corners of those pillows.

love it

Thomas , thanks for the quick response and I'll keep forging ahead and try and learn from my mistakes.

Thomas, The help you gave me on my pillow model over on the SubD forum got me thinking. I have run the sandbox to quads function on proxies after doing various adjustments. I'm now wondering if I'm using the tool correctly. ( I'm sure I forgot or didn't think I needed to do it to the pillow ) I've been triple clicking to select all in the group or component then clicking the sandbox to quads button. Is that correct ? Also I've noticed there is no outward indication it's doing anything. For example some plugins will turn the curser into the spinning beachball until the've done their thing. Short of running the analyze color to quads is their another indication it's done the job that I'm just missing. ?

Dave, I do A LOT of googling to look up the definitions of tons of the tech terminology

nice !

Thomas, sometimes late at night the tech stuff can start looking a little like "greek" to this reader .

Nap Time........

Posting this for newer sketch-upper's like me just starting to wrap your brain around SubD. A nice size sofa type pillow. In the pic the proxies are in the back row. Pillow on left is "factory fresh". Pillow on right , I manipulated with the gizmo tool in Vertex tools to give it a more natural used look.

I think these kind of objects are good learning exercises after playing around with super simple shapes at first and you end up with a nice model for your library.

Posted the .skp file. It just has the proxies to keep file size down. Creases are already set. Just make a copy and SubD it. In the pic I only ran one iteration of SubD and got a nice result.

A tip for newer users like me. If your going to deform a proxy with the gizmo, make an extra copy and stick to the side. When your learning to bend and twist with the gizmo you can wreck things sometimes. Don't ask how I know this ! It doesn't hurt to have a fresh copy off to the side. Last thing I'm not sure I"m building my corners the best but it seems to be working.

My fellow newb's, download , check em out and have a play...

Oh noooo... ThomThom pointed out some problems in my original model I posted. Shame on me , cleaned it up and reposting. Maybe now it's a nice pillow . Still think the unbent proxy would be a good sample to practice bending and squishing around on with the gizmo.

lrg pillow fixed.skp

Thomas, not knocking your docs. at all. Got into the whole computer thing pretty late in life and have jumped into they deep end with no life jacket and I'm bound to sink to the bottom once and a while. I'm just really grateful you and others keep pushing to develop super tools for SU.

Thomas, thanks for the tips. still struggling with learning the proper functions of your various tools. QuadFace tools has been the most difficult for me for some reason. A lot of going back and forth, practicing and watching your various videos and tutorials. Still struggling along with figuring out "best practices". Thought I'd turned out a reasonably decent model.... egg on my face... well gonna keep plowing forward and I'll get there eventually.

garydorn, that's the JPP toolbar in the upper right corner of Box's giff. You can see him select right before the pull.

Hey Box, having some trouble I think I need the proxy Great tut.

I'll bite on this.. a little front end story. Have been working on a large private museum project for the last 5 odd years. I've worked with the head artist doing concept design for the exhibits and exhibit spaces. First project I was put on did everything old school, pencil,paper, drawing board cut and paste etc. Do you know how hard it is to find somebody to print that stuff off for you..... they look at you like your some kind of nut. Well saw some SU layouts a coworker had done for another project. Got pretty excited and asked him "how the heck did you do that". Downloaded SU8 in the spring 2013. Didn't really get serious about learning until that fall. Bought "SU8 for Dummies" and found this site thank goodness. Lurked a while, registered in 2014. Did a heck of a lot more reading than I did posting for a long while. Like Box said I spent a lot of late nights practicing and a lot of learning on the go to meet the demands of the job. It's kind of funny I could barely send e mails before starting to learn this stuff and use to tell friends I wanted to be the last person on earth to never have turned on a computer. Now I start talking to random people about the Catmull-Clark subdivision algorithm.

with solo, really like layout and overall appearance of number 3