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INSIDE / TUTORIALS : |
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Lighting -
The quickest way to achieve truly photo-realistic results is to use HDRI lighting technology, which is great, because it also provides background reflections for the reflective elements in the scene (and there are lots of those in a bathroom). I used a tweaked version of the good ol' kitchen HDRI map (easily found on the internet) for the basic lighting, and added additional lighting where I thought it was needed, mostly in the form of a couple of wall sconce lights on either side of the mirror. These sconces aren't visible in the final image. In FACT, there's a vanilla colored towel shelf just to the right of the sink that isn't visible either, but the beauty of global illumination is that even though it isn't visible, it still makes its mark through shadows and bounce-light. It's very presence adds to the realism of the image. In any case, I played with a lot of different settings with the HDRI and different wall material colors before I was satisfied with the look. One negative thing about using global illumination is that hiding objects during test-renderings (which you WANT to do because GI takes a long time to render) can change the look of the final rendering when everything is un-hidden. Also, simply changing the material color of the backwall makes a huge difference as well, because (again, when using GI) its color bleeds into everything else in the scene. IMHO, using global-illumination is an artform in itself.
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The Reflection and the Final Rendering -
Obviously, because the mirror played a prominent role in the image (and because I didn't want it to reflect the kitchen HDRI map) I realized I would have to make something for the mirror to reflect. By duplicating the wall, wainscotting, shelf, and towel (scaling and tweaking the towels for irregularity), and adding a new shelf, a bottle of some sort, and a couple of pictures of my grandparents I had laying around, I had my reflective elements. My first few test renderings actually had a "true-reflection" of the back wall in the mirror, but the rendering times were dreadful because of the huge reflective surface area of the mirror, and I figured I could probably fake it by rendering the backwall separately, and compositing it in Photoshop afterwards. That meant much lower rendering times, and it gave me more control over the position of the reflected elements in the mirror. The tricky part was creating a realistic depth-of-field effect for the reflected elements, distorting the reflective section in the beveled area around the perimeter of the mirror, and making a mask for the reflected ceramic cup thingy (which IS actually reflected in the mirror). Still, it was far better than the alternative and I think looks just as good as if I had rendered the mirror as a true "mirror".
For you VRay users, here are my render settings for the final image, which took just over 4 hours to render at 1200X1600 (and about 20 minutes for compositing the reflection in the mirror by hand in Photoshop).
Thanks again to The123d.com for requesting this tutorial. Hope it sheds some light on my process. :)
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Related links ...
The online portfolio of ::: Joshua Staub :::
email :
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INSIDE THE MODEL DATABANK
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