Increasing interior ambient light...

[pijensen1875]

Hello... Is there any way to increase the ambient light in a daylit interior rendering?? I've maxed the sky brightness setting to 400 and loaded up the scene with studio lights ... but white wall & ceiling textures are still gray. Running radiosity doesn't seem to help either.... Thanks.

[beegee]

Try decreasing Indirect, which will add contrast and make the walls look whiter.
Also, play around with Brightness, Contrast and High Dynamic Range.
It can take a lot of tweaking to get what you want.

To control the brightness, contrast, and indirect lighting of the rendered image, choose View, AccuRender, Adjust Image or click Adjust Image from the Rendering tab of the Design Bar. In the Adjust Image dialog box, move the sliders back and forth to change the settings.

If you select the High Dynamic Range option in the Adjust Image dialog box, AccuRender tends to produce images with more contrast and better color saturation. This setting is effective with scenes that exhibit a wide range of luminance values. An example of this is an interior scene with a window to the outside.

The Standard option determines an average luminance for your scene and works much like an automatic exposure camera. It tends to produce images with less contrast and more muted colors.

The results are subjective, so you may want to try both options to see which rendering you prefer. The image changes so you can see the results immediately.

Brightness adjusts the overall brightness. For example, if a white surface in your model is rendering gray, you can increase the brightness until the surface appears white. Or, if your exterior scene seems overexposed, you can decrease the brightness until the scene appears more correct. The default setting is 0.0—negative numbers produce darker images. The brightness setting can range from 2.0 to -2.0, although for most renderings, small changes produce noticeable effects.

Contrast changes the contrast in your image with respect to neutral gray. The default is 0.5, or neutral. Higher values produce more contrast. This value ranges from 0.0 to 1.0.

Indirect adds constant light to your model to compensate for lighting that has not been calculated. Decreasing the amount of ambient light generally causes an increase in image contrast.

Note: Adjust Image affects the model only after raytracing has started.

[Roger Evans]

A Truly Amazing answer & really explicit

One for my print file

Thanks Beegee

You could also experiment with the reflectance within the materials editor
Try White Linen Painted on walls & increase / decrease
Save your favourites

Make a note (like I Don't) of some of the better settings for future reference.

Roger

[bclarch]

Hello... Is there any way to increase the ambient light in a daylit interior rendering?? I've maxed the sky brightness setting to 400 and loaded up the scene with studio lights ... but white wall & ceiling textures are still gray. Running radiosity doesn't seem to help either.... Thanks.

Have you selected your windows as daylight sources?

[pijensen1875]

Thanks for your help guys... regarding the Adjust Image tool... does it use information from the model when making adjustments.. or is it simply adjusting the rendered image ... similar to levels adjustment in photoshop?

Another issue... I'm also having problems with daylight removing the effect of light fixtures. I've placed uplights in a barrel vault ceiling and the ceiling is quite bright at night... but when the sun is turned on, the ceiling becomes darker (all the light fixtures remain on).

See attached image. The walls are painted linen, the ceiling pure white & all glazing is set as daylights.

Any advice?

[Allen Lacy]

Have you tried changing the time of day? Either early or late during daylight hours might cut back on intesity of daylight.

[Roger Evans]

Impressed by the image ~ What more do you need?

You could try increasing the no of passes ~ a lot slower rendering time

I reckon nice as is ~ conveys intent especially for sketch version

Roger

[pijensen1875]

Here's a quick composite image of the daylit interior with the night ceiling.... maybe photoshop is the answer......

[Roger Evans]

I'm attaching an image with ceiling set to higher than norm reflectance
don't know how well it will be seen here but I reckon its got a lot more life in it. With more tones.

Not totally 100% accurate I know but sometimes I find this quick tweak useful.

Roger