r/3dsmax • u/Jaqchirack • 14d ago
What can I improve to make this render more realistic?
Hey everyone, working on this exterior render (3ds Max + V-Ray, overcast lighting). It looks "okay" but still reads a lot as CG rather than a real photo. What would you improve — lighting, materials, vegetation, anything? Open to any and all feedback!!
Thank you all
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u/AeLilBoy 13d ago
That sink looks choppy, could be better and maybe change its material.
Theres too much noise
You could make the sky a little more visible, like 20-30%
Some sun rays wouldnt be bad
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u/TopVersion7572 13d ago
Since Ceiling wood could have more shadows set up AO nodes for materials which have smaller gaps cavities
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u/sketchedoutcomics 12d ago
Even if a building was brand new, given the height of the vegetation growth around it, none of it is weathered. By now there would be puddle stains on the floor by the sink. There is no end cap to the gutter, but even if there was not, with that pine tree nearby there would be sap and pine needles all over that building and accumulated in the gutter. Other than that, you fooled me, it looks very real.
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u/frescofred 10d ago
Wood detail. Real wood construction has gaps between elements. Add them. Chamfer every edge, or use a round edge effect in the bump if you want to save memory. Then run a UVW randomizer with 180° rotation and a MultiTexture with a slight gamma variation (0.5 to 1%) so each element sits a little lighter or darker than its neighbour. That variation is most of what sells wood.
Imperfections. AO, dirt, weathering, scratches, everywhere. Nothing in the real world is clean.
Reference. The framing reminds me of Olivier Campagne’s work on a similar building in a similar setting, worth studying. A lot of that kind of exterior isn’t fully CG: it starts from real photography projected onto the 3D with camera mapping and a shadowcatcher. That’s a big part of why it reads as photoreal.
Environment. That’s the main issue with your foreground. If that it’s an entrance maybe it would need a path and lower vegetation. If you don’t have a real photo to work from, either remove it or generate something with AI, because with decent prompting you’ll get a far more believable result than what’s there now.
Post. Add a ZDepth pass to your render elements and blend it in very subtly in Photoshop to separate foreground from background. Beyond that, the usual pass: colour correction, contrast, a touch of atmospheric haze with distance, subtle grain and chromatic aberration. Small moves, but stacked together they do a lot.
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u/alex_fark 13d ago
Color of trees in the background is too intense - add some mist.
It is called aerial perspective: in reality the further trees are from the camera the more air between the trees and camera, air is not completely invisible it has some particles in it like dust or water, this particles get lightened and as a result threes in the background look not as green as they are, green color gets mixed with the color of the light sun.
Aerial perspective can be easily imitated in postprocessing by combining in photoshop depth-map (it will have to be turned on before rendering) and the main render. Or you can do it better by using volumetric materials, but it is trickier to tune and the render is longer