I do pretty well with renderings in V11. There are a few tricks I’ve found helpful:
Delete the back wall; By this I mean, the wall behind the camera perspective. If the room is fully boxed in with walls and you have ceilings turned on, no ambient ‘scene’ light can reach the stuff you want in the image.
Use the ceiling light option- I usually place it out of the camera frame, but in a place where it will throw good light and the shadows lay in a pleasing way.
Change the background color- This is an odd one, but especially when rendering very light colored cabinetry, I’ve found that selecting a background color that’s a light gray or beige, rather than white, throws the cabinetry into slightly sharper contrast.
Ambient lighting- This setting is your friend, use it a lot! You generally don’t have to bump it up much, but the default setting is very low, so tends to leave stuff in shadow.
Visible Sun- Especially if you have windows in the design, visible sunlight can add a lot of light and some pretty dramatic shadows into a design. It’s not always the answer, but it can be lovely.
Exposure- After you’ve created a high quality image, you can adjust the exposure by selecting the lighting tool. This is basically a filter, and has a slider you can move back and forth, or you can enter numbers manually. A little exposure goes a LONG way in 2020. The difference between 1 and 1.2 is rather a lot. I’ve often found that if I put more light than I actually want into an image, then dial back the exposure a little, I get nicer results.
User Light- User lighting is complicated and takes a little getting used to, but it’s worth it. Use the light fixtures from the 2020 local catalog, since the cloud options don’t have functional light effects yet. After you place a fixture, you can select ‘light properties’ and change the angle, intensity, and color of the fixture. This is a great way to add realistic lighting and shadow to your design. Don’t rely on the default light color- select something a little more yellow or orange to get closer to the soft-white that most people tend to prefer, unless you’re doing a super modern design, in which case the brighter white is fine. Also, I’ve found most fixtures look better if I open up the angle a LOT to flood the area with light.
The Lighting Wizard- One common element of really great renderings is that they usually include cabinet lighting; Under-lighting, interior lighting, etc. You can download the Sensio catalog from the 2020 web site, and even if your shop doesn’t sell Sensio (They’re a fine product, but there are many choices) using it just for the visual effects helps a lot.
Render Settings:
When doing a high quality render, don’t bother with high or even mid quality until you’ve done it on low and you’re sure it looks the way you want. This is mostly just a time saver, but rendering on low is way faster and you’ll quickly get a feel for recognizing if the lighting or colors are off, without having to wait forever for a high quality texture rendering.
Hope some of these tips help!
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