Your posts were very encouraging, so I decided to keep it up with the house and try and improve it.
Many places downstairs I completely started again. I "tore" out the kitchen cabinets, etc, and made new, more detailed components, and I worked on smoothing on things like the cooker. I made a TV, coffee tables, components for sofas, a dining table, components for chairs next to that I made a front door and a component for door handles. And upstairs I made beds, toilets, baths, showers and sinks, though they may need a bit of revision.
I'll post the pictures below and any feedback on those would be nice. as for my questions:
1. I'm working on lighting. At first, I tried wall units with emissive surfaces, but that got a bit ridiculous, so I looked around my house for inspiration and got hooked on spotlights. But I'm finding that a) my render times are now about 8x what they were, and b) it doesn't look very realistic. meanwhile, c) some areas that have a good number of lights in them are coming out quite dark. d)The lights themselves are not visible like you'd expect. the only thing that makes the light noticeable is the effect on nearby faces. I've fiddled about with the vray light settings you get when you right click on the light, and although it makes a difference, I am not getting the desired result. o, if anyone has any reccomended settings on that box, or can think of any box elsewhere I may have forgotten about, your help would be welcome
2. Many materials I just can't get right. I've even tried some off the internet and not been too pleased with them. does anyone have any advice on water for a pool, or stainless steel?
3. If you look in this page: http://sketchup.google.com/product/newin7.html, you see the bit about "scale without stretching". Apparently this is a feature of dynamic components, so I went to the dynamic components window, and I had no idea what to do. could anyone help me with doing this, specifically?
Now for the pictures!
Glass! Yay! so far it all just looks like card and glass. I had problems: I wanted to use refraction to make it look normal, but that wasn't working how I expected it to. so I had to make do with normal fresnel/reflection. You can see how the house works from this picture. 2 storeys, door on the right, 2 main walls divide the space.
Just testing that light was getting in properly. The toilet, at the back of the house
Toilet at the back, staircase supported by wall, wall is for privacy. upper storey at the top, with glass banisters. sliding doors in the left foreground
Kitchen, the most detailed area of the house, along with my second bit of vray material, the granite. Homemade textures, too.
Homemade table and chairs, behind that privacy wall from earlier. in the background is the kitchen, as you can see it will be hard lighting that up later.
Panorama to help you see the general plan To the right is the front of the house, that is, the garden and the big glass wall. above that is the staircase. moving along you see the privacy wall, supporting the rest of the staircase. there's a gap visible between that wall and the upper floor, this makes it seem more open. table and chairs, bathroom. ketchen is over there in the corner, and next to that is where one would enter the house. then, since it's 360degrees, the thing loops
TV that looks like it's made of card
and... context. To the right is the half-wall that seperates things from the kitchen, in the foreground is the table and chairs, and to the left is the beginning of the toilet. I also made coffee tables and sofas. I had to make 2 different coffee table components because I don't know how to scale without stretch
Homemade toilet furnitures. I've made them a bit better since. and, as you can see, I'm going to have trouble lighting this, too.
Homemade bed. As above.
First attempt at lighting. clearly emmissive faces are a bad idea.
Yep, definately no to those lighting units.
Panoramas are cool. I started getting new spotlights in place, but they aren't on.
Sink. made new ceramic and metal materials, worked on smoothing throughout.
Homemade doorknobs - used throughout the model, in various sizes
More materials, more realistic generic TV
Lights are on for the first time, and this is where I need help. It just looks unrealistic, specifically, the shadows are too sharp, the cone is barely visible on nearby walls, and there is no glow from the actual units. Kitchen is still dark despite lots of lights within. It just looks like nothing I'd expect from real life. Little help?
