UK Residential Scheme

The problem with Vray sun is the lack of clouds and contrast in the sky. The reason your chrome kettle renders so well is because of all the shit around it. You need to simulate all that with trees, real sky, other buildings.. A simple image like this post should be all 3d. All my renderings posted here are entirely 3D.

Cheers Matt. This is actually a set of two photomontages (Not a lot in the way of photo here I know) On an overcast day, but the client has asked to 'make the sun shine'. Before I move onto using HDRI, I want to be able to control the vray sun and sky really well. Can't find many good tuts on that though.

Try Peter Guthries blog. I use Ronan Berkermans website for tutorials. http://www.peterguthrie.net/blog/2012/02/hdri-lighting-workflow Make sure you get yourself a very high quality HDRI map, play with the gamma to get sharper shadows. Dont have any other lights in your scene. Use Vray Physical Camera at the default settings. Up the Vray Light multipler till you get favourable results.

Thanks Matthew. I do struggle with exterior lighting - a lot. I've done a lot of research and studying but still haven't nailed a technique I can easily transfer to all of my exterior scenes.

Awful no, just not as good as your interiors. The perspective is off for some reason and the building doesn't feel part of the scene, like as if all the parts had been assembled in photoshop. Trying setting up the camera as if you're a real person on the street, and make sure you use a good HDR map for your environment, (try Vray dome light) If you dont have a realistic environment for your subject to fit into, everything will look flat. Then work on your sidewalk and road textures. The brick and roof materials are very good.

No, why is it awful? :)

Is this your first exterior rendering?