Continuing from last week I started adding some different types of lighting, like sconces and Art lighting.  This did help with the severe darkness I am dealing with in my model.  I also played with the materials quite a bit more:  Adjusting the bump on the chair and sofa textures, adding a transparent or trancluscent finish to the chandeliers, etc. 

Here I continued adjusting the details on the materials as well as changing the intensity of the art and sconce lighting.    I also adjusted the settings of my render here and there as the lighting and materials started to show in the render.  One thing I noticed that started happening a lot was the trim had a lot of noise on it.  It so happened that as I strengthened the quality of my settings, the noise would just go away.  

 

Here you can see I am starting to get closer to my desired lighting level.  The finish on the table and furniture are starting to come together to my satisfaction.  I am still having some problems with noise, especially with my Chandelier, but the Render is getting closer to my final product.  

This is also a bigger image.  I tried out the 1080 sized image that our final is required to be, to see if there are any details that were not in the smaller pictures I may have missed.  I do see some negative space on the right and left sides of the images that can be filled with side tables; the coffee table could also use some knick knacks to add detail to the image.  

Quality: 60%

Exposure: +6

This image was the REAL learning experience this week for me.  This image is Size: 1080, Quality: 100%.  I was expecting the render to take anywhere from 5-15 hours according to our first meeting in this course.  24 HOURS!!!!!!   This was a splash of cold water in my face.  I will have to plan to render my images accordingly, or buy rendering credits for the Shaderlight Cloud ( 5 Credits= $40).   Granted my computer is a few years old, I may not have a good enough grapihcs card for renderings to be fast like this.  I am super jealous of some of you saying it only took an hour or less.  

 

On the bright side, the image looks pretty great to me, so I am excited to be getting the hang of this Shaderlight program.