Trying to emulate an old picture of my portfolio.

[zooropa]

Dear forum.
I am trying to emulate an old picture that a friend took in his photo studio few years ago. I would like to resurrect this project for my personal web-page. I would like to recreate the images 'uploaded' here, but add a bonsai on the stand.

For this matter I am trying first to emulate the illumination. I think after that I will start to tweak the materials in order to get more realism.
I believe it will be easier if I treat this project as different chapters. I would like to ask you first from where do you think I should start.
It is easy to get lost (material or  light/hdri). I can share the scene, but I would like to do it privately. I am not sure to leave the link open for anyone if not ends with certain kind of assistance. Hope you understand this is a personal project and I am not sure If its clever to leave the file floating around in the forum.

Regarding the images posted. The left-one is the image that my friend took and the right-one is the scene I am doing.
It is hard to tweak the diffuse of the wood in order to match with the picture, but also know where to start. The reflection I could match is the bright spot on the coral paint. The shadows (casted on the infinite plane)  are also quite similar, but I believe I am missing something from the real picture in term of lights. Unfortunately I do not remember how we set the studio. I am sure wasn't only one light. At this moment my scene has a pin that works as the 'bright spot' reflection and only an environment (plain grey) which I am using to fill the ambient light.

Regarding the self-shadows, It looks that in the left picture the shadows have a stronger contrast and edges than in my render. Maybe I should tweak the falloff of my pin (at this moment is set on 'exponential').



Any recommendation to help me do this more credible will help.



Thanks a lot

[mattjgerard]

You are 90% there already, but as they say that last 10% will be the hardest and take the longest!

One thing I've observed, and this illustrates it perfectly, is that the real world is a lot less saturated than we would like to think. Looking at the real world, colors are not as intense as the ones we create in our virtual world. And the 2 images you have show just that. The coral paint is more saturated in your image than in the photo. Start with that maybe. I've found the eyedropper to invaluable tool when trying to get the right tones from reference images. The highlights look good, but I think you have the right idea when it comes to the falloff. The issue is that the falloff needs some noise to it, as the surface needs to be imperfect. That might have to come from a noise or slight bump in the coral paint material. That bump or noise would very much help out with my second comment which is the facing edge of the coral paint (the long edge facing us) is too perfect. The gradient is just too smooth and even. I think when its desaturated, wheather you do that with the material color, or by pumping a bit more light onto that front edge, it will allow for a slight imperfections to show on that front edge, and enable a better more real look to it.

Same with the wood look, its much more saturated and contrasty than the photo, and that can be easily dealt with too.

But I will say, that I can't see how to improve the shadows on the floor, they are nearly perfect. is are the shadows casting on the underside of the chair. Spot on.

Nice work already, very neat little project.

[INNEO_MWo]

Your spot is not in the right position. It should be near to the centre. Just look to the shadows. And play with the height position of the environment.

[zooropa]

Thanks a lot @mattjgerard look of good advice to tweak. I will keep posting. I also find this an usual approach to my workflow and quite interesting. I never tried to emulate something I built in real life. In this case is needed since I need to add a plant to my furniture and the object I left back in Buenos Aires. As I said I will keep refreshing the project.

Thanks @MWo I saw the shadows weren't perfect. I could not match the shadow right position with the reflection on the coral paint. If I match the shadows...the light spread differently on the paint. In any case I think I am ok with this light since I am not going to use exactly that camera. I just want to approach the lighting accurately in order to put it in my web-portfolio and mix renders with pictures without making it visible. Thanks for the observation!

[mattjgerard]

I do recall a way to use lights to cast the shadows, but not appear in the reflection, there is a tickbox in the lighting panel for that, but I'm not sure if there is the opposite, whereas you can see the light in the reflection but not have it cast shadows. I know this can be done in other 3D apps, but that would be ideal, as then you could control the highlights and the shadows separately.

[zooropa]

Thanks both. Since I decided to use the 'same' light as the original picture, but I am using a different camera things got easier.
I realize that It did not make that much sense to show the project by 'pairing' two images (real and render)  which I am not going to use.
The real picture will be in my web-portfolio, but what I am trying to do with my renders is to add a different camera. As soon as I changed the position of the camera, everything changed again in terms of settings. Fortunately when I change my camera the image looked much more similar to my real picture 'light'. Still some things to tweak. I am going to make a new post in the 'project' area of the forum in order to receive feedback for the overall render. I attached the image now. I added the bonsai (the main reason why I am doing this in KS/3D). I will keep this in a new topic for feedback.