Illustration effect - not wanted

[Lars]

Hello all!

I have been fine-tuning for a while and I'm pretty happy with this render but I can't seem to get it over a certain threshold for it to look completely realistic.
When you look up close it looks a bit when you have a grainy photo that you treat with a heavy smart blur filter in Photoshop. Any ideas on how to improve this? It looks ok as an illustration, but not as a photo.
It's lit with only two IES spot outside the window.

The speakers had to be pixelated as they haven't been launched yet 

Cheers!

[RRIS]

Hey, I think the effect you mean is down to some refinement in lighting and materials.
How does the light look when you do a clay render? Is the distribution of light good? Maybe you need to add a few more light sources to make the scene come alive.

Also, scale is everything.
At the moment your texture scales are a bit mixed up. The credenza looks ok, but the bump map seems too strong and the wood could be a bit less 'lacquered'.
Your floor texture needs to be scaled down, and the bump strength as well. Then I would add some detail on the rug (some color variation, bumpmapping, etc) now it looks a bit too much like thick velvet.
The wallpaper has some repeating texture on it, I would just stick to a noise bump map and keep the resolution quite fine.
The velvet sheen on your sofa is a bit strong, I would dial that down. It could also do with some indirect light coming in to define the shape a bit better. It's all shadows from the side and that makes it blend in too much with the wallpaper.
The curtain is a bit too blown out, causing shadow artifacts, so maybe try to dial down the sunlight and rely on some more lightsources.
Then finally the background image is burned out, so I would isolate that and photoshop that in later with more natural colors.

Final note, I think you could use a bit more anti-aliasing to soften up the edges a little. It's most noticeable in high contrast areas such as your wall decoration and window frame.

Pretty easy fixes

[theAVator]

I do agree with most of the sentiments RRIS had. I'm not 100% on the floor scaling, but there do seem to be some scaling "issues" throughout.
- To me it seems like the lighting is very harsh when inspected up close: i.e. the laquered look on the credenza may resolve itself with a change in lighting as it looks like the high areas get blown out, same with the metal table next to the sofa (look at the stand near the floor for the hot spots).
- The sofa looks to be floating, the light as well.
- The edge of the book has some odd texture (the texture is straight horizontal, but the pages are curved)
- The lamp material seems kinda flat as well, especially in contrast to the table next to it which is highly reflective polished metal.

[Lars]

Hey, this is amazing feedback!
It's my first interior so this is perfect help.
Thank you both very much!

[Zeltronic]

The light is good, in the perspective of continuous improvement I think that a curtain rod will surely add a little realism also, the curtains must slide on something to be closed 

[Lars]

Final note, I think you could use a bit more anti-aliasing to soften up the edges a little. It's most noticeable in high contrast areas such as your wall decoration and window frame.

Do you have any idea on how to render a good interior with anti-aliasing?
As far as I can see one can't use interior mode when Custom Controlling the render.

Thanks!

[RRIS]

Final note, I think you could use a bit more anti-aliasing to soften up the edges a little. It's most noticeable in high contrast areas such as your wall decoration and window frame.

Do you have any idea on how to render a good interior with anti-aliasing?
As far as I can see one can't use interior mode when Custom Controlling the render.

Thanks!

Oof, yeah good point. Sorry it's been a while since I did an interior scene in Keyshot. My standard solution is to render at ~150% and then downscale the render in photoshop (I'm still in Keyshot 7, so I can't use denoise or anything fancy like that )
If you have a fast GPU, you could try product mode..

[Lars]

render at ~150% and then downscale the render in photoshop

Great idea!

Thanks