Bleaching of images due to white cabinets

Hi guys, I always have this issue when rendering white cabinets that they always appear really washed and bleached out. I've played and played around with settings including diffuse, lit appearance on the windows, covering up windows completely etc to try and resolve this bleaching as seen below, but to no avail. Does anyone have any hints/tips to help? 

Thanks!

Can you PM me the file Jayne so I can have a look?

Sure thing - its reallyyyyy messy (lots of cubic boxes for frames, legs etc. lots of sketchup models....you have been warned!)

Jaynehiddleston wrote:Sure thing - its reallyyyyy messy (lots of cubic boxes for frames, legs etc. lots of sketchup models....you have been warned!)

Haha... a health warning...

I won't get the *.skp files anyway but should be able to look at the mats and lighting...

Jaynehiddleston wrote:Sure thing - its reallyyyyy messy (lots of cubic boxes for frames, legs etc. lots of sketchup models....you have been warned!)

Okay... What I found and done:

1. There where point source lights which I think you must of either moved from inside the kitchen to the outside or these got accidentally moved as it is easy you do when we highlight a group of them. I deleted these and left one in the adjacent room but altered the brightness, falloff and colour (warm white).

2. I changed many materials as they where not as good as they could be. Pure White materials try to avoid 255RGB... I lower to Red 245, Green 244, Blue 243 values as no material is completely white and these can really create problems when you think about it... if the material is white RGB255 then how can it have any brighter highlights and reflections...as it is already at the maximum. I also lift completely Black materials....RGB0 and then sometimes the diffuse is 0.9 so trying to get blacker... no such material.... apart from a black hole but even that would be RGB0.... Higher Black Materials to around RGB10.

3. Lighting. You have a lot of lights in there with the ceiling spot lights, under cupboard strip lights, 2 x large lit appearance on the window views plus the sky light. The windows where to bright which is not helping with the problem so I scaled them back.

4. So to correct the lighting I turn off tone mapping and the sky lighting system in the GI render settings. I used the lighting calculator. With this I changed the Diffuse Reference Brightness to 0.5 to just get the light around the windows to burn a bit and then adjusted all the others until I could see more balance from the interior lighting so light is not just all at one end taking over the rendering.

5. I did adjust the window view colours slightly to lower the green content. Using the ColourPic tool to inspect white material for white balance... lowered the green also in the warm white ceiling spot lights. The Sky scale is 0.1.

6. Due to not having all the materials you have used there are still RGB255 materials as the default when a texture is not available it used a pure white colour. But I hope when you render it on your machine the render will come out much better. I have not got any of the Skp files in the drawing so I cannot inspect the materials in those so check them out if you still are having problems, Especially if any of them have lit Appearance.

7. I have not moved or altered any of the units so not sure what is going off with the oven housing... hopefully when you open it on your machine it's okay.

Blown away as always Daz! Thanks for the feedback and taking a look at it, hopefully it will help others with the same issues, will post my results shortly!

Jaynehiddleston wrote:Blown away as always Daz! Thanks for the feedback and taking a look at it, hopefully it will help others with the same issues, will post my results shortly!

Great!

ArtiCAD V20 - Render settings for Lit Appearance checking unticking these options enables you to "see" the actual brightness... no point in the lighting being a whitewash and it can be once tone mapping is turned on as it scales all the lighting back... ;-)

Daz - where do you get this advanced options tab from please?

Jaynehiddleston wrote:Daz - where do you get this advanced options tab from please?

Hi Jayne...
For ease of use I have updated the RedSDK Preset xml file here - Dropbox ArtiCAD V20 Render Presets

I have put edited 2 of them one with GI OFF and Tone Mapping off and the Other GI ON and Tone Mapping Off. Both have Skylight off so you can look at all lighting for balance etc.

Just download and copy to your main ArtiCAD folder (default is c:\Articad) and this will replace the existing preset files... If you have ArtiCAD running just reload a room system to get the these options as shown below: