Need help from my fellow 3D Artists : )

[Anonymous]

I have this image that I'm currently working on, First time using max so im not too familiar with mental ray. In my scene I have an hdr set up for the lighting information, along with 2 mr sky portals and a skylight for the hdr. I have the gamma set to 2.2, along with mr Photographic Exposure Control (Indoor Nighttime) with exposure value of 15.0 skylight multiplier set at 1.0. Image precision set to 1, glossy reflections 1, glossy refractions 1, soft shadows 2, final gather precision low, max reflections and max refractions 4, FG bounces 3. My major concern is that the image seems dull, a bit washed out, and grainy despite the hdr set up. Am I using the wrong type of lights for this set up, or am I missing something in the render settings? Also Im rendering out as tiffs bc the employer wants me to put the render in some kind of background, I know in maya we would render out tiffs for transparency bc they worked great with mental ray. Any help will be greatly appreciated, there are photos included to give everyone an idea of whats going on. Thank you 

[Anonymous]

You can make changes to the curve in the mr photographic exposure control to give images a bit more punch.

I personally don't use mr photographic exposure control very often, certainly not for animation. I prefer to apply image contrast at the end of my compositing, in my compositing software (After Effects). I make sure my lighting exposure is fine in my renders, even if things look a bit flat, and a small curve adjustment after compositing my layers in After Effects makes the image/footage come alive. It sounds like you are going to be compositing a background in, so maybe wait until your scene is all put together first, then apply contrast and adjust saturation etc later, in your compositing software.

[Anonymous]

Thank a ton for the help, thats usually what I do in maya however my renders come out much better because I have a lot more experience with Maya. I used the photographic exposure control because in the autodesk help it said it was generally used for hdr's, plus the hdr tutorial that I follow showed that as well. I think the best option would be render passes, do you know of any good tutorials for 3ds render passes by any chance?

[Anonymous]

I never use any exposure control. Coming from a photography background I just light things to fit within the available dynamic range. I then tweak things in the post after rendering to EXR, just like I might in the darkroom. We composite in Fusion.

There are a lot of passes tutorials out there... Check youtube. It depends a lot on which renderer you use as well. VRay, which is what I use, is different from Mental Ray, or the scan line.

[Anonymous]

I took your guys advice, was able to tweak it in after effects and took off the exposure. Not the greatest render, but a heck of a lot better than what it was originially. This is the latest render of the cup dispenser. Thnx a ton fellas. 

[Anonymous]

The grain could be from you sky portals, you may want to up the Shadow Samples.

Another cause of grain is glossy reflections, you can fix this, for HDRI reflections at least with Env Blur, it is both smoother and faster.

[Anonymous]

Nice, thanks a ton for the help. I can't wait to try that on our next renders. I tweak a few settings got it a little better than before, but im sure the env blur is gonna help out a bunch. cheers