TheKitchenAbode

You could try using the Distributed Objects. If you change the object/symbol in the user library the edit mode automatically changes to the Replace Object, just hover on the distributed polyline and click, all objects will be replaced. If you want this convenience but your objects are not evenly distributed then you can draw one very short distributed polyline, set distribution to "1" and attach your user library column to it. Copy/Paste and move this object as many times as you wish to get your desired positioning. You can now go into the your user library column, change it's sizing, the auto replace will activate. You just have to move over each object and click to replace it. The auto replace remains valid until you change to another mode. Ten columns to replace only requires one column change and 10 clicks. If you anticipate having three different column sizes then save three columns to your user library. Change each accordingly and apply with one click.

If you create and Architectural Block with several items you can click on the block close to the item you wish to edit, hit the Tab Key. The item within will show it's bounding box and then you can open the objects DBX and adjust it. Works in all view types. Will only do one Tab level deep so make sure to be as close to the item you need before clicking the block.

Not sure it's too big of a deal. I checked your original file size and then the one where I replaced the 2D trees with 3D ones, the file sizes where almost identical. If you like to introduce a color cast into your scene there are some other ways to do this without being dependent upon the backdrop. 1.) You can assign a color to the sun. 2.) You can assign a color to some or all of your lights. 3.) This is the technique I use the most. Place a 3D spot light outside, say about 80 or 100 feet from your structure. Set it's height to about 40 feet off the ground. Set the tilt to say -30 degrees and aim it towards the structure. Make sure shadows are turned "Off". Now assign the color you wish to cast. With the PBR scene displayed open up the adjust lights DBX and start adjusting the intensity of this light, it will vary according to how intense your sun setting is. You now have complete and independent control over the cast. By changing the lights tilt and direction you can control what surfaces receive the most cast. PBR without exterior color cast 3D spot light PBR with exterior color cast 3D spot light. (I cranked it up so the effect would be more obvious)

Hi Mick - If you go back to the original file, open up a camera view towards the island pendants. Slowly move the camera so the pendant lamp shade crosses the patio door. If you watch carefully you will notice that the portion of the lamp shade that disappears corresponds to the 2D plants outside. Need to watch closely as there are so many trees out there that it can look as if it disappearing according to the patio doors glass. Turn off the lamp shades transparency and the lamp shade stays intact. Delete the trees and the lamp shade stays intact even when it has a transparency. I replaced the 2D trees with 3D ones from the bonus library and the lamp shade, even with a transparency, remained intact. If you also watch closely you will notice trees will completely disappear at times depending upon the camera angle. I have seen this behavior before, no idea why, it's as if they get clipped from the scene.

All those trees around the property.

Cheryl - The disappearing lamp shades has something to do with a conflict when the lamp shade has any level of transparency in conjunction with those 2D plants. Just set the lamp shade transparency to "0". Suggest your replace those plants/trees with the 3D versions in the bonus library.

PBR Higher Levels of Reflection & Gloss Here is a technique to obtain higher reflectivity and gloss. PBR of counter top using a general material with roughness=0. Ok but not great. After the technique. Much better. I changed the counter top material property to "Predefined Metal", "Aluminum", "Brushed", U Roughness = 10%, V Roughness = 15%. Vary the V & U roughness settings to get the degree of reflection/gloss you desire. When you do this you will need to use the "Texture", "Material Color", "Blend with Texture" and lighten it's color. When you change to a metal it will automatically darken the material. Note, this will not work on bright white solid materials such as the cabinet finish. Also, keep in mind that there needs to be other things around and proper lighting, if there is nothing to reflect then there will be no reflections.

PBR Light Shadow Depth Control Here is the technique I use to control the shadow depth on light fixtures. PBR with 3 pendant lights, light source has shadows turned on. "Really Bad" After the technique described below has been applied. "Much Better" The Technique 1.) Open light fixture DBX. 2.) Select "Light Data". 3.) Note the light Intensity, in my case it's 12 Lumens. 4.) Under "Light Sources" select "Add Light" 5.) For the added light, Under options, "uncheck" "Cast Shadows". 6.) Set the added lights intensity to say 75% of the first lights intensity, in my case that would be 12Lumens X .75 = 9 Lumens. 7.) Go back to Light #1 and change it's intensity to the difference between the added light and the original intensity, 12 - 9 = 3 Lumens. 8.) Close the fixture and note the reduction in shadow depth. By varying the ratio between the light intensity of the one with shadows turned "on" and the one with the shadows turned "off" you can make the shadow depth as strong or light as you wish. If you wish to change how big the shadow is then go back to the light fixture DBX, Select the light that has shadows turned on and then under "Offset" move it's position "From Base" up or down a few inches, the shadow size will change. You can check the "Show Position in Camera View" to see the actual light source position, just remember to uncheck it before closing the DBX.

I don't use normal maps as of yet, still trying to fully understand them. The scene I just posted uses bump maps on the stool fabric, stool wood legs, backsplash tiles and hardwood flooring. For the bump map I just copy the texture source file from above and paste it into the bump map box and adjust the scale, seems to work just fine. Bump maps are sensitive to the camera angle and the angle at which light strikes the object, as such if your lighting does not vary much then the bump effect will not be noticeable. So far from what I have read is that bump maps are best for finer details like fabrics while normal maps are designed for soft flowing variations such as waves in a blanket. Other than that I'm going to leave this to Rene, far more experienced and knowledgeable than I.

Here are two camera views after I made some adjustments to the lighting and materials. Will try to explain what I did in a follow-up post.

I had this problem a while ago. I believe the issue is that the blocks position defines where the blocks boundary cad box displays, the actual elements within the block will display according to their individual locations as defined within the block. You need to access the individual items within the block to make sure their location references are correct.

Alvar - Had a bit of spare time yesterday and played around with your exterior scene. X10 PBR Added some additional exterior elements to make things look more complete. Everything is standard CA, no so called workarounds or custom bump maps. As Rene mentioned in one of his prior posts, the end result is highly dependent upon the time spent on fine tuning the lighting, material properties and the quality of the 3D elements in the scene. Initially, this process is going to be time consuming and often frustrating, however as time goes on it gets much easier and faster.

Looks like a positive step forward. I would work on those 3 pendant lights. By any chance, did you change the height of those from their standard height. If so, you need to go into the fixture DBX and adjust the location of the light source, unfortunately in CA it does not reposition the light source in a fixture if you change it's sizing. Also, if you are using any 3D area lights I would have them turned off while adjusting my main lights, I only use them after to fine tune/control the overall interior ambient. Once the lighting is correct you will then need to start making some material property adjustments. I usually use "Stainless Steel Polished" on my appliances, counter tops = Roughness 0, Bcaksplash tiles = Roughness 0, Hardwood = Polished. For white painted cabinets I set the material to General and the roughness maybe around 5 - 10. Most materials look best with a bit or reflectivity.

Just a bit more commentary to explain what I'm doing. With a real camera, if you go outside to take a pic the light level is determined by the suns intensity, this you can't change. If it's too bright out you must adjust for this through your camera by stopping down the lens, increasing the shutter speed and lowering the ISO. If it's not bright enough outside you would do the opposite. In real life you can't just click on the sun and adjust it's intensity. With PBR you have the ability to adjust the light instead of the camera. My approach is to turn off all automatic camera functions and open the lens to max and then adjust the sun and lights to control the amount of light the camera receives. Another advantage of this is that the number of variables involved have been reduced, the scenes look is essentially determined by my light settings. Once the light/lighting is correct then it's a fairly simple process to tweak a few of the material properties to finish it off.

I certainly think this approach is worth a try. When I first started PBR'ing using the default settings, specifically the PBR Camera Exposure, I noticed that when adjusting light intensities the lights did not respond in the manner I expected. For example, if I had some undercabinet lights set to my liking and then added some recessed lights the brightness of the undercabinet lights would change, their brightness would reduce. If I increased the intensity of the undercabinet lights to compensate then the recessed lights intensity would reduce. It was like a constant cat and mouse chase, seemed to me that the Camera Exposure worked in some manner by establishing the maximum brightness of the scene and as such when you changed a particular lights brightness it would adjust everything else in the scene to maintain the exposure setting. When the Exposure is set to max (1) this adjustment does not happen, when I add lights or adjust a light then the added or adjusted light does not effect the existing lights. You may have noticed in my settings that my Lux and Lumen levels are very low, this is because the camera exposure is set to max and as such if you crank up the Lux or Lumen levels you will easily create an overly exposed scene. As mentioned, I don't care whether or not a Lumen setting for a light is technically correct, so I'm not concerned that my recessed light is set at 10 Lumens when a real bulb would be 500 Lumens.

Thanks Larry, From my playing around with PBR'ing I think most of the problems being encountered relate to having the sun intensity set way too high. As sun intensity increases the brightness of the scene and backdrop increases as does the casting of the backdrop colors into the scene. What also happens is that any added lights must also have their intensities increased so they will show up in such a bright environment. Even though the PBR DBX has controls for exposure and brightness I believe these are best used for fine tuning versus attempting to correct for significant lighting imbalances. The technique I use is fairly straight forward. I shoot a PBR and turn off all lights, I then set the PBR Exposure to max (1) and the Brightness to max (100%). I then set the sun direction and intensity to get the best look without overexposing the scene. I then start turning on my lights starting with the most important ones first such as my recessed cans. I adjust the intensity, drop rate and angle to my liking. I then move on to the next most important lights. What I'm looking for is the appropriate balance between the lights. If the scene is a bit on the dark side I will just add a few 3D point lights with shadows turned off to adjust the overall ambient light level. If it's a bit too bright then I will use the PBR Exposure and/or Brightness to trim it down. I do not pay any attention to the actual Lux or Lumen values as I find that in PBR'ing it's more of a relative thing than absolute. In other words if one light is 1000 lumens and another is 500 lumens then this is no different than the first light being 10 lumens and the second being 5 lumens, ln both cases the first light is twice as bright as the second. I'm certain there are other approaches to all of this but for myself I find this approach to be very reliable and consistent. After a short while I find my light settings to be very similar from one scene to the other so you can just save your light fixture to the user library for future use. Same for the PBR settings, they can just be set as your defaults which will only need to be slightly adjusted depending upon the particular view direction of additional cameras.

Here's another example of a PBR exterior. The lighting only consists of the sun and one area spot light behind the camera to soften the shadows. As an alternative to using the traditional backdrop I drew a polyline solid behind the structure just past the terrain perimeter, essentially a large screen. To this I applied the wispy tree backdrop, now I can use the image properties DBX to control the backdrop independent of the sun. To create the slight orange/red glow in the sky I placed a 3D spot light aimed at the backdrop image with the light colour set to a deep orange/red color. All materials and objects are just standard CA.

Good examples demonstrating the sun intensity effect and the technique of using 3D area lights to soften the shadows. It's unfortunate that there is no direct way to independently control the background intensity. While you are experimenting with this, you might find it of interest to set up several more exterior cameras viewing the other sides of your house, especially the side that is exposed to the direct sunlight. I suspect with the higher sun lux setting that side will be completely over exposed. The same issue can occur if you also have interior camera views, the sun setting for the exterior may be too much for your interior views. Another technique to control the background is to get the background JPEG and load it into a photo editor, make several versions with the exposure adjusted up and down and then import them into CA as backgrounds. If your sun setting is low and the standard background is too dark then change the background for one of the backgrounds that you saved with increased exposure. If your sun setting is high and the standard background is too bright then change it for one of the saved backgrounds with lower exposure.

You are welcome. I just checked mine and I added one more area light between your two. That explains why my shadows are a bit softer. I also have the saturation turned down to 10% which could also have a small impact.

Sun = 1 Lux, Area Lights = 250 Lumen. Shadows are even softer now.

Here it is at the settings I suggested above. The shadows are much softer than your original.

You need to adjust your sun and light intensities to get the proper ratio. The pic I posted shows that it works. Open the PBR DBX, set the Camera Exposure to 1, set the Brightness to 100%. Turn off all of your lights and then set the sun intensity so it looks correct, about 2 Lux. Then turn on your 2 exterior area lights and adjust them to soften the shadows, around 100 Lumens.

I've encountered this before, open the adjust light DBX, in lighting mode you have it set under automatic to 40 lights. Change this to "Light Set" Default. What's happening is that the exterior two area lights are not being used under the automatic setting, must be a bug. You can now adjust your sun and area light intensities to get the shadow depth you are looking for. You can just uncheck the lights you don't need.

There have been many discussions in the past concerning this, might be worth searching the forum. Personally, if you are satisfied with the renderings you posted, with the exception of the bathroom, I would suggest that it might be worth your while to spend a bit more time with the X10 PBR and save the expense and time learning a new program. X10 PBR Rendering Examples With your current hardware, these would render in about 5 seconds. To get something such as your bathroom example is a whole new ballgame and would require exceptional skill to obtain something close to that. I took a closer look at that and it looks to me as if it is an actual photograph, not a rendering.

Sun is at 15 Lux.