robdyck

This wall transition can be adjusted in section view, however Chief will not build the railing to match the walls, rather the railing will still match the stairs.

Keep in mind that when using a 'Complete Break' the 2 sets of stairs (different widths) will need to join at a riser line. This will mess up the wall junction at this transition because the riser line doesn't match the 2nd floor walls.

Select that wall and open the dialog. Check default wall heights. Check Roof Cuts Wall at Bottom.

For night time scenes, the same views look pretty good with the sunlight toggled off. As for lighting reality, I suppose it's pretty tough to say if Chief can reproduce the light settings on a per lumen basis close enough to use as a predictive tool for specifying the amount of light. I'd probably start in a Chief model of my home office and see if it looks close to realistic using the exact same light sources. I'd then evaluate the accuracy and make some notes. Stainless Steel: reduce both roughness values significantly (U:30 / V:10) and alter the material color to something much darker and on a black/white scale (122/122/122).

There are so many factors that affect these renderings. A person really needs to spend a lot of time learning and evaluating the effects of various camera settings, light settings and material adjustments. Not to mention the model needs to be thoroughly and accurately detailed so that the model quality is in tune with the desired rendering quality. Trouble shoot 1 or 2 items at a time by critically examining what is wrong and how to fix it. For example; review the stainless steel material on the fridge and compare it to your own fridge or a real photo of a stainless fridge; does it look close to the same? If you used a Chief library material, then probably not. It's probably not quite the right color, it's probably too light and overly rough so experiment with material settings until the material preview (using physically based rendering) looks pretty good. Then save and move on to the next material. Is the entire interior almost all one material? Is that working? Maybe experiment using various settings of white materials for walls, ceilings, doors, trim, etc. Do the faucets look real to you? If not, replace them or adjust them, etc.

I kinda thought that but couldn't remember for sure. Also, I'm not sure if the OP rotated the view in layout or rotated the Plan View or if there is a difference between those two methods. My own preference would always be that all vertically oriented text is read from the right with a few minor logical exceptions. In the OP's picture, I'd suggest the dimension is correct and the other plan view text appears to be in need of adjustment. I've only ever rotated a plan once and text adjustment was a pain. After that process I preferred to use the Edit Area tool if I run into a situation where the plan has developed in such a way that a rotation is suitable.

Dimension Defaults > Text Style > Options...

You can use a 3d model of a tile and distribute along your roof planes. It's a manual process, but it can be faster than you might think. If you have your camera views set up and determined in advance, then you can reduce the amount of area that requires accurate modelling. Just to give you an idea, this took only a couple of minutes.

Open the Glass Wall defintion dialog and under Wall Properties make sure Partition Wall is checked.

Library search 'Oriel'

Always a good idea to post the plan. If it's too large, use google drive or dropbox!

Sometimes.