Hoff_Design

I applied concrete thin set to the backsplash walls and then put a varnish over it, it is a cool look. The granite countertops were repurposed, and worked very well. Our kitchen used to be very dark and was a tight space, now it is airy, bright and open. You can seen that the sunlight comes in through the windows and gives this scene a realistic feel. Great job Chief Architect! On the doors for the upper cabinets you will notice there are no pulls. What I did here was made the doors and side panels drop down from the cabinet about 3/4" and you just grab the door from the bottom back of door, this serves also to create a block for the under cabinet lighting. (the ones in my render come down a little more than the ones I actually used), so you see the lights still in the render.

I brought the light down for the backdrop, and for the sunlight as they were pretty bright and were flooding the space with too much light. I like the adjust lights function in Chief as it gives you a lot of control over the lighting by room...I shut off all the lights in the house except for those connected to this scene. As to not get overwhelmed by all the lights, I toned down the backdrop and the sun first with all lights off. I adjusted the sunlight angles so that I could get some outside light to flood into the space (very low light setting). I then turned on the lights in the adjacent rooms ( dining, living and laundry) then adjusted their brightness. Then turned on the light above the sink (making sure that it was a spot), and adjusted its brightness, angle and drop off. The next lights I turned on were the under cabinet lights and simply adjusted the brightness. Finally I selected all the cans in the kitchen at once, made sure they were spots, adjusted their angle, drop off and brightness, and then did some tweaking to get the setting I wanted. I could have taken that floor texture and exported it so that I could create a normal and AO map and reimport, but it was getting pretty late and it looks OK, but if I wanted more realism I would do that for sure. One other item to note, on the walls, I selected a stucco texture, you cannot really see it here but if the camera gets close to the walls you see the subtle shadows created by the normal maps that relate to the texture...then if you want to change the color, just use the stain function, or change the color in the material library.

I could not find a texture for the island top so I found an image online and made it seamless in photoshop, then took it to materialize and made the maps for it. It pretty much looks like that in our kitchen now. The texture on the chairs had no depth so I exported it and created a normal and AO map and reimported into to chief. Now it has a little character. On the window glass, I went into the material and adjusted the color from white to slightly grey...this enables the interior to reflect a bit more, while still allowing the backdrop to be seen and the sun to come through.

We found some hidden space in the wall to the right, and added a cabinet with shelves above. The horse sculpture above the sink is actually there in reality. I am pleased with the rendering capability of X17. You can see that I brought in some exterior sunlight that crosses the doors on the cabinets. I have the cans lights set as spot lights.

This is my kitchen...I am currently painting the doors for it, but it is built and waiting for doors and flooring...It looks to me like X17 is capable of creating photo real renders fairly quickly once the scene is set up. HDRI, the sun, and the lights all play a part in pulling off a realistic render.