I can't see the mountains, PBR help

[mtldesigns]

@Renerabbitt

And whomever else are good at these kind of views.  There's a few of you out there, names are not coming to mind.  I usually don't spend a lot of time on PBRs, basically OOTB settings.  They usually turn out good enough for presentation sakes.  HOWEVER this one house I am doing, I just cant get the PBR to show the mountains through the glass.  This is why the lot was sold to my client and why they want a house that they can see those mountains from inside.  The least I can do is give them a representation of that view, right?  I have spent a good hour on these few views, and I played with every setting that I know of, every sun position, sun intensity and even turned the glass to air insulation....  it just isn't coming through.  I even tried Chat GPT.. looks cheesy IMO.

 

Is there a setting or two that I need to adjust..

 

Thank you in advance. 

[scottharris]

Michael, try setting your backdrop intensity to ~500.

 

Here's a good resource BTW - https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/1977/interior-ray-tracing.html?playlist=103

 

[Rich_Winsor]

As Scott suggests your Daytime Backdrop

Intensity of 12000 is way too high. Also you

have Brightness almost pegged @ 98.9.

I would try dropping the DBI to 50 and the

Brightness back to 0 and see where it takes

you. I would also lower the sunlight you are

using for the camera view. Once you get the

the backdrop dialed in you can then use the

rendering technique tools to the adjust the

interior. You should also have a play with

manually adjusting the exposure for more

control. I like to get the image slightly 

underexposed (darker) and the lighten or

brighten (overexpose) it to taste. You also

need to consider aerial perspective in a

situation like this. Distant objects look lighter

softer and hazier. How sharp do the hills

look in the actual backdrop image? Can you

use a sharper image? Just a few things to

consider. Good Luck

 

 

    

[Renerabbitt]

The issue here is fundamental: adjusting the backdrop intensity is not the equivalent of changing your camera’s ISO, aperture, or shutter speed...it’s the equivalent of physically dimming the lights on a physical backdrop.

 

In real‑world production, if a backdrop is 12,000 lux and your interior is 500 lux, you don’t dim the backdrop to 500 lux; you expose for the interior and bracket or shoot separate plates for the backdrop. Why? Because the moment you drop the backdrop’s physical brightness, you lose its colour fidelity, contrast, and detail...exactly what happens in the render when you slide that value down. In other words, 12000 is not too high and is an appropriate level for many hdris, 500 on the other hand is quite low but is often used for some of chiefs backdrops that have a larger concentration of green pixels to avoid color casting...and consequently, limit the effect of more dynamic and natural lighting.

What’s actually occurring when you lower the backdrop intensity to “normalise” the view is:

 

1. You reduce the light emitted by the backdrop.

2. The camera’s auto‑exposure (or the render engine’s exposure compensation) sees a darker overall scene and opens up.

3. The interior brightens—but so does the noise/grain in the shadows, and the backdrop remains dull because its native light level is still being crushed.

 

For me personally that’s not a solution I care for but I have additional tools at my disposal; it’s trading one problem for another, exactly like trying to shoot an HDR scene with a single exposure, no bracketing.

 

The proper photographic workflow—whether on set or in post—is to capture multiple exposures of the same frame and combine them where the content of each is correctly exposed. In a render engine that lacks native exposure stacking, the equivalent is to render the backdrop and the interior as separate passes, then composite them. This is quite literally what I do with a real camera in a real world application, it takes some skills to shoot an interior shot where a bright exterior is in frame and you don't want it blown out.

 

That’s why I’ve repeatedly requested features like:

 

· A separate intensity map for backdrop elements, independent of the main scene lighting.

· Object / texture ID masks that let us isolate the backdrop in post.

· The ability to output the backdrop on its own layer with transparency (alpha channel).

 

These aren’t “nice to haves”—they’re the digital analogue of a cinematographer flagging off the backdrop, lighting it separately, and shooting plates.

 

Until then, the only reliable method is to render with transparency enabled for the backdrop, export a file where the window opening is alpha, and composite the backdrop at whatever exposure you need inside Photoshop (or After Effects, etc.). That gives you full, independent control over the backdrop’s brightness, contrast, and colour without compromising the interior exposure.

[robdyck]

If you can post the plan file or send me a download link, I'll take a look and see if I can help.