POV-Ray surface realism

[Dilvish]

I created a few test renders in POV-Ray to experiment with blurred reflections. Which of the following five images do you feel are the most realistic? The least?

Also, note the transparent pieces. Is the reflection right for them too? IMO they look a bit too frosty.

Thanks!!

[edit]

I just noticed that if you use desktop DPI scaling in Windows, these images will look extra grainy/blurry in Google Chrome. You might want to try a different browser temporarily.

wrapper_townview_close_01 by Michael Horvath, on Flickr

wrapper_townview_close_02 by Michael Horvath, on Flickr

wrapper_townview_close_03 by Michael Horvath, on Flickr

wrapper_townview_close_04 by Michael Horvath, on Flickr

wrapper_townview_close_05 by Michael Horvath, on Flickr

Edited February 17, 2018 by Dilvish

[SylvainLS]

IMVHO:

3 is the best of the five, but the trans parts are a bit “frosty.”

4 and 5: too much reflection, too sharp too (the reflection is sharper than the bricks!).

1 and 2: not enough reflection, and yes, the trans parts are very “frosty” (almost like tracing paper (“papier calque”)).

 

[Dilvish]

Here's my latest render.

 

It is an improvement. But the reflections still appear somewhat frosty, specially the clear pieces.

[Littleworlds]

I like the transparency on pictures 4 and 5, but the reflections on solid pieces, especially the road is way too much on those.

I think what would make the builds more realistic are displacement and/or bumpmapping. Every real brick is slightly different from each other which gives a not-quiet even surface and can create a wonderful sense of scale on pictures. If that is possible to render, that would be amazing.

Apart from that, the lighting doesn't looks particularily realistic on the renders too. Too sterile and flat.

[Dilvish]

I can't do bump mapping, but there is already a normal map that makes the bricks look slightly wavy or warped.

I tweaked the lighting. Maybe a little too bright.

 

Edited February 22, 2018 by Dilvish

[Venefic]

On 22/02/2018 at 8:32 AM, Dilvish said:

Maybe a little too bright

Most likely. It's nice though that you added shadows to make it look more realistic. It looks as if this would have taken some time to complete.  

[Dilvish]

Depending on the settings that I enable, it can take anywhere between 6 and 24 hours to render.

An alternative would be to use cloud computing. It might take 1/3 the time (16 threads at 2.4GHz instead of 4 threads at 3.6GHz), but the rates are about $1/hr or more. I used the $200 free service trial period on Microsoft Azure to do a render, but ran out of cash pretty quickly!

Edited February 25, 2018 by Dilvish