Refining Rendered Scenes with Lighting, Shadows, and Post-Processing for Professional Results

Alright, welcome back to the final video of this course. Let's take a look at our exported renderings now that they are complete. Hopefully you didn't run into any issues where it crashed in how to restart.

If so, try again, reduce the file sizes, the export sizes, and the bounce counts,  things like that, and let's get to a point where you can actually export it. I'll be available to help you if you have any issues, so please reach out. Now that we have our exports, let's take a look at them and potentially troubleshoot any possible issues that we can see.

So let's open up the three exported views that we created. Here's the first one that was exported, and the second one,  and the third one. Overall, I think these all look really nice.

However, there are some things that I might want to look at, possible adjustments. But look at the first image again. There's a couple things that I see.

First off, there is some smudginess and blurriness in the walls. You may have more or less of that. You kind of can see it here.

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That's really common in some of the Lumen settings, and that's really because you don't have enough light in your space. You can either increase the intensity of the lights and or increase the exposure. The other thing is this shadow right here doesn't look very good.

So there's a couple things that we can do with that. From what I've seen, I'm going to go back into Twinmotion and click on my view. Under render, under shadow settings, I've noticed that whenever you have a tree casting shadows, it creates kind of a weird pixelated effect with using accurate shadows.

I found the best solution would be to use standard shadows, which you can kind of can see that here, like accurate shadows has like a nice kind of blurred, like, you know, soft shadow effect over the interior, while standards a lot more harsher shadows. So you kind of have to give and take, right? Am I going to be wanting to use this pixelated version or this? One option that you could do is you could export one as accurate and one as standard and maybe crop out this portion here and paste it on top of the other one in post process. Kind of give you the point that you want to do.

Under standard, this shadow percentage increases the kind of blurriness of that. You kind of want to be kind of right at this kind of, you know, 50 range, which is pretty crisp where you can kind of still see some of those leaves and then the shadow bias. This is kind of this reduces self shadowing artifacts on objects that can also reduce the accuracy of the shadows.

So artifacts are a little pixelation, so that will help reduce some of that kind of right in the middle is a good spot. So that's something that you could do under accurate. If you were to move the sun bias and you go up high, that would.

Increase the crispiness of the shadows, however, it's still running into that same kind of issue, so I want to stick with standard shadows and I'm going to export that. If your image is creating that smudginess, you could go into camera, increase your exposure as needed. You know, bump that up brighter kind of thing, or you can increase your lights to a brighter number just so you can kind of increase the overall brightness of your scene that will help reduce those smudginess elements.

So let's go take a look. I already kind of went ahead and exported a few different scenarios, so let's take a look at what these changes will do. So here's the original image.

You can kind of see some smudginess in the shadows. Here's an export with the brightness increase. You can see that I lost some kind of depth and shadow to it.

However, I did remove any of that smudginess. The shadows still don't look good, so here's an export of using accurate shadows. And then this is actually, I think I cropped this onto this image.

As you can see, this stuff is all kind of the same. And then here we can see fixing some of the shadows and what that looks like. It's still a little bit blotchy, but it feels better overall than the first one.

Let's take a look at the other rendering views. So, you know, here is the first. You can kind of can see some blotchiness in the ceiling, increasing the brightness, you know, still it created even more.

Sometimes I've also realized that if you were to export the exact same scene with the exact same settings, you may get a different result. Like, for example, you may get one that doesn't have any blotchiness, and then you may get one that does. So just try again.

Sometimes if the first time isn't working, go for it again. And then here's that kind of brightened up image. You can always tone down the brightness in Photoshop or some sort of post-processing image if it ends up too bright, but you really don't want the smudginess on the walls.

And then for our final image was the kitchen. Here was the original image. Here is the second image.

You can see it kind of increased some of the smudginess. And here is the third image. I have a crisper shadow over here, and some of my textures and elements look the best.

So yeah, again, to reiterate, bumping up some brightness would help reduce some of those smudginess elements. However, you may lose some depth. So you want to kind of find the sweet, sweet spot balance where you remove that, but you still have some soft shadows where the crown molding is and things like that.

So once your exports are complete and you're happy with the result, the next step is some light post-processing. So the beautiful thing about Twinmotion is that the images are really great right out of the get-go, but sometimes you may need to adjust. A few things that I like to adjust in Photoshop is some general brightness and contrast and some coloring to get the look and feel that I'm going for.

Maybe some vignetting on the bottom. Just really simple things. Or if there's any specific things that I need to tweak and adjust, I can do that.

So let's go back to our first image again. So this was our very first image exported, and this is the point where we were happy with the finished result. The next image shows some Photoshop refinements.

I'm going to go back and forth here too. So you can see very minor things. I wanted to tone down some of the color of the couch.

So I isolated that and I did that in Photoshop. I wanted to maybe make my color scheme a little bit darker, and I wanted to put some vignetting on the bottom. So just kind of little things like that really kind of help that in that process.

Let me show you the next image. This is the series here. This is the final image before we did some Photoshop work, and this is some Photoshop.

So go back and forth. Before, after. So you can, this is an optional scenario, right? This may be exactly what you want, but you may want to need to do some sort of refinement.

And then finally in the kitchen before and after some Photoshop work. So really minor touches, but it definitely helps your image overall. The next thing that I like to look at is using some AI tools to help enhance some of these images.

For example, I'm going to go over into this Photoshop or into this Photoshop file that I ended up doing. One thing that I can notice about Twinmotion is the people look a little fake, right? Like their hair doesn't look very good, but it does give you a nice kind of scale. You can adjust these and make these look a little bit better in some post-process tools.

You can use tools like Gigapixel AI or Craya AI, which is spelled K-R-E-A dot AI. You can isolate an area, like maybe you zoom in and just crop this portion or maybe screenshot it and then you will run that and then in Photoshop you can overlay it. So I want to kind of show you an example of what that looks like with post-process by zooming in here and then going into the next image.

So this is the after, this is the before. You can see a little bit better quality, the hair looks good, the person looks a little bit better, but overall it kind of kept the same. Backing up from far away, before, after.

Also did some more Photoshop work to brighten up some of the scene, but overall you can kind of see the quality that you are going to get with these images, with AI images. Let me go into the other view and show kind of what this one looks like before and after. I'm taking a note at some of the hair right here versus here.

You know I'm going to do a side-by-side shot just to kind of can see what these two look like side-by-side. Yeah, so looking at these side-by-side I can see some better quality in the person, the hair, the jacket has some more texture relief. Overall, like you know, it's a big improvement, but it's just really, really minor just to do.

So I think that's something that I do recommend if you wanted to enhance some of the people using some sort of third-party AI software. I used KREA.AI, KREA, it is a free software. Feel free to, as I'm recording this, there's probably going to be other ones that come out and do things.

So feel free to do some research. I googled AI upscale or refinement and that will help you kind of refine and upscale some of these without doing some sort of crazy things. Another thing to do beyond just the people is sometimes some of the equipment.

Like for example, the kitchen sink, the microwave, this, we'll see what that looks like when I do like an AI upgrade for that. A little bit better quality overall, you know, some more detail. So that definitely is an option that helps with this.

One thing that I did notice in this rendering is I had this plant cut to the wall. I may want to re-render this and change that. For the sake of this video, I'm not going to do that.

But those are just some things that I will notice after rendering and be like, oh yeah,  I can either do that in Photoshop or I can just re-render the original base image. In Photoshop, I like to have my image linked so I can refresh it with an updated version as I go. So the key with like any sort of post-processing is subtlety.

Your enhancements should refine the work, not change it. And the final product should look, you know, polished, professional, and really true to the original design. You don't want to go too far in post.

So with this final step, our scene is presentation ready and optimized for any sort of client review or your portfolio. You're ready to go. So I hope you enjoyed this course and I'm really excited to see your finished renderings.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any specific questions. Um, again, Twinmotion is fairly simple to start, but challenging and hard to master. I want to just reiterate that it's challenging.

You may have to do some trial and error. Don't get frustrated if things aren't coming out. I've been doing this a long time and I've kind of given you my best workflow of how it works for me professionally.

You may Google things online or watch some YouTube videos and see different approaches. Totally fine. The great way to learn about the program, all things that you can do.

There's a lot in here. Everybody has their own sense of process on how they do things. I definitely recommend watching videos and learning more and diving more into it.

However, what I've showed you is kind of my tried and true best way. We do have an additional course where we will be exploring exterior renderings and animations, which will take your scenes to a whole another level. I definitely recommend taking that course as you kind of will get a little more understanding of Twinmotion and some of the tools that we didn't really touch on in this one.

Thank you for following along and I wish you the very best in creating your final images.