Blender house revision.

Here is a new try at rendering the house I made as a test drive for Blender's rendering engine.

I had to render it in separate passes to composite it out in Photoshop. Also, the ambient occlusion pass was a complete re-render, because if I understood right, to be able to use the indirect illumination inside Blender, I was only allowed to use approximation gatherer. 

 And with that I wasn't satisfied with the ambient occlusion pass, as it was to blurry in my oppinion. So for the ambient occlusion pass I used the raytrace gatherer. It's crispiness was crucial for me to achieve the fine details in the corners of the mesh.

Things I would like to have in the renderer:

• Separate controls for ambient occlusion, environment lighting and indirect illumination.
• Pixel displacement. The rock wall around the garden still looks flat only relying on bump map and diffuse texture map. The ambient occlusion is not calculated considering the bump map.

If I continue refining this scene, i should:

• Work on some textures like the asphalt, it has a bad tiling. 
• Try a new approach to the grass, maybe give a try at fur.
• Add more mesh details, maybe on the rock wall and try vertex displacement.

I'd love to hear some comments on how can I improve this scene in Blender.

Cheers,
Andz

First two Blender renderings.

These are the first two renderings of my tests in Blender.

First one is Tea Box, I was still learning the modeling and UV mapping tools. I was still having a hard time understanding the materials and textures at this time. There are some color bending on the background that I think is caused by a bad smoothing on the infinite plane.  If I spend time again on this file, I would redo the two tea bags on the right.

The second image is more recent, I just finished the rendering last night, but I'm still not 100% happy with the illumination and colors. Right now it has to much contrast, maybe because of the lack of indirect illumination. I also think that the colors don't look right, it looks almost like a painting.

  I'll be definitely trying a new rendering on this one.

So, things that I'm still trying to adjust my self in Blender:

• Complex scenes organization;
• Materials;
• Lighting;
• Rendering parameters.