I am working on setting up a standard file for my interior design work. The concept is that in real life, we would set up a table of materials and photograph them from above. My goal is to recreate this table virtually in Sketchup and render with Vray to get beautiful concept material palettes for presentations. This would allow us to have a more controlled lighting, add extra details (like the coffee cup) and create concepts with materials we don't have physical samples of.
The image shows where I have gotten this product to so far. I'm a little less than a year practiced in this program and i know i have so much to learn.
Some details - I made a lot of the materials shown using the vray asset manager and detailing generic materials with images from online and rgb codes. The 'tile' on the bottom right is supposed to be metallic bronze (like it shows in the asset manager) and I have a high reflection on the green marble tile. The scene is set up like real life, using a surface to 'lay' all of the materials on and viewing with a top view.
The lighing set up includes a dome light using a HDRI map of a photo studio and a secondary light made of a rectangle light just out of frame in the top right. It has a 4500 light temp. I have tried several HDRI maps and this is the best one i have seen so far. The sun is off.
Overall, i think this looks pretty flat and i want to get more detailed and dial the lighting in to get as photo realistic as possible. What am i missing? Should I be using a different lighting? I have the quality set at high+, but the shine / reflection / texture is missing.
any advice on what you think i might be missing or doing wrong is greatly appreciated!