The release of Blender 2.79 brought an incredible set of resources for architectural visualization artists, like the filmic color profile. That resource alone was already changing the way we work with Blender on versions 2.78 and below. Before Blender 2.79 you had to replace the color profile files in your installation folder. In fact, you still can use filmic on any version of Blender by replacing that files.
But, a few artists were surprised to see a slightly different version of filmic shipping with version 2.79.
If you perform a render and compare both versions, they will produce different results. Is it better? Or worse?
A good way to compare is to check the results of that profile based on real projects. And here is an excellent example of the results you can achieve with filmic in Blender 2.79. An artist called CristianTM shared a project with the name of House Portugal in the BlenderArtists forums.
The project shows a great level of control over lights and overall render in Cycles. Besides being a great example of artwork created in Blender, you can also check the settings! The artist was kind enough to share a significant amount of settings from the project. Including color management settings with the new filmic.
For people used to the settings in Blender Cycles, you will find it surprising to realize that with “only†0.3 in exposure the artist was capable of setting a bright illumination for an interior space.
That might be from the HDR map used as environmental texture. For instance, a few of the HDR Maps from HDR Haven doesn’t even require a sun lamp to simulate daylight. With only a single HDR map you will get an incredible bright daylight render.
If you are evaluating the possibility of replacing filmic from Blender 2.79, you should definitively spend a few minutes studying the settings and results from House Portugal.
