Room Corner with Blender Cycles and no HDR

For projects using Blender Cycles to render interiors, you will find that most artists will use similar settings. You will use an HDR map in the environment settings, Area Lamps on windows, and maybe a Sun Lamp. All that lights will create a natural daylight look in your render.

However, some artists may get excellent results with settings that don't use all those resources.

Here is an excellent example of a simple interior from an artist called nooki and shared at the BlenderArtists forums.

Besides being a great example of an interior render using Cycles, you will also have an opportunity to learn how the artist manages to create the lights and render. He shares some of the settings!

If you visit the link that will lead you to the BlenderArtists forums, you will see more renders of the project and also some of the settings. For instance, you will see how each window has an Area Lamp to help with the diffuse light.

The primary light source for the scene is a Sun Lamp with an adjustment to get a color based on Blackbody temperature. In this case, you will see the Sun using 6500K as the temperature.

One unique aspect of this project is the absence of an HDR image in the environment settings. According to the artist description, he is not using an environment map to avoid additional noise created by this type of texture.

If you were looking for a similar setup for Cycles with no HDR maps, you might want to take a close look in the project settings.