Making a modern kitchen in Blender

You'll discover rendering improvements, tree optimization, camera matching, creating dirt with the new ambient occlusion node and more.

First, we are matching reference image with 3d scene with fSpy add-on. then, we are blocking the scene and add windows with Archipack add-on. we are lighting the scene with solid blue color. It's better not to use HDR images to light interior scenes, because render time can double. We are dropping maximal light bounces to one for previewing. for final render 2 or 3 is enough.

Then we can use Ambient Occlusion Node form adding a bit of dirt in the crevices. Andrew Price used IES node for lights over the kitchen island.