Room lighting coments and suggestions...

[Ls3D]

Hey, your back (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?p=2204253#post2204253). Well the floor is a bit blown out in the wider shot, but other than that what would you like to see. BTW Zip her up & and email it to me if you like.

Quick Tips:

Less raytrace shadow density, increase shadow map size (1024 or 2048 depending on RAM). Turn down diffuse value on wood floor material, also reduce and mask/bump the floor. Turn down wood texture if needed to (and even pure black in diffuse) to darken, maybe adjust levels of that texture in photoshop.

Its looking pretty fun,... dig the kids drawings, all bent - nice touch.

-S

[Maven]

I think your shadows are just way to sharp. They look raytraced. Where is the light source? Is it from a haning fixture or from another window? It's hard to tell what would be lighting this room this way. Try a traditional ligting setup and give the room a main source of light. Like a lamp or the window.

btw looks good so far.

[Ls3D]

Got your zine, now help me to help you.

Via Email: I'm basically after softer edges.

A. - You mean softer shadows? This is done with the big shadow maps I suggested and sample area and bias tweaking. I'm not suggesting area lights because I bet you want this zine to render fast for your animation. Do you want to loose the raytracer lights alltogether?

B. - You mean the aliasing in the door panels for example?

TTYL,

-S

[Gamoron]

Why not just use a shadow map in the standard lights, eliminate mental ray and use either defualt renderer with Lighttracer or Radiosity? You shouldn't need an advanced setup.

Try Logarithmic Exposure control in Environments dialogue.

Should be pretty straight forward. Don't forget to use a skylight in the scene. Thats one powerful light.

[superted27]

Yeah thats wat i mean ls3d. Would be nice if it could render quick and look good but i dont mind using raytrace if it gives better results.

Thanks for all the other suggestions guys. Ls3d is having a play with the scene for me, i'll post my results...

[-Vormav-]

superted27 - Your lighting in the second shot is confusing! I'd suggest removing the shadows on your fill light (I'm assuming you're using a fill, or "bounce" light, which would be create those brighter shadows, right?); Even with soft shadows, it really just doesn't look right.
The lighting solution in the other shot is looking pretty nice, though. That throw pattern really helps. Did you keep the blue light from that shot for your other scene at all?

[Ls3D]

Ok, first problem - the default samples value is too low.
http://www.ls3d.com/FTP/room-renderer.jpg
We see this often. Other lighting problems I have noted in the summary info of the 3DS Max 6 files I will post latter*.

Here is what she rendered like with one basic material change (the floor). Of course the missing map list has a dozen or so files listed. Note the undersampling in the door that the above or higher setting will fix.
http://www.ls3d.com/FTP/room-as-is-plus.jpg
What I like to do is start with one light and add from there - here is a sequence showing a new light with each render. All less than 30 seconds to render each at 640 x 480 - 1 over 16 samples. Download and view in photohop if you really want to see the detail, or I will zip up all my WIP and email to you.
http://www.ls3d.com/FTP/room-mod1-first-light-sml.jpghttp://www.ls3d.com/FTP/room-mod1-2nd-light-sml.jpg
http://www.ls3d.com/FTP/room-mod1-3rd-light-sml.jpghttp://www.ls3d.com/FTP/room-mod1-5th-light-sml.jpg
Final gather smoothed out some of the banding (below), but rendering shot up to 8.5 minutes. Adding GI (not shown) took it up to 15 minutes and added some subtle color bleeding - reducing bounces and other MR specific optimizations could improve those results.
http://www.ls3d.com/FTP/room-mod2-FG-8min27sec.jpg
This ambient occlusion and lighting pass is from max 7, I played with the dirtmap to try and get the look working in max 6, but I'm more of an AO guy.
http://www.ls3d.com/FTP/room-mod3-AO-exp9min39sec.jpg
Here is the AO pass above composited onto the 15 minute FG & GI rendering.
http://www.ls3d.com/FTP/room-mod2-FG-GI-14min47sec-post.jpg
These are just some ideas in lighting at night, there are so many ways to skin this cat, so I'm not saying this is THE way, just where I went today.

* I've got one more very long render going right now, and will post the reduced Zines for others to play with if that is cool with you.

-S

EDIT: Ok then, if anyone wants to play CG-LD with these (http://www.ls3d.com/FTP/light-room-suggst.zip) Max 6 files, well there they are 2.24 Mb, with several max 6 scenes and renders. Scale seemed a bit large for any photometric buffs. I hope others will be inclined to delete the lights and do their own plots - then post em all up in here. :)

[superted27]

some great lighting techniques here, ive had a play with what you sent back and got some nice results. I'll post the up on here when ive rendered them out.

And yeah share the file if anyone is interested, cheers!!

[FATdan]

Ls3D, what method do you use to composit the AO pass and the normal render pass? i tryed using photoshop with limited progress..do you export an alpha from max? any help would be great!!
ta
dan

[Ls3D]

Well that is the AO layer @61% Hard Light in photoshop, I also use Vivid Light, Overlay and Multiply at various opacity settings until I get a look I like.

Latey I have been more focused on working the AO shader base into my materials - a bit more complex, and so doing it in post remains a valued and flexible option. I have even run grain removal on a rushed AO pass in AfterEffects with great results. Also, sometimes screening a copy of the original layer on top of the AO pass at very low opacity, say 4 - 16 % can restore hilights - bluring that layer can fake a glare or provide a softer looking composite.

-S

[nebille]

Im not sure if this will be any help to you but there is a magazine called 3d world and they created a tutorial for a scene that almost is identical to yours. I will dig it out and tell you what copy it is. If you dont have it i will try and scan the tut for you.

regards

nebille

[FATdan]

thanks for the info Ls3D!!

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