CG Society Lighting Challenges'

#21

Its more than those settings, really.
Going step by step…

First you need to visualize your photon map and tweak the settings. The Map Mode should be set to “always visible” which means that Camera will render the actual photon map itself. “Baking” set to none and “Calculate” set to always.
During this photon map visualization, “Enable Global Illumination” must be DISABLED in the GI dialog box!

This will create a “blotchy” looking image.

By adjusting the lookup radii, and number of photons you can get even coverage of the photons, while optimizing for speed.

The next step is to use the “baking” feature to completely smooth out the photon map.
This effectively re-samples the photon map, further optimizing the scene for quality and speed.

Finally, you can change the settings back to “GI & Secondary”, Baking On, and re-enable GI in the GI dialog for your final render.

Please post again with your progress. We are all very interested :wink:
Good luck!

Dave

#22

Hey thats great Dave. That is the exact workflow I am using.

One of the cool things I think this new lighting system offers is that the photon map is used for secondary lighting (ray-traced reflections and transparencies) so no need to add a secondary light to the scene. Just use the photon map.

One of the other little new features (I’m sure it’s new) is you can nominate a background colour which is great for when you want the blue sky to be in your reflections but you want control over adding scenery into your window via an alpha channel when in Photoshop.

Here are some screen shots for the Natural History challenge everyone and the link to the image for reference.

http://www.goodbuildingdesign.com.au/Natural_History_1.jpg

http://www.goodbuildingdesign.com.au/Natural_History_Light_1.png
http://www.goodbuildingdesign.com.au/Natural_History_Light_2.png
http://www.goodbuildingdesign.com.au/Natural_History_Light_3.png
http://www.goodbuildingdesign.com.au/Natural_History_Light_4.png
http://www.goodbuildingdesign.com.au/Natural_History_Light_5.png
http://www.goodbuildingdesign.com.au/Natural_History_Light_6.png

Buggsy

#23

Nice Images Michael!
One other nice thing about the Photon Map is that blurry RT reflections are much faster.
This can add a good bit of realism to certain materials.

Dave

#24

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