I just want to say that the second image, to my eye, looks every bit as good as the first.
I’d venture to suggest (as others have) that you could probably lose the illuminator and compensate for it by adjusting the sun light and GI settings. (It’s at least worth doing a lo-res test render for comparison.)
Also, not to seem lordly, but: rendering in passes is just pretty much standard practice nowadays.
For the most part I agree with you, but there are some places like the ones I pointed out that are just not as good as the original. My next test will be to cut off the illuminator dome and see if I get those areas back.
As far as passes go, I wanted to stay away from passes with this image. With most of my other work, I work in passes and I’m very familiar with it. This image was to test the capability of EIAS’s GI in one render, no post work.
Thanks GM
Yes Kurt, I agree with you,that would help a lot. Thanks everyone for the great tips.
Ok, this render has no illuminator dome, and has averaging mode anti aliasing. I figured from all the remarks I got about the sampling of all the lights in the dome that I would get a much faster render. It was faster, but only by 13 minutes. But hey, 13 minutes is 13 minutes, so I won’t complain too much.
The anti aliasing I think I like. Things do look sharper. The illuminator dome being turned off does NOT look good. I’ve lost the warm daylight haze feel. I will try however to up the skylight intensity to compensate for this as suggested. Although, this may add to the underlighting on some of the objects which I do not like. We’ll see.
Reuben suggested that I add a skylight image, well actually there has been one since the first render. I should have noted this. I’m using the same image that is in the backgound, that’s why the colors seem to match so well.
I forgot to mention that I took Reuben’s advice and lowered the soft edge on the raytraced shadow down to 7 samples instead of 12. So I’m not sure if this was the bigger time saver or the removal of the illuminator dome?
Any guesses?
Both i should think,
Raising the skylight intensity should actually counter that “underlighting” effect, remember that the sykylight model adds its own shadowing, its the bounced rays that cause the underlighting.
For the sake of experience you might try rendering this scene with reverse illumination turned off (no bounces), you’ll find its a pretty big difference, not to say the results will be better though.
Also be aware the “optimize shadow generation” can produce artifacts and give slightly differently results, i would turn this off, it may add to the render time, but not a great deal.
Reuben
I think now its just a case of balancing the lighting and shadow, its very close, i would turn off AA, RT soft edge and remove some objects so you can get some fast snapshots.
Reuben
Hi Richard,
I do agree the first render looks better, about the third render if you prefer the illuminator doom light maybe you can try what Igor has suggested…
Adding a light with GI Mode = Exclusive (no shadow) often is much better and faster if you need rid of dark areas
regards,
Loon
So what ever happened to this very promising image eh!
Did you get to spend more polishing time on it?
Ian
hey Ian
I got slammed with work, which is a good thing. I have messed with it a bit. The problem is, the slower image looks better than the optimized ones. I got stuck deciding on what to do next. I think I will try loons and igors method of adding another GI light set to exclude shadows. See if that helps instead of the illuminator dome.
I hope I can finish this render up soon. I think I maybe seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.
OK. I’m trying to summarize the wealth of info coming from this thread. Thanks Richard, Loon, Yan, Reuben, Giacomo and Igors for your input. If you read this and find out I went wrong somewhere please correct me.
I understand these are not absolute settings but good guidelines to start with.
Setting up a “Sun” light
Type: Spotlight
Intensity: 1.455
Shadow: Raytrace, soft edges (radius 1, samples 7)
Now for distance and size:
Light to reference distance: Assuming 1 scene unit = 1cm
400 scene units - Sunrise and sunset
32 000 scene units - Dull spring and autumn scenes
100 000 scene units - Superbright mid-summer day
Light size: 10% of the distance used (A distance of 32 000 gives a light size of 3200)
Using a size over 6000 isn’t worth it.
Always look through the sun light to adjust the angle so it fits the scene.
To control the shadow opacity you can duplicate the sun light, turn off it’s shadow casting, turn intensity way down (0.2) and go from there.
Global illumination
Primary rays: 200
Secondary rays: 0 (To get rid of dark areas, add one GI light, GI Mode = Exclusive, no shadow)
Sampling level: 8X8 (Lowering it to 16X16 will be faster but less accurate)
Bounce: 1 (1 for outdoor scenes and 2 for indoor scenes though it’s not a rule)
Use skylight (or skymap) set to around 0.55 (Play with this setting to increase or decrease the color depth of the image.
This is about what I learned from this thread and, again, many thanks to all contributors.
Oi Richard! You trying to put the EI training company out of business before we’ve even started? hehehehe 
That is an excellent summery, I have, however, never set my Sun intensity quite that high, you might start to see blow out, but that of course might be what you’re after.
I think the only thing you missed is:
If your scene contains reflections/ transparency you may want to fake secondary rays without the render hit:
Duplicate sun, set GI mode to secondary. This brightens the reflections of objects but not the objects themselves.
This renders OpenGLs lighting preview useless though because of all the extra light this pumps into the view. I usually switch to ‘Camera light only’ when I use this trick, either that or I only turn the secondary sun on for renders.
And of course, these settings are all for stills only. Animation is hugely different (and therein lies the training video 
!!
Ian
PS. Nice to see you found us CJ
Thanks for the correction Yan. This is exactly the kind of info I want to see in a training video. Putting EI Training company out of business!? Au contraire, I’ll buy everything!
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