M:Render: How can it be improved?

#1

Its a bit quiet right now so I’d thought I’d start a friendly thread. This has been discussed in IRC quite a bit. I’m not sure what settings and features everyone would like to see. We all know that further documentation would be a big plus, but thats not the point of this thread. So I’m opening this thread for some discussion. More options are good I think, as long as some explanation is provided. Its better to have more control than less. So what would you like to see?

I’ll open up the discussion with irradiance caching. I’m not an expert at the various rendering techniques or technologies, but from discussion in the #messiah3d IRC chatroom this has seemed a desired feature. And reading up on it, I’d have to agree that its something I’d like to see implemented as well. As far as I know messiah does not have this, please correct me know if I’m wrong. From research: An irradiance cache speeds up the time of rendering Global Illumination renders by rendering a pre-pass to determine the best areas of an image to sample. The basic idea of radiance caching is to compute indirect illumination only at certain locations and then interpolate it elsewhere.

Now apparently this “pre-pass” can be controlled with gradients and can be blurred. Now I’m not sure about the details of this. But keeping with the “learn it once” concept of messiah and how everything ties together it might be interesting to control this “pre-pass” using messiah’s shading system. I believe I’ve seen control like this in Cebas’s FinalRender. I’d love to hear more info on irradiance caching from the more educated and its benefits, along with other ideas.

Some articles on this:
http://graphics.ucsd.edu/courses/rendering/2004/wjarosz/index.html
http://www.cgg.cvut.cz/show_research.php?page=01

Both obtained via this google search.

(info on attached image: Radiance gradient significantly improves the smoothness of the interpolated illumination on the glossy floor. Left: With gradient. Right: No gradient.)

#2

Now one thing I’m curious about is that there seems to be two terms. Radiance and Irradiance. Can someone tell me the difference?

#3

I like Messiahs renderer. But a few things would be nice. A few more useful shaders added to the basic set. I can get the results I want now but I really had trouble right off the bat having to cook up my own shaders for chrome and brushed metal dirt etc. And some Slope and altitude sensitive shaders or if they are there an easier way to get there.

A sky generator. I tend now to go back to Bryce 5 cook up a quick sky for environment and background. I don’t think a few more easy enviromental controls will break the bank. Particles I have had little luck doing much of anything besides an occasional crash with them. I know they are powerful and a lot can be done with them some preset particle shaders etc. so we can start cooking with it insead of scratching my head I am already bald and I am pulling up skin.

So most of what I want is already there but just hard to access for a newbie. The particles system I find poorly documented also. Just my two cents. Heck a decent particle shader to start playign with would be nice.

#4

Nichod: You need to play around with the Hybrid GI mode in Messiah. It has a lot of the features your talking about with gradient smoothing. I have had quite a few conversations with Fori about this as of late and there are a lot of things already in Messiah’s renderer that I was not aware of.

The trick with Hybrid is to adjust the GI intensity and don’t use noise reduction.

Don’t ever use that actually. I have found it to be rather. . . crap. :frowning: I really wish that were improved.

Dann-O: The Gradient Fresnell shader is what your looking for. It lets you define a gradient based on multiple paramaters based on the slope of an object. That can be driven by light for some cool toon shaders. . . or Camera Fresnells for that velvet or car paint stuff thats so popular in Lightwave Land.

If you hit F5 when your in the interface there are a bunch of pre-set materials there already. Obviously there could be a bunch more. . . but. . . I tend to always go custom with everything I do and I’m kind of bad about sharing. I’m trying to do it more and more though.

I agree with you on the documentation. Frustrating.

#5

Thanke I can find the shaders that are there. So far I only really like the car paint one. I do tweak all my shaders but a preset is a good jumping off point for disecting how it is doen and makign your own. I think a shader share would be cool. I have a few that are cool myself even though I am a newbie. (only had Messiah for 1 month)

#6

hah, well although im one of the firm believers that messiah should focus on animation and solving all the issues reported in the tracker, if there is one thing that would really make messiah stand out is an integrated render manager. i think that all pmg has to do is buy out thomas helzes shader tools and include them with the program and you will have a tremendously powerful combo. thomas is a genius as far as documentation and shaders go - so why reinvent the wheel?

quite honestly, if you are serious about using messiah render engine, you should be buying his shaders. they are a must have.

#7

The only thing I can think of is render layers that actually work, or to say it better easily accessible, with direct output in Photoshop maybe!
There’s none at this moment right?

#8

The render layers work. Which ones are you having problems with?

The Shadow Buffer one isn’t so hot but the rest work and are quite easy and are accessible. You just click on the buffer, tell it where you want it to be saved, what format. . . and if its one that you need to define ranges with, click on the “Modify Output Buffer” checkbox and enter in the Minimum and Maximum numbers. Like. . . for Depth. The Min would be 0 and the Max would be however far away from the camera you want to define.

#9

Actually I had a hard time with the depth layer getting nice results and I remember from some Ztoy post there was a “strange” way to get around these issues, but maybe I’m mistaking!
The shadow one gave me akward results as well, so I just render normally most of the time, have to say that the render is a lot faster than most out there!

The real problem is really lack, and I know it sounds boring, of documentation.
Can’t somone out there make a nice dvd such as “The art of rendering in messiah”!)

Ah, could a hair request be included under the render!)

#10

yeah, thats another reason why i recommend the shaders by thomas, the docs are done the way it should be done… so read them atleast, they are free and will show alot about messiah workflow.

#11

Guys please respect the topic of the thread. I pointed out the documentation is not the point of this thread, its a known issue.

By the way. Does anyone know the difference between radiance and irradiance?

#12

where? i dont see it?

#13

Its a bit quiet right now so I’d thought I’d start a friendly thread. This has been discussed in IRC quite a bit. I’m not sure what settings and features everyone would like to see. We all know that further documentation would be a big plus, but thats not the point of this thread.

where? i dont see it?

First post Stooch. I appreciate it.

#14

What things?

#15

4 Nichod:
Well all the posts here were replied to with a “there is such function all you have to do is…”, so it’s obvlious that there is more need of showing the render tools more than an effective need of others!
I’m sorry that bugs you but that’s just the way it is!
Other than that I already said fur, and a toon option wouldn’t be bad,
but then again someone will reply now telling me there are such features!)

#16

The smoothing of a small number of GI Photons with gradients in order to get the quality of other methods in less time.

Try this scene out.

There is no way I could get that quality in that time without using Hybrid.

Its not perfect. . . and Kray is spanking us up and down the map in terms of render time/quality but compared to Lightwave users. . . we have it pretty damn good.

#17

AHH, today I’m spending valuble time just to get a writing projected on an object!
Maybe better mapping tools!
They’re so less apealing than max’s!

#18

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