Radiosity settings

AdamT · 2003-12-05 06:24:49 UTC

I’ve found very little difference when rendering 7.3 radiosity scenes in 8.x.

STRAT · 2003-12-05 06:26:36 UTC

me too. all my jobs rendered identical when rendered in 8.2 from 7.3

handige_harrie · 2003-12-05 07:01:31 UTC

The hardest thing to recreate from the vray render is the contrast/falloff you see in the corners and still keeping the room lit enough.

Although the vray renders look incredibly slick, but the contrast/falloff is unrealistic (besides that the colorbleeding is exaggerated).

I think C4D is closer to real life than vray in this case. I checked loads of photo’s and all show a contrast/falloff that is much closer to that of C4D than that of the vray render.

So the question is: are we purely trying to recreate the vray render or are we trying to create realistic lighting, just as the creater of the vray render is trying :p?

AdamT · 2003-12-05 07:06:38 UTC

Originally posted by handige_harrie
[B]The hardest thing to recreate from the vray render is the contrast/falloff you see in the corners and still keeping the room lit enough.

Although the vray renders look incredibly slick, but the contrast/falloff is unrealistic (besides that the colorbleeding is exaggerated).

I think C4D is closer to real life than vray in this case. I checked loads of photo’s and all show a contrast/falloff that is much closer to that of C4D than that of the vray render.

http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/s/sk/skiphunt/71738_8564.jpg
http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/g/ga/gaffera/56100_9033.jpg
http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/j/jd/jdsmith/29091_2962.jpg
http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/f/fi/fish/25856_8688.jpg
http://www.stylepark.com/db-images/individuumpic/02b_440.jpg
http://www.stylepark.com/db-images/rosenpic/me_konferenzesstisch_440.jpg
http://www.stylepark.com/db-images/interluebkepic/duo_tisch_01_440.jpg
http://www.stylepark.com/db-images/garpapic/SEITE-51_440.jpg
http://www.stylepark.com/db-images/performapic/perfor_1_2_440.jpg
http://www.stylepark.com/db-images/performapic/perfor_5_2_440.jpg
http://www.stylepark.com/db-images/morgenpic/1PALM-clubtable_440.jpg
http://www.stylepark.com/db-images/rosenpic/c-r-e-w_einzelarbeits_440.jpg
http://www.stylepark.com/db-images/performapic/perf_115_440.jpg
http://www.stylepark.com/db-images/performapic/perf_1513_440.jpg

So the question is: are we purely trying to recreate the vray render or are we trying to create realistic lighting, just as the creater of the vray render is trying :p? [/B]

Good point. I was thinking the same thing myself.

STRAT · 2003-12-05 07:18:21 UTC

max users think their gi software/gi renderers are the best, C4D users think their GI software is the best, Lightwave users think their GI rendering is the best and so on and so on.

we’ll always try to argue the toss that our chosen software is the best/most realistic/true to life etc etc whatever.

who knows? each scene is individual and suits better applications more than others. An experianced user can make any GI renderer do the biz, nomatter how unorthodox is methods are.

I’m a staunt C4D user, and i love the results i get with C4D, but my all time most realistic renderer is the now discontinued LightScape, and i never even used it. LS still stands out head and shoulders over anything else around imho.

(and if anyone was wondering, NO, it’s not the current max or viz radiosity engine)

twilight · 2003-12-05 07:28:29 UTC

I’m not trying to recreate the vray image, but there are some things in there that i’d like to do in C4D.
Not because it’s more or less realistic, but because clients tend to like that kind of imagem a lot more.

Anyway, my main concerns while recreating the scene are:

No artifacts
The wooden floor reflection

The artifacts issue can be “easily” solved by tweaking some settings.
I don’t care if the radiosity solution takes 4 hours to render. C4D can save that solution for an entire animation, vray can’t. Vray will calculate the solution frame by frame, bypassing the already calculated areas.
This makes C4D faster in the end, in my opinion.

Now, the floor reflection has always been sort of an issue to me.
It really makes a big difference.
I’ve tried to render a multipass animation and blur it in AE but it’s not as good…

Any hint?

STRAT · 2003-12-05 07:32:56 UTC

hmmmmm. try a hyper small noise map in the bump slot to simulate the bluring. if it comes out too blurred (even with a bump sometimes set to 1) make the noise map contrasts closer together.

twilight · 2003-12-05 07:41:24 UTC

Eheheheh
this thread is getting faster…

Strat, this is not a vray vs. c4d issue.
I worked in 3dsmax for a long time and i’d hate to go back!
I love the way things work in C4D and i love working with it.

It’s not a question of “let’s see if your software is as good as mine”, not at all! It’s more a question of “this guy is achieving this result with this not-so-good renderer and i’d like my amazing renderer to achieve it too”.

I’m not trying to do any sort of comparison or contest. I’m trying to improve the quality of my work.
I see people that use 3dsmax and used to come up with those plastic looking images now starting to produce some better looking work than mine. Why? Vray, brazil, fR, MR, whatever…
Does that worries me? Of course it does! 3D is not (only) a hobby for me, it’s my job.

So, please, don’t take this as a chalenge but as a request for help.

If it makes you guys feel better i can ask it in a different fashion:
How can i use the super-ultra-fast-amazing-C4D to produce this kind of lighting and reflections?

Thanks for all the help!

STRAT · 2003-12-05 07:54:59 UTC

twilight - thats my WHOLE point

i know it’s not a comparrision thread and a comparrison thread is the last thing i want to see. i never compair software or rate one better than the next (except LS)

twilight · 2003-12-05 07:58:06 UTC

Cool!

Have you tried to apply the wooden floor yet?
That’s where most of my problems started…

STRAT · 2003-12-05 08:00:44 UTC

heehee, back on topic.

no i havent. and unfortunately i wont im sorry.

my 2 xeons are currently rendering a 2000 frame gi animation where the frames are taking about 15-20 mins a piece to render, and it has to be finished before xmas week.

i only did that 10 min test thismorning as a break from my usual job i’m working on. sorry

twilight · 2003-12-05 08:13:10 UTC

No problem. Thanks for all your help.

Meanwhile i’ve done some tests with the bump channel and multipass renders. Still no luck.
Multipass is kind of tricky. When you blur the reflection channel in AE the edges look weird, not to mention that you need to apply a lot of blur to achieve the desired effect.

Maybe i’m trying to achieve something that’s just not possible… I’d like the wood to reflect only the light from the windows (have i said this before? eheehhe).
I’ve tried a lot of different approaches so far, like using planes that are invisible to the camera but visible to rays and to GI but that wouldn’t work, i don’t know why.

Any help is welcomed.

Shane_W · 2003-12-05 08:16:37 UTC

Could someone post the scene as an obj.? I am at work and would like to give it a go with max/finalrender stage 1.

Thanks,

-Shane

twilight · 2003-12-05 08:27:55 UTC

Here’s the file in 3ds:

Room

twilight · 2003-12-05 10:29:56 UTC

Here’s another example of the effect i’m after:

ronhondo · 2003-12-05 10:31:59 UTC

Originally posted by Peoples
ronhondo! - What were your first settings (15:48) and what were the new ones that brought it down to 00:03 ? Just curious because I’m getting a new Dual 1.8 G5 in a few weeks and would like to know both your settings…

G5 Dual 2.0 GHz - ATI 9800

I missed your post last night, seem to have misplaced the prior settings, but I just redid 2 renders with these settings:
Not a true A/B test, but should give you an idea of how the trade-offs go.

Render time 00:05:14

800x600
Strength 150%
Accruracy 50%
PP 1/1
Difuse 3
Stoc Samp 400
Min 30
Max 350

Floor Reflection Channel
Dispersion Channel 50%
Mim 5
Max 128
Accr 50%

Render time 00:27:51

800x600
Strength 150%
Accruracy 70%
PP 1/1
Difuse 3
Stoc Samp 850
Min 30
Max 350

Floor Reflection Channel
Dispersion Channel 90%
Mim 5
Max 128
Accr 50%

BTW: the test has turned into WIP on me, and perhaps gone off topic. I am loving the reflection blur (dispersion)

Take a Look:

/ron

panchopantera · 2003-12-05 12:12:59 UTC

4 minutes

thanks

handige_harrie · 2003-12-05 13:23:56 UTC

Second try:

Rendertime was 35minutes at 720x540 (the res the original vray render was at). Partly due to the reflection blur but mostly due to the high radiosity settings that were necessary to elimininate artifacts. It is still not totally artifact-free.

I copied the reflection pass (set to ‘screen’ in PS) after changing the brightness/contrast. Don’t expect to get a much better result this way.

So far I don’t think we can beat the Vray’s render quality-wise with a lower rendertime :shrug: Ehhhh, wait, I currently have dd=6, might turn that down to 4 and see what happens.

handige_harrie · 2003-12-05 15:25:47 UTC

Lowering dd to 4 sure helped :).

13min 15sec (while doing other things). Less artifacts. The reflection is also much better now.

Still tweaking a bit, stay tuned ;).

Peoples · 2003-12-06 02:55:12 UTC

Looking fantastic handige__harrie! What’s your secret recipe - settings?