SSS for curtains help.

#8

While personally I love both SSS and Translucent pro, dealling with single thickness objects works best with the backlight shader as AdamT already suggested, this is what the shader was designed for was single thickness objects, while the othertwo are more designed for volume objects. not to say none of them can’t do the other, but would you rather waste time tweaking settings for hours with one shader or using the one better designed for the task in a few minutes?

Also why are you using a hard shadow? All Translucent plugins don’t like hard shadows that mcuh, and honestly it doens’t make sense for your render. You’d be beter off using a soft shadow, or array of lights with soft shadows, set to a high maps size, like 1000x1000 or even 2000x2000, it will give that hard look but work better with distances and such then hardshadows, which unrealisticly remainhard the whole way. Interiors shouldn’t really have hard shadows, harder soft shadows of course but never a hard shadow itself.

#9

use transparency or alpha map for curtain material. not for sss effect, just for correct curtain shadow.

pupi

#10

Thanks for your advice everyone,

AdamT, I did notice the floating chairs but I Havent found whats causing this, they are touching the floor but thanks for pointing it out, I’ll have to find out whats causing this.

Robodesign, well i think from the tests below Translucent was the best choice for my particular scene so thanks a lot.

Kaiskai, well its almost embarrasing to have not known that hard shadows wouldn’t work with the effect i was looking for. I’m going to go with the soft shadows at 1500x1500 as in this next tests. Thank you very much.

Thanks Pupii, I’ve done that in the translucent test, I had not used any transparency for the colormapping would give out artefacts but It looks fixed now with the new build.

So… since I’m such a stubborn guy I went and tried the curtains with the three different options and defalut shader settings ( I had to see for myself).

All three were done with soft shadows, :hmm: backlight and translucent took about 10 minutes each but the SSS see for your self 40 minutes and it kept on going. I’m sure that with the right settings all three give out nice results but I’m sticking with translucent free, since it worked better for me this particular scene without tweaking anythinging.

the three shaders have different colors in the shadow areas I don’t know why.

This is backlight

This is Translucent Free wich I’m going to go with

And this was done as Kico suggested, giving it mass and with SSS but I stopped it at 40 minutes I think it would’ve taken at least another 20 minutes to finish and I wasn’t liking the result neither the long waiting.

#11

Backlight is the one i like most, i’d add a lil transparency to get the effect Pupi pointed.

#12

double post sorry

#13

in fact the translucent example has transparency if you look close there’s 2 shadows from the frame and from the curtains but I think the shadow wouldn’t look that detailed with the small holes from the curtain also I think that the soft shadows are taking the small detail that perhaps the curtains would cast, maybe I should use area shadows. But I’m planning to drop in a lot of detailing geometry and blurred reflections so I don’t know if the render times will go up too much.

you got me thinking again about wich of the 2 I should use.

#14

the backlight gives a nice sense of volume

#15

Hello!
I’m glad you succeded into doing the the courtains how you wanted… with my suggestion: Translucent plugin. When I made my 3D scene, it was a little bit more complex than yours, i tried many, many tricks: backlight, C4D’s own SSS, blah and blah, but nothing as Translucent :bounce: ! One more thing i need to mention, as i said my 3D scene was more complex, C4D’s own SSS doesn’t have any effect on the courtains if you put a glass object - like a window - between the light source and the courtains. In my 3D scene the window was in depth details: all the frame of the window detailed, glass, blinds and the courtains. My scene was totally lit from outside.

Anyways, congrats! Your image looks promising.

#16

from a rather render noobish point of view the backlight one looks more natural to me. its not drawing the attention immediately to the curtains like in a real room.

//siddhy

#17

If there’s not going to be anything crazy in the shot, like animation of the sun setting or something, then I’d say to paint a luminance texture for the curtains in photoshop, and just map it right on there. For pure artists control and rendertime, nothing beats faking it.

#18

although I don’t use it much, taking brent’s approach further, adding a very subtle glow can help soften the curtain edges a bit, too.

#19

Hello!
I don’t like to fake 3D in photoshop - 2D -… i want to do as much as I can in 3D, so when i animate the scene, move thru the room or whatever it is, i won’t have any problem! If you are good at 2D then do it totally in 2D, don’t combine… as much as you can :). Anyway, i’m using too these “dirty” tricks :frowning: :banghead:

#20

Why not fake all you can fake? If your goal is to create stunning imagery, and not a science project, then do anything you can to make your images a cut better. If you find yourself a fan of Hollywood effects, then I hope you know that pretty much every effects movie is jam packed with camera projections, fake GI, fake shadows, fake raytracing, miniature models and 2d pantings.

Anyway, back on topic, of the three tests, I’d say the backlighter one is the most realistic.

#21

Definitely the one with backlight.

/Anders

#22

1 minute of Ps work

#23

Hi, thanks for the advices,
I would have to be a pro to paint something like that in photoshop but I only use the basic tools to touch up things -maybe I should dig into it a lot more-.

All seem to agree with that I should go with backlight and maybe it would look more real but, I was away today, left a test render running with translucent and at the end it looks like its giving a nice effect so I’m going to stick with it since it was supposed to be a finished render today. Here is an almost finished result, I’m just going to move some things around and remove others. So test renders are supposed to be no more than 1 hour I think, well this one took 6 hours at this resolution. Its crazy time, maybe I’ll just put some alpha mapped vegetation instead. I’m really pleased with the results so far thanks to you guys.

Here it is I added more curtains so the effect its not as noticeable as in the other tests.
I gave it a glow effect in photoshop where the light hits directly.

Thanks again,

J.Carlos

#24

I still think the backlight was a lot better, nicer and softer transition between bright and not bright areas. Also if you can pump up a bit the dark value of that new plugin and use HSV exponential if you still didn’t :wink:

#25

Thanks Thirdeye I’ll do that,
is this because its dark or has to much contrast?
I wonder if I can change the shader after I have the gi solution done. Its been 7 hours and still calculating the gi. :shrug: The settings are way up thou.

#26

too many dark areas

#27

Well it took 17 hours to render at 2500x1900 with exponential. Now that I have the gi pass I’m going to render it with hsv exponential to see how it looks.

Thank you all very much for helping me, now after all this, I just got to do the kitchen, master bedroom and master bathroom :sad:.

I’m going to post the results in a new thread to see what kind of attention I get.

J.Carlos