need help tweaking settings! artifacts n slow render time

#1

okay,

this is my first attempt at a xstream rendering in maya – mind you i only learned maya and mental ray recently – i’ve tried tweaking my setting to optimize final gathering but it still took me 9.30 hrs to render this image. the aliasing on the depth of field looks like garbage. i’m getting artifacts – weird transparent plants (not on this rendering) and i can’t bump my final gathering up to a reasonable number to not get blotchy patterns… plz if anyone has advice on reducing render time… without any documentation this crap is a totally a trial and error using this program and i’m getting really irritated about not having ANY DOCUMENTATION on how to use this product.

here are my settings for final gathering

core 2 duo e6700
8 gigs ram
nvidia 6800 gt
gigabyte p-35
koolance water cooled (@3.2ghz)
xp-64

#2

It looks as though you are using Vue’s DOF. Disable it, or increase the number of ray passes, which will increase the render time even more too. Vue’s DOF is not good - don’t use it. Use DOF in maya or render out a z buffer, and add DOF in post.

#3

I read nothing but complaints about Vue’s handling of DOF. Depth of Field Generator Pro is one of the better purchases I’ve made in the last few months.

http://www.dofpro.com/info.htm

#4

pretty cool program… thanks

#5

are these render times standard for final gather through maya? 10 hrs for a small rendering seems a bit long…

#6

Vue’s render engine has a lot of settings and tweaks which makes it very versatile, but quite complicated also. This means that it’s common for new users to get huge render times when they could have rendered the same scene at the same quality in a fraction of the time. Vue’s DOF and motionblur are very time consuming too and are generally best avoided. The above picture could have been rendered in a matter of minutes with out the DOF, and with different render settings.

#7

hrmmm… know of any documentation? when i separate the two software the render times are minutes for each-- its when i use them in conjunction… i’m thinking that the final gather is “overcalculating.” atleast thats my theory.

#8

Lack of documentation? Didin’t you get the pdf as long as the program? The whole document is 500+ pages!

As for dof, Vue’s true raytracing dof is not good. I mean it can be good, but it needs AA settings so high that you don’t want to know how good it can be.
Using the z render is a good option, but on large landscapes dofpro will not look good, nor Photoshop’s camera blur. They look good in close ups, not on a larger scale, imho.

When enabling depth of field in the Vue render options, you have an “edit” button. Click it, and choose “hybrid 2.5 blur” instead of raytraced, with 4 passes. This will take some time, but will not produce noise, will not need insane AA settings, and will look better than postwork.

#9

Bruno, you’re right about DOFPro and landscapes. I used it in this image and I had to edit the z map in photoshop to get the look I was after.

I look forward to trying your Vue DOF technique, thanks for that tip.

#10

what i meant by lack of documentation was referring to the section on mental ray in that documentation…

Compatibility with MentalRay (for 3dsMax and Maya)
xStream automatically enables the Autovolume option, and needs to disable the Scanline option
and set the Shadows option to Segments mode.
xStream is compatible with Final Gather, so Final Gather rays will be cast into the Vue scene.

okay, so they tell you it works and it does something, but i push that magic final gather button and i end up with a ten hour render time. ten hours an image is a lot of trial and error… i guess i when i have more spare time i could set up a real basic scene and start playing with the settings till i figure out how the two work together.

needless to say it seems to actually work fairly well with cinema4d (including the opengl! with less bugs) i suppose ill just do lots of multipass renderings and see if i can make something look pimp through AR. now i just have to wait for my approval on my educational license >:(

#11

Hello, here’s the link to a good story about the Vue render settings. To begin with…

http://users.tns.net/~mwalter1/Vue_Render_Settings.pdf

Greetings,

Jan Henk Speelman

#12

theres a lot of very helpful information in there. thanks!

#13

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.