Realistic Renders... NOT!! 12 "And we're back in the room!"

RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
edited November 2013 in The Commons

Hello, 'RR..Not' people!!

Whether or not there is still a 100 page limit wasn't ascertained in the last thread, however, as that one was getting close to that limit, I thought it wise to start a new thread just in case.

For any newbies, the purpose of this thread is for us to showcase our renders and to discuss what it took to make them. That's why you may see a page or two with few renders. All platforms are catered for be it DS, Poser, Bryce, Vue or whatever you happen to be using.

Due to my involvement with other projects I don't actually have a render of my own with which to get the ball rolling, so, if anyone else wants to do the honours then they are more than welcome to do so...

Have fun, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with

CHEERS!

Thread number 11 here

Post edited by Chohole on
«13456750

Comments

  • RarethRareth Posts: 1,458
    edited December 1969

    currently playing around with the Luxus plugin and LuxRender, looks like I'll need to rethink lighting when using this.. going to give the currently render some time to run.

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    Cool, looking forward to seeing what it can do.

    CHEERS!

  • RarethRareth Posts: 1,458
    edited December 1969

    ok I got this after a hour and a half, around 700 samples per pixel..

    am now in the process of updating graphics drivers so I can use Hybrid mode.

    simple scene, with backdrop, and Luxus lights (sky and area light)

    Luxtest1.jpg
    1024 x 768 - 651K
  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    Pretty nice,

    Still a bit grainy though. It might need a few more hours before that clears.

    CHEERS!

  • RarethRareth Posts: 1,458
    edited December 1969

    yeah looks like an old grainy photo atm.

    anyway got the hybrid mode working, and its about 2x faster, but after an hour the results didn't look as good.. still playing with settings.

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    Bob should be able to tell us what's what, the way he cranks out Lux renders...

    CHEERS!

  • Male-M3diaMale-M3dia Posts: 3,581
    edited December 1969

    Rareth said:
    yeah looks like an old grainy photo atm.

    anyway got the hybrid mode working, and its about 2x faster, but after an hour the results didn't look as good.. still playing with settings.

    If you're using a sky and an area light, you may have too much light. Remove one of them (most likely the sky light.) Sky is really for outdoor scenes, though it still my be too bright and harsh.

  • RarethRareth Posts: 1,458
    edited December 1969

    Rareth said:
    yeah looks like an old grainy photo atm.

    anyway got the hybrid mode working, and its about 2x faster, but after an hour the results didn't look as good.. still playing with settings.

    If you're using a sky and an area light, you may have too much light. Remove one of them (most likely the sky light.) Sky is really for outdoor scenes, though it still my be too bright and harsh.

    hmm used one of the luxus light sets that came with it....

  • BobvanBobvan Posts: 2,652
    edited March 2013

    I will prolly get this plug in since its cheap and since I am used to Reality I can ease my way into it.. The way to get rid of graininess is material adjustments and patience by letting it render. I sure grew lots using Lux but as you all know I can still crank out moocho renders

    Rareth welcome to the great world of Lux rendering

    Post edited by Bobvan on
  • BobvanBobvan Posts: 2,652
    edited December 1969

    Now to add renders here indoors

    8550552414_9edc1af01c_c.jpg
    800 x 426 - 217K
  • BobvanBobvan Posts: 2,652
    edited December 1969
    8550552414_9edc1af01c_c.jpg
    800 x 426 - 201K
  • BobvanBobvan Posts: 2,652
    edited March 2013

    One from a while back WERTS Lynda Carter morph Lynda

    7785490606_a8bd0820a5_c.jpg
    800 x 426 - 151K
    Post edited by Bobvan on
  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    You certainly seem to get the most out of it, that's for sure!

    CHEERS!

  • Herald of FireHerald of Fire Posts: 3,504
    edited December 1969

    Bobvan said:
    I will prolly get this plug in since its cheap and since I am used to Reality I can ease my way into it.. The way to get rid of graininess is material adjustments and patience by letting it render. I sure grew lots using Lux but as you all know I can still crank out moocho renders

    Rareth welcome to the great world of Lux rendering


    Often your lighting rig will heavily contribute to the amount of noise in the final image as well. Patience is a virtue, but there's no sense in creating a scene which will take 5 days to render when you can reduce the number of lights and get it done in one. This goes double for any scene which uses volumes such as fog, since Lux is trying to calculate how two sets of light passes through the same materials.

    Been hard at work trying to get realistic subsurface scatter for skin in Luxrender lately, and my results have been very mixed. Hopefully I'll hear back from one of the boffins of the Lux community to figure out the minor issues which currently plague me, but until then I'll just keep experimenting. It's the one linchpin which prevents me using Lux for anything besides scenery, since the people in the image look almost like plastic action figures compared to the scenery they're placed in. It's very distracting for me.

    Here's my latest attempt, but the SSS effect seems too subtle, so I might need to make some alterations. In an ideal world I'd have a muscle map texture I could place under the skin. The idea being that if the skin is translucent and the muscles underneath are accurately simulated, the result would be close to real life.

    Luxrender_SSS.jpg
    1000 x 1000 - 404K
  • kyryiakyryia Posts: 46
    edited March 2013

    Here are my 2 contributions. Both done with reailty/luxrender. SSS handcoded in the .lxo

    jump.png
    1024 x 1170 - 1M
    framed.png
    1396 x 1600 - 3M
    Post edited by kyryia on
  • Herald of FireHerald of Fire Posts: 3,504
    edited December 1969

    Out of interest, what were your settings for SSS?

  • kyryiakyryia Posts: 46
    edited March 2013

    Out of interest, what were your settings for SSS?

    You have to add the following line to your .lxo file

    MakeNamedVolume "SSS"
      "homogeneous"
      "texture fresnel" ["RealityWorldFresnel"]
      "color sigma_a" [0.948, 0.03, 0.015]
      "color sigma_s" [1.0, 0.251, 0.12]
      "color g" [0 0 0]

    For the Skin surfaces, assuming you've set them to glossytranslucent in Reality, you'd add a line

    Interior "SSS"

    after the NamedMaterial line in each Skin attribute block. In order to set the material to glossytranslucent you will need to check "translucency" and move the slider all the way to zero.

    You will also have to edit the .lxs file and the line

    VolumeIntegrator "multi" 

    before the WorldBegin line.

    Post edited by kyryia on
  • Herald of FireHerald of Fire Posts: 3,504
    edited March 2013

    Intertesting that you're using sigma_s values of lower than 1. In the Luxrender documentation it states that this represents the interior density and that values higher than 1 are recommended for interior volumes for subsurface scatter. As a result, I've been using quite high values (in the region of 100+), so perhaps that's part of my problem.

    Time to retreat to the drawing board and see if I can't remedy this unique problem.

    Edit: One thing I couldn't help noticing is you have comma's in your sigma values. I too have a habit of adding them, but Lux doesn't seem to like them and throws up an error if I use them. Every other source file I've seen simply uses a single space between values instead.

    Post edited by Herald of Fire on
  • madisonx_c5746f56a5madisonx_c5746f56a5 Posts: 224
    edited December 1969

    First question of the new thread....

    I'm having lots of luck now using UE and HSS, thanks to the help I have gotten here. (Thanks!)

    However, I'm having trouble applying my UE lights to things like interior scenes, especially ones lit by 'natural' sun light. l typically end up with really crummy lighting compared to what I am used to, either too dark or washed out or otherwise rather ugly. I've been trying to setup lights to represent the light streaming through windows, but this rarely has the effect I am going for. In these cases, the UE actually somehow seems to make things look worse!

    Do you guys have any general tips for using UE in a situation like this?

  • Herald of FireHerald of Fire Posts: 3,504
    edited December 1969

    Are you using directional lighting? If so, try using soft shadows only and relying on your 'sun' to provide the major shadows in the scene.

  • RarethRareth Posts: 1,458
    edited December 1969

    second test with the Luxus plugin, (well third, second got posted in the luxus discussion forum)

    luxtest4.jpg
    1024 x 768 - 30K
  • Male-M3diaMale-M3dia Posts: 3,581
    edited March 2013

    MadisonXF said:
    First question of the new thread....

    I'm having lots of luck now using UE and HSS, thanks to the help I have gotten here. (Thanks!)

    However, I'm having trouble applying my UE lights to things like interior scenes, especially ones lit by 'natural' sun light. l typically end up with really crummy lighting compared to what I am used to, either too dark or washed out or otherwise rather ugly. I've been trying to setup lights to represent the light streaming through windows, but this rarely has the effect I am going for. In these cases, the UE actually somehow seems to make things look worse!

    Do you guys have any general tips for using UE in a situation like this?

    I'd use area lights (if you have them) then position them outside the windows. Then you would assign a light color to correspond to the time of day or type of light. This chart was posted a in the old forum..

    EDIT: Got my wires crossed, but you can assign these colors to get the type of lighting you want.

    color_chart.jpg
    704 x 800 - 138K
    Post edited by Male-M3dia on
  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited March 2013


    Often your lighting rig will heavily contribute to the amount of noise in the final image as well. Patience is a virtue, but there's no sense in creating a scene which will take 5 days to render when you can reduce the number of lights and get it done in one. This goes double for any scene which uses volumes such as fog, since Lux is trying to calculate how two sets of light passes through the same materials.

    Been hard at work trying to get realistic subsurface scatter for skin in Luxrender lately, and my results have been very mixed. Hopefully I'll hear back from one of the boffins of the Lux community to figure out the minor issues which currently plague me, but until then I'll just keep experimenting. It's the one linchpin which prevents me using Lux for anything besides scenery, since the people in the image look almost like plastic action figures compared to the scenery they're placed in. It's very distracting for me.

    Here's my latest attempt, but the SSS effect seems too subtle, so I might need to make some alterations. In an ideal world I'd have a muscle map texture I could place under the skin. The idea being that if the skin is translucent and the muscles underneath are accurately simulated, the result would be close to real life.

    The composition is nice, but, I can't help feeling that there's a light missing. It looks somewhat dull.

    CHEERS!

    Post edited by Rogerbee on
  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    kyryia said:
    Here are my 2 contributions. Both done with reailty/luxrender. SSS handcoded in the .lxo

    The top one seems to suffer from the same lack of light as Herald's does. It probably cuts down render times, but, if you're left with a dull looking render then whatever time it did take seems a little wasted. I do like the character though, she reminds me of the actress Dakota Blue Richards.

    Your second render is much better as there is light and life in there and it makes for a very eyecatching scene.

    CHEERS!

  • Herald of FireHerald of Fire Posts: 3,504
    edited December 1969

    Rogerbee said:
    The composition is nice, bur, I can't help feeling that there's a light missing. It looks somewhat dull.

    CHEERS!


    That's largely a result of the materials being used. I can adjust the tone mapping to make it brighter, but it ends up looking washed out and faded. Like I said, I'm experimenting mostly, trying to find the best settings for decent SSS effects using Luxrender.
  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    Rareth said:
    second test with the Luxus plugin, (well third, second got posted in the luxus discussion forum)

    Looking good,

    I would change her hair though, too much of her face is hidden and the dark hair is disappearing into the background.

    CHEERS!

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969


    That's largely a result of the materials being used. I can adjust the tone mapping to make it brighter, but it ends up looking washed out and faded. Like I said, I'm experimenting mostly, trying to find the best settings for decent SSS effects using Luxrender.

    No problem,

    All the renders I seem to do are tests, so much so sometimes that I forget what it is I'm testing. I want to buy up a few more Lantios sets and maybe get into Lux when I'm more comfortable with everything else.

    I'll get there in the end, thing is, I have to concentrate on one project at one time or I lose focus, and that project isn't 3D at the moment

    CHEERS!

  • RarethRareth Posts: 1,458
    edited December 1969

    Rogerbee said:

    That's largely a result of the materials being used. I can adjust the tone mapping to make it brighter, but it ends up looking washed out and faded. Like I said, I'm experimenting mostly, trying to find the best settings for decent SSS effects using Luxrender.

    No problem,

    All the renders I seem to do are tests, so much so sometimes that I forget what it is I'm testing. I want to buy up a few more Lantios sets and maybe get into Lux when I'm more comfortable with everything else.

    I'll get there in the end, thing is, I have to concentrate on one project at one time or I lose focus, and that project isn't 3D at the moment

    CHEERS!

    I'm having to completly rethink lights for working with Lux, more is definitely not better.

  • Herald of FireHerald of Fire Posts: 3,504
    edited March 2013

    Rareth said:
    I'm having to completly rethink lights for working with Lux, more is definitely not better.

    Quite the opposite in fact. You want as few lights as possible when working with any Lux scene. Since Lux simulates light accurately, it's doing billions of calculations per light source. Too many lights and you get a mass of noise which can take thousands of samples to clear up. Some of my early works are still dotted with noise even after 3000+ samples per pixel and over 100 render hours. In fact, it's so bad that all of the works I've posted both in these forums and on my DA account use a maximum of two lights. I have at least 15 different works which I'll probably never post because they're noise-ridden messes.

    My current render, albeit using SSS, is clocking in at 516 samples and has been running for the last five hours and 37 minutes! It only uses a single light source, but has an efficiency rating of nearly 3000% and still looks as noisy as a test render.

    For simple scenes, Lux can render pretty fast, but the more advanced stuff really does take incredible amounts of time to wash out all the noise. It's one of the major reasons I'm far from abandoning 3Delight just yet. That and easier to use SSS :p

    Post edited by Herald of Fire on
  • RarethRareth Posts: 1,458
    edited December 1969

    Rareth said:
    I'm having to completly rethink lights for working with Lux, more is definitely not better.

    Quite the opposite in fact. You want as few lights as possible when working with any Lux scene. Since Lux simulates light accurately, it's doing billions of calculations per light source. Too many lights and you get a mass of noise which can take thousands of samples to clear up. Some of my early works are still dotted with noise even after 3000+ samples per pixel and over 100 render hours. In fact, it's so bad that all of the works I've posted both in these forums and on my DA account use a maximum of two lights. I have at least 15 different works which I'll probably never post because they're noise-ridden messes.

    My current render, albeit using SSS, is clocking in at 516 samples and has been running for the last five hours and 37 minutes! It only uses a single light source, but has an efficiency rating of nearly 3000% and still looks as noisy as a test render.

    For simple scenes, Lux can render pretty fast, but the more advanced stuff really does take incredible amounts of time to wash out all the noise. It's one of the major reasons I'm far from abandoning 3Delight just yet. That and easier to use SSS :p


    actually I think I got it right.. more is NOT better... 3Delight you need a bunch of lights (3 minimum to get decent lighting or use UE) with Lux one or two seems to work the best.

This discussion has been closed.