Show Us Your Iray Renders. Part II
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As an irrelevant side story, I did attempt to take a picture by candle light using a digital camera designed for the casual user. I placed an object behind the candle at a distance similar to that of the 500,000,000 lumin candle Astrid render. Lining up the shot, I could see the object perfectly well in the electronic viewfinder. I had myself convinced that a ordinary off the shelf Best Buy modern camera could shoot by candle light!
Well, no. Not that the hardware isn't capable, but the software is designed to be idiot resistant. (As an experienced software guy, I don't use the phrase "idiot proof." I have become convinced that nothing is "idiot proof." The best one can hope for is "idiot resistant.") Anyway, only an idiot would take that candle lit shot without using the flash. The camera was going to use the flash! Maybe there is an option available somewhere in the many screens available on the camera's human interface. Maybe I'm an idiot. If so, the camera successfully resisted the idiot.
Not sure what philosophical point might be driven by the experience. Personally, I think that Astrid picture is more interesting with her face lit by the simulated candle than it would be with a simulated flash. I'm a bit disappointed that my point and shoot designed for casual user camera doesn't want to take the shot.
Here the final version :)
Here my reworked scene of the Aviator
HDRI for lighting , custom Iray new materials
Render time 1 hour 1500 samples
zoom in for the high resolution
Sorry to bother again,
but still haven't gotten the solution to handling the dome. It was suggested to set the dome to finite sphere, but still the YXZ handles to nothing more than rotate or tilt. What I like to know if there is way to zoom in and out.
Maybe I'doing something wrong.
...this is really good. Nice work.
Under the setting of Iray Environment choice Finite Sphere and then bellow you find slider for Dome Scale Multiplier , you can scale the Finite sphere to match your HDRI maps and objects in the scene
Iray have 2 spheres domes one is Infinite and other Finite
Thank you :)
Another few thoughts on tone maps, then hopefully I can let it go.
There is an abundance of one control solutions. If one moves from the bright simulated sunlight of the default environment to a darker situation, there are lots of ways to get an acceptable result while changing only a single control or type of control. One can boost the light sources unrealistically and leave everything else alone. One can change the film ISO rating and leave everything else alone. One can change the shutter speed and leave everything else alone. Etc… It seems one might get good results with any of these one control solutions.
Someone who knows cameras might well wince at the thought of ISO 900,000 film as much as they would at 500,000,000 lumen candles. While I haven’t tried all the plausible one dial solutions yet, I somehow suspect they will all be equally absurd if one thinks of Iray as a simulation of real world camera equipment.
I might propose default presets might be made available. There is already such an option for the viewport sizes. One can set up for golden ratio portrait, golden ratio landscape, HDMI, or any number of width to height ratios. A similar list of tone maps set up for outdoors, indoors well lit, night time, etc… might be useful for Iray users who aren’t familiar with traditional manual cameras. This would allow a casual user to set up appropriate usable and believable tone maps that might not make camera savvy folk indignant or burst into fits of uncontrollable laughter.
Automated suggestions seem plausible too. The computer might select which of the available maps would work well.
My three pictures of Xiao Mei are attempts to build two such light maps for my personal use. I suspect I’m not the only one that could benefit.
I'll give that one another go. I tried yesterday, but maybe it was impatience. :-)
I second this idea.
And I really enjoyed your digital camera anecdote. "Idiot Resistant"... have to remember that one.
That's one of the nicest you have posted.
Where'd you get the skimpy briefs and the hand wraps?
Render presets are already supported, and can be accessed via the presets tab of Render Settings. There's also the Exposure Value that can be used to adjust tone mapping without looking at individual settings if desired.
That's one of the nicest you have posted.
Where'd you get the skimpy briefs and the hand wraps?
The swimwear is from Sickleyield with Muscleman's addon. The armwraps are from one of Joequick's sets.
http://www.daz3d.com/sy-swimwear-for-genesis-2-male-s
http://www.daz3d.com/muscle-style-for-sy-swimwear
http://www.daz3d.com/vandals-for-genesis-2-male-s
(today is a good day to get them since they all are on sale ;) Get some of my stuff too. ;) )
Render presets are already supported, and can be accessed via the presets tab of Render Settings. There's also the Exposure Value that can be used to adjust tone mapping without looking at individual settings if desired.
I looked at the available render setting presets. Most of them featured an icon showing the 3Delight render settings window. This left me dubious about how well they supported Iray. I clicked on most of them, went back to the Iray render settings window after each, and found they didn't change the Iray settings.
But that is precisely the sort of mechanism I would like to have for Iray.
The presets offered were also named for specific sets or characters. More generic settings like "Outdoors" "Nighttime" and "Indoors" would be appreciated, at least by me.
Could anyone suggest values for "Exposure" that would correspond to Outdoors, Indoors and Nighttime? If not, I'll figure it out. It might be that all I'm looking for is a single control solution that won't get me laughed at if I run into a pro. That, and there are a whole lot of other inexperienced Iray users who need to figure it out.
light with the equivalent of a 40 watt bulb. (450 lumen)
Shutter speed 60
F/stop 1.2 (not many point and shoot cameras can get this low and I believe only specific pro lenses can get lower than F 1.8
Film ISO equivalent of 800
Render presets are already supported, and can be accessed via the presets tab of Render Settings. There's also the Exposure Value that can be used to adjust tone mapping without looking at individual settings if desired.
I looked at the available render setting presets. Most of them featured an icon showing the 3Delight render settings window. This left me dubious about how well they supported Iray. I clicked on most of them, went back to the Iray render settings window after each, and found they didn't change the Iray settings.
But that is precisely the sort of mechanism I would like to have for Iray.
The presets offered were also named for specific sets or characters. More generic settings like "Outdoors" "Nighttime" and "Indoors" would be appreciated, at least by me.
Could anyone suggest values for "Exposure" that would correspond to Outdoors, Indoors and Nighttime? If not, I'll figure it out. It might be that all I'm looking for is a single control solution that won't get me laughed at if I run into a pro. That, and there are a whole lot of other inexperienced Iray users who need to figure it out.
Best advise I can give for starting to get a handle on "exposure" is use a digital camera in auto mode and pay attention to the settings IT chooses (if it shows you) for different scenes and light levels. Or set up a test scene in DAZ and just run test renders at different settings.
tips
Lower shutter speed = more light
lower F/stop = more light
Higher Film ISO = more light
Camera's (even digital cameras) work to balance these settings (in auto mode) to get a "good" exposure which doesn't always work if you're going for stylized or a Mood with the lighting.
I assume that's a photometric point source inside a sphere primitive with a glass shader? I tried something similar and found the Iray frosted glass shaders seemed to block a lot of the light from getting out of the sphere. That's why my 3 earlier shots used clear glass on the lamp. You might want to try it with clear glass. If that doesn't make a difference, I'd like to know what shader you are using on the sphere!
I recommend reading the article about exposure values on Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_value ), which among other things includes a table of exposure values for common lighting situations (at ISO 100). To change exposure values in Iray use the "EV" slider in the render settings, which then automatically changes the exposure time to give correct exposure.
well, i downloaded 4.8 and tried some rendering in iray and the result was jaw dropping, with one minor inconvenience.
the image, in a resolution of "full hd", has heavy noise effect in it. i have not touched any parameter.
soo... what parameter enables me to reduce the noise effect?
also, i didnt add any light (just once, and it still showed heavy noise)
There are three parameters to make the image render longer, though only one of them will take effect at a time. Under render setting, progressive rendering; max samples, max time, and rendering converged ratio all affect how long it renders.
How long did it take to render? If it was two hours, then you need to increase the max time. If it was less than that, then it was probably the converged ratio that stopped it. I haven't seen an image reach the max number of samples before reaching something else first, but you can safely increase that too, I suppose.
thank you, ill try that when i get home.so im expecting renderizing to last... what, 4 hours?
I decided that my Lyrics to Pictures "Starry Eyed" entry was perfect for testing Iray - I had designed it to really show off 3Delight at the time, so now we can see how much better Iray does in comparison. (Iray version on top, 3Delight version on bottom)
I was able to remove a lot of props and all the lights I had originally used to get the atmosphere I wanted. In the Iray version:
Lights: Dome & Scene - Dome infinite with a starry space pic from NASA, Scene lighting is all the emissive objects like the fairy's skin, her wings, the lightning and magic, etc. Camera Headlamp was turned off.
Shaders: All Iray Uber, Genesis 2 female preset, water presets, emmissive presets - all with some tweaking (the "steam" cloud took all day to figure out)
Render Settings: Mostly default, I did change Tone Mapping to 12 exposure, 114 shutter speed, & 6 F/Stop. Size was 1920x1080. Time to render is uncertain, the log says it took a day but it hasn't been 24 hrs since I went to bed, and the seconds on the line above it divide to about 2 hrs ~shrug~.
System Specs: 1 GTX 690, i7-3770 3.4ghz (there appears to be a memory bug according to the log, so the graphics card may not have been used at all [kept saying it wasn't going to use it]).
All my previous test renders, and other persons' notes taken into account as well, I suspect this rendered way faster than the original which took 3Delight 8 hrs to render. Also the original took 3 days to set up and the conversion to Iray took me only 1 day despite knowing little what I was doing.
I'm not 100% satisfied with the new render yet - things like atmospheric volume need to be played with some more and I need to set it to longer rendering times because it's still too grainy - but it's pretty decent for comparison purposes right now. Neither render has any postwork at all. I think the things I am most pleased with is the water she is standing on looking so much better, and how easy the lightning and water droplets were to convert to Iray.
Enjoy!
Depending on the scene and your computer's specs, they can be significantly faster or slower than that. You can keep track of its progress and stop the render when you feel like it's done. Four hours may be enough, or it may not be.
I assume that's a photometric point source inside a sphere primitive with a glass shader? I tried something similar and found the Iray frosted glass shaders seemed to block a lot of the light from getting out of the sphere. That's why my 3 earlier shots used clear glass on the lamp. You might want to try it with clear glass. If that doesn't make a difference, I'd like to know what shader you are using on the sphere!
No its a sphere with the emission shader applied, the Lumen setting was dialed down to equal a 40 watt bulb,
so glad someone posted the watts to Lumen chart earlier that when into my notes on Iray render settings that I have been making.
There are three parameters to make the image render longer, though only one of them will take effect at a time. Under render setting, progressive rendering; max samples, max time, and rendering converged ratio all affect how long it renders.
How long did it take to render? If it was two hours, then you need to increase the max time. If it was less than that, then it was probably the converged ratio that stopped it. I haven't seen an image reach the max number of samples before reaching something else first, but you can safely increase that too, I suppose.
Also consider how you scene is lit - do you have any Iray lights if it's an interior and do you have it set to use the Scene lights in Render Settings pane>Environment group, or are you relying on bounces from the Sun/Sky or the dome? If your scene has little in the way of light that can reach it, even with a blazing sun set in Environment, then you will get noise.
No its a sphere with the emission shader applied, the Lumen setting was dialed down to equal a 40 watt bulb,
so glad someone posted the watts to Lumen chart earlier that when into my notes on Iray render settings that I have been making.
Here is that same scene with the emission shader changed to thin walled glass sphere and a photometric point light placed inside, no other settings changed
edit:* the photometric point light is brighter than the emission shader when they are both set to the same Lumen value. not sure if its bug, but it is something to be aware of them lighting scenes
The swimwear is from Sickleyield with Muscleman's addon. The armwraps are from one of Joequick's sets.
http://www.daz3d.com/sy-swimwear-for-genesis-2-male-s
http://www.daz3d.com/muscle-style-for-sy-swimwear
http://www.daz3d.com/vandals-for-genesis-2-male-s
(today is a good day to get them since they all are on sale ;) Get some of my stuff too. ;) )
Oddly.. I think I own all of that. And damn it, I did forget to pick up the one thing of yours I still haven't bought yet.
Here is the comparison of the Emission shader, applied to the sphere, and the point light, inside a thin walled glass sphere, both at 450 lumens (40 watts) both with the same shutter speed, F/stop and Film ISO. the point light is much brighter than the emission shader.
The difference might be that the default light temperature is different the emission shader being 2900K and the point light being 6500K.
more testing to be done, but I won't bore you folks with the details.
Why am I having problems with this particular render?
This is the 3delight version, it hangs up in Iray. I let it go for over 5 hours but it won't go past 91%.
I have tried various thing that don't work: removed everything not in the picture, changed every material to Iray material, this is Sandy Bay with two figures and a few props. Unfortunately there is nothing in the temp folder to recover, otherwise I'd use what I had got so far.
I have rendered another angle (second picture) so I don't understand this.
No its a sphere with the emission shader applied, the Lumen setting was dialed down to equal a 40 watt bulb,
so glad someone posted the watts to Lumen chart earlier that when into my notes on Iray render settings that I have been making.
I've been making a bunch of notes too. Still, check out the "Luminance Units" selector just under the Luminance slider under Emission. Two of the options are "lm" and "W". If those are what I think they are...