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Thanks for the info & tips guys. Yeah the shadow wasn't what was concerning me, it's the overall look of the skin. With Maui she looks so much darker than with OutdoorB. Almost like the lightsource isn't as strong in Maui. I actually did try throwing in a very dim distant light shortly after I posted it and it seemed to work pretty good but with my lowly gtx 770 just that one lightsource bogged everything down. Really need to stop binge buying so I can get a 980ti and soon! lol.
Adding a light in Iray should not slow down your render but rather speed it up. I suspect the issue was that you added a distant light which is not really an Iray light type. Pro photographers added reflectors out doors to get added outdoor light. You can do that with just a white surface but it might be better to add an actually low level photometric light changed to one of the shape settings to increase render speed. Perhaps a large rectangle on a low (say the one it loads with) light level. Increase the dimensions so the light is soft and you won't end up with spare shadows.
Ah ok thank you Khory. I'll try that when I get home from work tonight.
I have read many a thread on emissive primatives and there is some good information in this thread on the subject but what i havent seen mentioned is what i have been doing. Alot of times you want a light in an area that the primative doesnt cast a shadow...of course you can turn off the render emitter but you still get hot spots and glare on glossy surfaces. What i have been doing is when i have my light spheres all set up to illuminate the scene the way i want is to scale all my primatives to .001% this effectively makes them microscopic so they dont show up in any reflections but they still cast the same light as set up in the emmision channel. This used in combination with Sickleyields tutorial on dust and fog using Iray can yield some interesting effects as well. This is an example of one such idea the sphere thats casting light in the shot is translucent but yields an interesting light. Another shot to show practical application the light coming from left the sphere actually is in the shot but its so small you cant see it its just in front of the amp http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/77508
Daniel
Neat 'tricks', nice execution, beautiful images. Thanks for the tips.
@D.Robinson
I second that! Neat trick.
...positioned a white plane behind the camera in the pic of little Leela on the Big Wheel to reflect a bit more bounce light from the floor on her.
Well I did a test for caustics, but caustics never appeared, dunno if the plane is Titanium shader, maybe does not cause caustics, don't know.
I'm including the .duf scene if anyone can check what am I doing wrong...
There are no lights in your scene other than the sun, which Iray may interpret as an infinite point light. You get better results using lights with physical dimensions -- e.g. a spotlight with a planar emitter set to a larger size, or a mesh light. You can also see the effect better with objects that have transmissive properties.
Though this thread is a little older (previous version of Iray, and not D|S specific, it does have some useful tidbits in it. I'm sure there are other threads of interest, but this was one of the first I saw that had demonstrable examples in it.
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-3ds-max-design-general/iray-renderer-not-supporting-caustics/td-p/4201299
Very useful info!, now caustics are present, thanks Tobor.
Be-oo-tey-ful!
Can you remind me what your system specs are? 590 iterations in one minute! I want to build my next machine to be just like yours.
sure!
my system does more iterations using CPU+GPU, example below.
Thanks!
I see your secret: a GTX 780 Ti, with almost 3,000 CUDA cores. Looks like a good board, and your speeds are proof it's a good 'un (I don't need more memory; most of my scenes are objects only, with no setting). Now to see if I can find one used, then to get a new PS for my Dell T5500, because I don't think it'll handle this card...
very important to have installed the right PSU, I have this one: http://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00001830
GTX780Ti needs double 8pin input and 70A on the +12V rail or the PSU will reset your entire system.
This is NOT my picture - I just copied it from somewhere here in the forums ...
@Kerya "This is NOT my picture - I just copied it from somewhere here in the forums ..."
Very helpful. Thanks for posting here.
The easist way to adjust tonality for skins is to make an adjustment in the SSS Reflectance Tint under Translucence Color when the base is set to scatter and transmit.
Ha! I finally figured out how to make a material invisible in an Iray shader. This may be old hat to some ppl, but I'll post it here anyway in case someone else wants to know.
It's very simple. All you need is a black jpg (full 0/0/0/ black). I made up a 512x512 jpg and used that. Just add it to the Opacity Cutout channel as a map, and your material will be invisible. (The value is already set to 1.0 as default).
Why would anyone want to do that, you ask? Well, I made a coffee-pot with coffee pouring from the spout, but I wanted the option of not seeing the coffee if the pot isn't in use. Simple enough, but it took me a while to find out how to do it.
mac
Not 100% sure, but, I think that still will cast shadows. The map won't...
Setting Cutout Opacity to 0 still leaves the material showing up faintly in the render.
Thank you, now I don't have to test that. ;)
I've never seen that. For me, setting cutout opacity to 0 has always made the material invisible. I see no faint trace or shadows. I wonder if it has something to do with the other settings for the surface - maybe some channel or value you are using that I am not.
Looks as though you're right. It was a stream of coffee with Refraction, so I did a few experiments on the other materials. Metal (with no refraction) disappears simply by setting Cutout to zero, but the coffee definitely doesn't. It needs the black map.
It was a comment by DAZ_Spooky that prompted me to try the black map, although he was talking about using transmaps. Anyway, as a general purpose shader, I'll keep using the map because I know it'll work on any surface.
Now that you mention it, I've veeeery occasionally had problems with cutout set to 0. I'm not sure what causes the problems. Interesting.
Seems like I've heard of shadow issues with 0% cut out as well.
Greetings,
I use Iray and cannot figure out how get my backgrounds lit properly. For instance, I will have my lightbulb switched on which shows plenty of light as there is a dome, ambient lights, and a sun light, yet rendered there is nothing. When I added lights to my characters they were over exposed and the background remained black. When having the lighbulb icon switched on, I am used to getting a similar look to my render, not total darkness. How do you control EXT lighting with Iray when you have terrain and a dome so that it matches the desribale lighting relative to my INT lighting? I cannot seem to control any of the EXT light parameters and its driving me insane. ;) Please help!! Thank you.
I have tried rendering a figure (my first Iray render) with just a single spot from the upper left. But the render looks like it has another light source in it because a) there are no harsh black shadows as you should get with a single spot and b) the shadows on the floor are pointing towards where the light is!
Weird!
Sertorial: check camera properties, headlamp should be set to Off. It's Auto by default.
Ok, thanks. didn't know cameras had headlamps