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I been messing with the gamma lately and it seems if you reduce the gamma you also need to adjust the saturation levels as well. The lower the gamma the more red tones are produced which can make your models have a sunburn in low lighting. Try messing with it of course light temps make a difference too.
Ha that was the problem I had with it, I thought it messed too much with the overall tone. Unlike using lux I find using the tone mapper hard since everytime you move something it all gets grainy again and if working on a large scene (like the example I posted) quite painful...
Then work with an external tone mapper. The one in IRAY is a very basic thing (I wouldn't even call it a tone mapper). Photoshop has an excellent one built in, although not reallly labeled as such) with handy adjustments like midtone contrast and "vibrance".
True that, that is what I have been doing (CS5) hence why I dont bother with the iray tone mapper more like lighting adjustments...
No, you can't. Not really.
For example, what appears to be a dramatic color temperature shift in thricegift's two images is a result of blowing out the red channel on the left image. Had the overall illumination been backed way down (I'd say 2 full stops, cause it's that blown), the colors would have been right, but dark. Then tone mapping.
But the main reason for tone mapping, gamma adjustment, curves, levels, and all the other hooey that has been mentioned here is plain and simple bad lighting. Physics based renderers are an awful lot like real photography.
Bobvan's image could not be photographed with a real camera at the lighting ratios he has between the windows and the chandelier. If it could, it wouldn't look good. A close look at that image shows the foreground objects are "reilluminating" each other by reflecting window light onto each other, and the effect isn't "dark and moody", it's "dirty". And it's totally out of control. Let direct lights (lights you place specifically to illumnate subjects) light important scene elements, and then crank them down to get them dark and moody. Blow the windows in a second render pass, and comp it, or play with their intensity until they just barely blow. That's the trick in real photography, letting the things you want to blow out "just barely blow", not blow by so many stops that they blast stray light into every other scene element.
You control the light, or the light will control you.
Thricegift's first image has, wild guess, a 10:1 or greater difference in illumination between the highlight and shadow sides of the face. Trying to bring that down with gamma leaves the image vulnerable to all that "one sided" light reflecting and the shadow side totally out of control (hence, all the stuff going wrong in the ear and eye sockets after the gamma "fix". And the too-dark shadows don't contain as many photons (ray hits, whatever you want to call them) so when the gamma change brings the shadows up, they're noisy.
One more light source, a large "fill light", would have totally fixed that without gamma tweaking. You will also get enough render to judge the lighting balance almost immediately, and your production renders will render much faster.
Double u tee eff at all that jargon....
Iray stops rendering when one of the Progressive Rendering conditions are met, even if you enable Render Quality. I recently learned this when Iray kept finishing my latest project after processing the default 15000 Max Samples (iterations), but never exceeded 4% convergence. I presume the something similar was happening with your project? If so, here's a better tip:
1. Click the gear icon next to Max Samples and uncheck Use Limits.
2. Set Max Limits to something ridiculously high (ie 1,000,000).
3. Remove Max Time by changing its value to 0.
4. Leave Render Quality set to 1.
5. Set Convergence Ratio to 99.9%.
With those settings, Iray won't stop rendering until the image reaches the Convergence Ratio.
My latest render, Hall of Mirrors, took 2 days to process 139,715 iterations and reach 99.9% convergence, resulting in clean volumetric lights.
Yeppers! Thanks man I know you are coming from the world of Lux like myself and appreciate your input.
Wiz thanks for that but like nightfall we just want to render until we feel enough noise is gone. Compared to lux iray cleans up quite a bit faster. Providing one has the right hardware of course. I admit to not being a photographer but simply looking for the desired end result..
On the contrary, I think Wiz offered sound advice. It's not enough to simply force your favorite renderer into submission until something halfway decent comes out of it. When I read you had set the Render Quality to 50, my only thought was, "50?!"
You have to learn how to control your lights.
I spent several hours just setting up the lights in Hall of Mirrors to create the effect I wanted, trying various degrees of intensity, luminance, radius, volumetric density, different tonemap settings during test renders... I even experimented with several different Iray shaders and their settings to produce the kind of interaction I wanted the lights to have with the floor.
The only reason the original version had any noise was because it never exceeded 4% convergence before Iray finished processing the default 15000 Max Samples. That's why I removed the limits.
BTW - I never render with any Gamma Correction setting less than 2.2.
I just used chanderlier's lights and ceiling included with the room after applying the light shader, then used the main scene light to simulate night light coming in, like it would be in RL. BTW the tip did not pan out. When attempted to input 1,000,000 with limits off, not sure if it was due to having commas but the value would simply bounce back to 0. So I did like 1000000 but then was already at 50% after 15 minutes. My original question was to simply let renders run until I decide I am satisfied like I was able to do with Lux. Iray works different I guess. Renders are finite like using 3DL.. Cranking the quality setting seems to be working best so far. I know I prolly sound simplistic..
May I ask what room you're using?
If, by night light, you're referring to moonlight, the render in your original post completely missed the mark. It looks more like a thick blanket of fog in daylight.
Oh now I get it you guys did not know that the outside was left blank and a night sky layer was added in PS after the fact. It was part of Dreamhouse. The finished effect is more like this http://fav.me/d9mmrnw but new with less noise since I figured out how to let the render run longer which is what I was originally asking for.. I know one can get very technical. If you read the skin topic they go as far as having human dermis diagrams crazy good tips, but beyond what I need.
Umm....how exactly did you leave it 'blank'?
Blank...invisible...dome draw off...
Scene only for lighting?
If Scene only was NOT enabled, then you are still getting the light from the dome, just not the visibility...and THAT is what is causing the problem (or at least one of the major factors).
It was intentional as I was using it to simulate moonlight and the night sky was added as a seperate layer. So that is what caused the render to stop early?
It's what caused the lighting imbalance....the windows were too bright. So that threw everything off and trying to compensate for the massive difference is why you were getting the noise.
When rendering in Lux, did you ever turn on the lights individually? To see which ones were noisy?
Just the windows/moonlight would probably resolve very quickly. The chandelier by itself would probably go pretty fast, too. But put them together and it's not going to work quickly.
It may be a lot quicker to do in two passes and then composite them in post.
Actually my original complaint concern was not in regards to long render times ( I know coming from lux right?) My complaint was the render would stop before I wanted it to. I was asking for the best method to let it run endlessly until I decide it has cleaned up enough. The settings I posted above with high a quality number seems to be giving me what I was asking for. BTW I rarely need to go beyond 2 to 3 hours. Quite often I get good results in less then an hour...I understand the overwhelming tips in regards to lighting. Thanks all. I do miss using Lux its too bad it's all gone to Sh*t
The thing is...if the lighting was working correctly for the scene, it wouldn't need to go a long time. And that's why all the lighting tips.
With good lighting, I'm even getting scenes in Lux that hit over 1000S/p in under an hour. So yes, concentrating on the lighting is going to improve render times.
Makes sense.. Having said that this was simply daylight with lux (sun and sky) took approx 20 hours http://fav.me/d8t9laf
this with iray 7 minutes http://fav.me/d9e978k
Its definately some of the longer iray render times I am encountering still lots to learn. I am fully aware, but my fans on DA love me LOL