First interior C/C + render settings

[CCS]

Working on my first interior. I've attached an override render and the current version. Working in linear space, and no post on either image.

First Q - any crits on the general lighting? The scene is a bit dark, but that has something to do with all their dark mats as well.

I have missing mats and other mats that still need work, plus still need to fill out the scene. But, I'm still open to any comments and suggestions.

Finally, does this look like a 4hr render to you? And any idea why I'm getting so much grain? This was rendered as shown (800x600). IR(-3/0)+LC(1200/0.01). Direct sun outside, mult=3.0 Planar Vraylights outside windows range from 5 to 15, all with subdiv=20. Fill light (vraylight plane) just right of camera. Rim light behind the sleigh table. Adaptive QMC AA 1/4, Catmull-Rom. QMC samp 0.85, 0.002, 4, 1.0 Default enviro (blue) at 1.0 Refl enviro is HDRI at 1.0 No displacement in scene.

(edit: BTW, override scene used lower render settings.)

I think that about covers it.

Ah! the images...

[dlparisi]

Looking good. Nice modeling and I love the sled table! Something just doesn't look right with the 2nd image though (the first one looks a little better). It doesn't look like your multiplier is high enough on your sun. You appear to be getting a lot of skylight from the windows but the intensity of the sunlight looks a little low. Can you also change the sun to have it enter in a little more through the rear doors which might make the lighting a little more dramatic. Related to this, the view outside the windows would probably be well overexposed since in reality it's lit by the full sun and sky. Also, I think your camera may be a little too high, it seems about level with the door head on the rear wall making the scene a little toylike.

It seems a little high at a 4hr rendering for a 800x600 image, and really just a test image at that. Personally I would expect good quality test renders for a scene of this size in about 20-40 minutes. A couple of quick suggestions to get the time down (although what do I know, I usually just play around until I get it set right):

• -Drop your LC settings to 500/.02 and see how it looks. How long was just the LC calc taking on your 800x600 shot?
  -Try lowring the subs on the vray lights to 10.
  -I've had pretty good luck changing the QMC sampler to .92/.007 based on other suggestions here.

Be sure to post an updated image and any changes to your settings. I'd like to see how it turns out.
David

[CCS]

Thanks.

I'll try bumping the sun up some more. The sun angle you describe would look nice, but would mean a sun coming from the NE. Not something that happens much up here. Not against taking a little artistic license, but I'm not sure whether that would fly with the client.

Not sure how to overexpose the exterior. I know what you're saying, and I do that when I'm using a bkgd image, but this is geometry. I suppose I could render it out separately.

The camera is at 5'6". It's just looking down a bit to get more in the view. I hear you about the "toy" look of it though. I'll play with it.

Render time seems high to me too, but I'm stumped. I'll try your suggestions.

Thanks again.

[dlparisi]

Once you pump up the sun the exterior should automatically overexpose-tweak the rest in photoshop. Maybe render them out as separate passes too.

Just thought of this but not sure---your very large site might be causing it take so long to render. How are your render times if you turn off your background model pieces?

As for the sun, what if you pushed it further south so the sun hits more in the center of the room?

BTW - This post should be in "Image Uploads", not "General". Can anyone move it?

[CCS]

I wondered about that, but the 'Images' section says "Show off your art work rendered with VRay." I took that to mean finals, and that WIPs should be elsewhere.

I'll try dumping the exterior, but it's only 2 entities (water plane and panorama cylinder). Maybe the sheer size of it is the problem though.

[dlparisi]

Rethinking it, it could probably have gone in either section. Especially since it's just seems to be the two of us talking here (anyone?, anyone?).

Two other things I noticed: the reflections on the table don't look right as I would guess the sky is pretty bright though the window. Also, do you have glass in the windows (I'll assume 'no' since it doesn't show up in the material override version)? Definitely add the glass in to get the reflections. I usually check invisible to GI in the VRay properties for the glass and set it to not cast shadows in the regular properties to speed up GI calcs.

[joconnell]

Indeed - I'd agree with the sunlight comments from earlier. If you think about photography for a second, the lens has to be open wide enough to let in enough light to make a decent enough exposure. If you are outside, the sun is normally incredibly bright and will give enough light to give a nice exposure quite happily. If you are inside however, there is a lot less light so you need to open the lens of the camera much much more to get enough light for a decent exposure. If we open the lens wide enough to get this exposure, it'd probably be far too wide for an exterior and our sunlight would burn everything out a lot.

How this relates to 3dsmax is to mimic an interior render with sunlight coming in, the sun and sky outside have to be incredibly bright by comparison to the lights inside the building. In a recent render using a skylight and a sunlight, I needed to have a sunlight multiplier of 8 outside to get something that looked like a correct interior render. Your skylight would have to be something around the 3 multiplier range to fit appropriately. If you use a standard bitmap for your environment bg, try raising the output level of it to around 3 which should make it appear quite burnt out in comparison to your interior. It's nigh on impossible to take a photograph where both the interior and exterior are both evenly exposed unless the interior has walls made of glass that are letting pretty much all of the light outside in - It's normally expose for the details you want more and let the rest burn out or underlight. Take for example the following photo where everything is lit by the sun and sky outside and no artificial interior lights.

You can see that the kitchen is nicely exposed with plenty of colour, details and no burnt out areas. Now if you look out the window, the sky is completely and utterly burnt out, almost to white. As we mentioned earlier, this is because the interior has a lot less light than outside and if we open up a camera lens wide enough to have enough light inside, that means outside is far too bright resulting in this burnout.



Here's another image where the sunlight again is quite strong outside but the major difference is that this time, the image is exposed for the sun and sky rather than the interior of the room so you can see the lens is opened wide enough to let in enough light to get a correct exposure of the very bright sky, but it isnt open wide enough to expose correctly for the much darker room, so the room that the image was shot from is extremely dark, almost to the point of sillhouette.



It may seem a little weird to be using really bright multiplier values but this is pretty much the main thing that's holding back your render right now. It might be a little weird to introduce a big burnt out area by making the sun three times brighter and make the outside environment burn out, but it'll make the render a lot more natural and photographically correct.

Here's a test render of something I'm working on - I'm by no means advocating this as a good render or as an example to follow but it might be close to the effect you're going for.



The two links above you may need to manually copy and paste to see since they're from a stock photo site and it might block external links.

[CCS]

Making some progress. Still missing some mats, but render time is down to 30min. That's more like it! (Tried a bunch of things, but the largest culprit turned out to be my sun, since the hot spot was adjusted so wide as to light the entire background. Doh!)

Still open to any c/c.

[joconnell]

Exposure looks a lot more realistic now

Some of the colours I'm not a huge fan of - Maybe it might be worth looking for a stock photo with a similar layout and furnishings and sampling colours from that? Looking a lot nicer now, cant wait to see more updates!

[CCS]

I'm with you on the colors. Every material, paint, fabric and exact piece of furniture was specified by the client.

[joconnell]

No accounting for taste it might be worth doing a slightly tweaked version for your own reel / portfolio?

Personally I'm not a huge fan of medium tone colours, I find that they make things quite muddy and unfocussed overall, I prefer nice dark blacks and browns and crisp whites with the odd little dash of bright colour here and there but that's all down to personality (or complete lack of)

[CCS]

Ok. I've spent a little time on this one since last post (very little actually...)

Below I've posted 2 images.
The first I rendered night before last with IR=-5/-3, LC=1000/0.01, QMC noise thresh=0.005. It rendered in 3.75 hr.
The second I rendered last night with IR=-3/0, LC=4000/0.01, QMC noise thresh=0.001. It rendered in 7.75 hr.
All other settings were fairly typical, and did not change between renders. No material, lighting or any other scene changes between renders. No PS adjustments to either image, other than adding image outside windows.

Question #1: What's up with the red spots? (Showed as turquoise in VFB. Looked red when I loaded into PS.)

Question #2: Why is the "better" solution so much darker?? When it was calc'ing light cache, the preview looked normal for the first 75%. Then instead of getting lighter, the LC image started getting progressively darker and kind of blue until it was nearly black everywhere but the windows. When it started rendering buckets, I could see the image again, but as you can see it's still a bit darker than the earlier image.

So.... why?


#1.....



@2.....

[rivoli]

Question #1: What's up with the red spots? (Showed as turquoise in VFB. Looked red when I loaded into PS.)

may those spots have anything to do with this?

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpB...ic.php?t=14271

[dlparisi]

Looking much better although the render times are still up there. As for the second image see this post (http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpB...ght+cache+dark). I don't think they ever resolved the poblem or the solution.

The dots could be from the colorcorrect plugin or try unchecking/checking the clamp output in the Color Mapping rollout.

David

[CCS]

Nice. It does look like the same thing, but it sounds like it's intermittent. My favorite kind of problem.

Render times are too high because I got an older version of the file I think. (One before I fixed the sun size, etc.)

We'll see.

As for the spots, I do have color correct on a number of materials in the scene, but not on any of the ones that have the red dots.

Colors are clamped. If I unclamp on any scene, I get blowouts here and there.