new workflow - some test renderings

[muzzy]

I like it whites are white

[bernhard]

thx

Thanks for your kind words.

@stupendousman_dk:
nice to hear, yeah that's exatcly what I wanted to reach - it should be easy to create and handle the entire scene file. And great to hear that it works for you too.

@priad:
lol: yeah testing, testing, testing....

@muzzy:
my idea was to have a setup that works with the basic 255-white material like a white balance you usually do before you make a photo with your camera.

I know it's a freaky setup but it looks like the rieder work flow (RWF) works better than expected.

so far so good,
take care,
bernhard

[Morbid Angel]

I like your renders.
A few coments:
The carpet texture does not hold up, that close it loses quality. Some of the chairs need to have those hard edges smoothed out.
Also, when you get such bright highlites like on the chair wood for example, normally you would get a bloom in the lens from that. Adding this kind of detail really helps the realism.
Lastly, you may need to increase the anti-aliasing a bit, some of the shadows are pretty grainy.

[pengo]

congratulations Bernard
and thanks u shared it

COuld I ask the max preferences Gamma values u use?
I mean u use imput gamma and display gamma to 1.6 color editor and mat editor affected too or the LWF values (2.2)?

THanks in advance

[giraffe]

hi
I like this sterile look and sometimes we need exactly this for the feeling.
and it is amazing that whites are white.
I want to ask the light sources in 1st 2 scenes. is it only vraysky? is there a vray sun? can you give a little more info about your light setup?
when you say you want to see materials as they look in material, do you mean enabling the gamma for the material editor?
I think it is very strile lighting congrats!!!

[bernhard]

rwf

Hello and thank you all for your kind words and your interest in my very strange RWF tests.

@Morbid Angel:
for the carpet I just took a naked plane, mapped a texture on it with a bump. lol: no displacement, no fure - sorry for
that, but my main focus was more the setup.
bloom in the lens: Do you mean to add some effects in post ? AA: I used the brutal sharpen filter in ps, that caused
the edges. grainy shadow: I used very low settings for fast render - more samples in light, or higher IR+LC or DMC settings and it's gone.
sorry, just a test I wanted to have quick results.

@pengo:
I know that can be confusing, so here are my settings for this:

Checking
- Enable Gamma/LUT Correction
- Load Enable State wth MAX Files
- Display: Gamma 2.2

Materials and Color:
checking
- Affect Color Selectors
- Affect Materials Editor

Bitmap Files:
Checking
- Input Gamma 2,2
- output Gamma 1.0

Basicly the RWF
- has the Gamma setting 1.6 in the color mapping rollout
- type: Exponential

Hope that helps you.



@giraffe:
I didn't use any Vray Sun, and no Vray Sky - but works with that too.
Usually, when I use the vray sky, I use it independent in the environment slot only, and I check the skylight
in the Vray Environment rollout just with a color. It's easier for me to control the main influence color,
and brightness.

so the lightsources are basicly two. one is the skylight, and the second one is just a simple vray light (plane) placed
in the window. Additional to that, I tested it with more lights and so I positioned for each lamp one vray sphere light, that simulates the bulbs.
- and I tested one IES light to see if the values work togehter.
for the gamma: see above @pengo.


ok, I hope that helps you - so long happy rendering,
bernhard

[pengo]

thanks for the reply
congratulations

[giraffe]

thanks for the reply
can I have a wish? can you make a fast quick test render with a sun? I would like to see result when sun goes inside room and shodows too.

I didnt understand your gamma settings. when your gamma is 1.6 in color mapping, why do you make it 2.2 in max prefrences? and why do you make the bitmaps 2.2 ?

[beestee]

Nice results! It is interesting how the "LWF" revolution made a lot of us attempt to adjust our workflows, but in the end, we all use whatever we can get the best results with. It also seems that the adjustment phase for LWF forces one to become better acquainted with the way they use VRay.

My group actually had quite a struggle with trying to implement LWF because of pre-existing color accuracy issues on our exteriors. We have a very high-speed production environment and really do not have time to muck around with RGB values and bitmap adjustments for every project. Most of our work is colored with sherwin williams paints, and we have a very nice system set up now because of these problems we encountered when first attempting LWF.

Instead of changing the Gamma value, though, we used the physical sun and sky paramaters, the white balance of the physical camera, and the color mapping settings to get the results we were after.

We tweaked these settings by saving a solid color swatch in photoshop, used that as our texture in VIZ, and then rendered and checked the RGB output color using the VRay VFB pixel information. We now get about a 99% RGB integrity from photoshop, through VIZ, and back into photoshop. One minor negative to using the white balance to do this, though, is that the physical sky becomes a muted grey, forcing us to post-comp our sky.

By using the physical features of VRay it gives us a more natural looking end result overall, and as a bonus of using the bitmaps as our color reference instead of manual RGB input, our materials show up the correct color in the material editor. Our swatch system also ensures that every one of our past projects that is updated to this system is and will be using the best possible color match well into the future if we ever see it as a revision.

It is nice to see how others have approached this situation. Perhaps I will try RWF on one of my future interior projects

[bernhard]

rwf test with sun and sky

@giraffe:
here is a fast test with the RWF and the vray sun and sky...

I made two render, so you can compare.

1st: you can see the hard and bright sunlight on the carpet...


for the second, I set the sun value less intense, and you see the room has still enough light comming basicly from the sun and sky system


for both tests, I turned of the vray light in the window - instead of this, I used the vray sun like you requested giraffe. well, it works fine..... of course, I could turn off the bulb lights too...

I make the gamma settings this way, because I can see the images in the mat editor of max, like it will be rendered...

@pengo:
you are welcom


@beestee:
hmm, well, that sounds very interesting.. do you have some test renderings while using your swatch system ? I can follow you with the color matching, and that you get a muted grey physical sky... makes sense... hmm, woul dbe great if you want to show us some pics from your workflow....



bernhard

[stupendousman_dk]

For some reason these last ones look cinema4D 1999'ish... can't tell what it is... there is just something not so good

[giraffe]

bernhard thank you so much
yes it works.
but I prefer with the area light and without sunlight.
because I think it is better to darken the white walls in the sun-render. this will make it more realistic ( imo)
but if you do this, then that sterile look will be gone.

this was exactly why I asked this test
becaue when sun comes directly in room, with sun-lit areas and shade areas, then shade areas naturally look darker.

thanks so much to put your time on my wish

[bernhard]

sun & sky

@stupendousman_dk:
lol: yeah, I think the settings for this hyper fast test were to low plus, you can see the strips because I sent it to the farm too, and every comp calculated the LC and IR.

@giraffee:
you are welcome. I didn't change any settings from the sun and sky, used the standard settings, and I am sure while playing with different light values, colors etc, you can reach many different looks - depending on what you would like to reach.


so far so good,
happy rendering,

bernhard

[paulison]

good effort on your workflow and very well explained. I think everyone has their own style and own workflow so this may help people reconsider their own methods. For me, i think you have some strange things going on. On one hand you have dark shadows under the furniture, but on the walls, they almost look like they are standard materials or without GI and dont appear to receive shadows very well. I know that you mentioned this is intentional, personally i like to try and keep the GI realism and have the colormapping multiplier left at around 1 and then make whatever adjustments required to the whole image in post.

One thing i am wondering though. By increasing the colormapping multiplier, you don't need to have such bright lights so will this render more quickly?. Would be interesting to see what difference your methods have on speed.

Thanks again for sharing, Regards!

BTW: does anyone remember a certain russian who a few years back began sharing settings with Light/dark multipliers of about 4-7?. This reminds me of those where you could use very low light values to give a nice bright flat look to your images in resonably quick times. The only issue is i think you end up relying on modelling and textures, resolution and antialiasing a lot more to get decent results - so from this perspective, these methods aren't new, but adjusted to work with vray sun/sky

[bernhard]

standard materials

@paulison:
Indeed, I used in the entire scene files standard vray materials. There are no fall of maps, or any other special settings. The lights on the small tables do have some reflection in the mat, also the wood - just a standard vray material and the reflection is about 20.

It's for sure with more accurate mats you will get also a different look.

hard shadows under the sofa:
I think the IES light causes that stronger shadow.
The render time is a bit faster - but I couldn't see any huge difference.

Light dark multiplier:
I used that technique before, here is a test render - a room I made with that technique almost three years ago.