Fossil Watch

[catpower]

Here's the current render of my watch. Fairly happy with it, leather could be better, but I'm going to mess with it for another week then move on. Looking for feedback.

Also, posting my settings. Have a decent understanding of Vray but trying to get more efficient renders, and more detail in my renders, so please take a look at my settings and let me know if I'm doing anything dumb. This render took 4 hours. Specifically have questions about Light Cache, after some research I tried unchecking "Store Direct Light", and my renders time went up 6x, and my reflections seemed to be weaker/different. Also tried turning off "Use Light Cache for Glossy Rays" and again my render times went up 10x and again it seemed my reflections were much weaker/different. I though these 2 options would give me more detail in my lighting, but are these MUCH longer renders to be expected, and are they supposed to affect reflections. Watch is for my reel, so 12 hours renders is fine, just want to get good bang for my buck.

Overview - 3 vray lights, 1 dome light with HDR, HDR in environment slot for reflections. Model is on a box. Idea is watch is on a counter with window to its right. Little bit of warmer lights on its left for fill.

Thanks! - Chris

[prateekvishwa]

Hi Chris,
from my observation, image looks ok but rendering time is way too long! i checked your settings, i think rendering time can be drastically reduces for same quality & size by reducing below values to half or even less thn half-

Dmc max subdiv= 32, upto 10 should do for your scene because you using HDRI otherwise even default value of 4 is ok
Irr preset = Very high! man this is just no necessary! reduce it
Light cache sub =4k! for you image size , LC 4k will drastically increase your render time, 1000 is just fine.
Global sub multiplier = 8!!! , keep it default aswell
Seeing your render settings .. i am worried about your material subdivs.. I guess you have been very generous using high values for same there also, further you have multiplied it with 8 in global! ,
Both light subdiv too high.. in my rendering i am scared of even making them 10!
Key light multiplier to 335.. dont know why you need so high multiplier which looks physically incorrect to me...

If you have decent machine, this image should not take 5 to 6 mints of rendering time with similar quality.

This is my observation.. may be i am wrong also sorry for my poor english.. GOODLUCK!

[catpower]

Prateek,
Yes, I really never go above Medium for Irr, 2000 for Light Cache samples, etc - but I'm not too worried about render times, trying to maximize quality at about a 2-4 hour render. I think when I figure out how to get the best quality in 4 hours, I'll go in and see how low I can take the settings and still get similar quality, but for right now I'm going for best quality, that's why I'm curious about the Light Cache settings, seems like using that for calculating glossy rays and direct light would take away some detail, but 10x longer renders seemed a bit much.

Thanks for input! - Chris

[Paul Oblomov]

As always - if you unsure at how much you must tweak irrmap - just use bruteforce and lightcache

[Drawehn]

Watch looks really nice but i kinda feel that it should stand out more from the background, if you know what I mean?

[catpower]

Stefanie - Thanks. I'll apply the AO pass some more, and saturate the watch a little to help it separate from table.
Paul - Brute Force for Primary and LC for Secondary? DO you use default settings for Brute - 8 subdivs and 3 bounces?

Chris