interior

[oluv_cg]

interior

may i ask how your entire light-setup looked like? as you mention that you used skylight, did you also put arealights into the windows, or is the scene only lit by sun/enviroment?
when i use enviroment for interior i always get splotches and noise on white untextured surfaces (especially ceiling) that i hardly can rid off. i assume it would be better if i used arealights instead of enviroment light, but as some of my scenes combine both exterior with interior at once i still have no idea how to deal with this.

[Micha_cg]

interior

Hi Oluv,

I know you problem. For standard interiors are arealight recommendend, best in portal mode (GI and a GI environment map must be enable). If you need a mix from interior and exterior, than you could build a big arealight box around your scene. Here some more infos about lighting:

http://www.asgvis.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=397

-Micha

[oluv_cg]

interior

thanks for your tip. i always liked your example with the fireplace a lot and i was wondering how you achieved such a noisefree result. what was the rendering time? did you use irmap as first and lightcache as secondary engine?

how far away from the window do you put the arealights? and how big are they? are they about the same size as the windows, or larger?
when i was testing i got better results, when making the arealights the same size as the window and putting them slightly inside the szene. this way i avoided unwanted blurred shadows, coming from the windows themself, that ended being very noisy.

i have to try your setup with a large arealight-box around the scene.

[Micha_cg]

interior

Rendertime approx. 1h, but I'm not sure. Yes, I have used IM+LC. If I remember me right, I have used the LC option "use for glossy rays" too.

The arealights are very big, approx. 2..3 times bigger as my scene. I have used 22 divs, the "store with irradiance map" light options and "ignore normals".

If I would put the arealight in the windows, than I would get a break in the lighting between the balcony and the interior.

The background are textured lighmaterials, so that the background is visible in reflections.

For the metals I have used 20 divs.

-Micha

[andreas]

interior

may i ask how your entire light-setup looked like? as you mention that you used skylight, did you also put arealights into the windows, or is the scene only lit by sun/enviroment?
when i use enviroment for interior i always get splotches and noise on white untextured surfaces (especially ceiling) that i hardly can rid off. i assume it would be better if i used arealights instead of enviroment light, but as some of my scenes combine both exterior with interior at once i still have no idea how to deal with this.

Hi Oluv,

actually in this scene i have not used any arealihts, its just plain skylight + sun. Regarding the splotches, i try to get rid of them by increasing the samples of the irradiance map to at least 70 (irr-map at -3/-1), this works to a certain degree, but when adding contrast in PS, splotches will eventually reapear,i f you look at the right part of my picture you will see some splotchiness

I always have to do a lot of "white boosting" in PS. I am using levels, gradient curves, match color etc. to whiten up my walls (clients allways want light rooms, no matter how dark they would be in the real world )
besides the splotches I ocasionally get "banding" problems, i think this is due to the fact that I am widening the spectre of certain areas e.g. the white(greyish) walls to get more grey areas into nuances of white. So this is limiting me a lot in my attempts to balance the lightning in post, the solution would be, to have better initial renderings, light but not burned...

I have not used portals so much, because i think i remember that they increased my rendertimes, especially when there are many openings, but they would probably tent to a better lightning solution as well.

@ Micha : interresting idea with the oversized lightportals, i think i will give that a try when i find the time.

[Micha_cg]

interior

Here an other suggestion: I have a interior with much openings in a wall, than I use one big arealight integrated in the wall. But I never have tested, will it be better to use many small arealights? If somebody has a little bit time, I would be happy to know it.

-Micha

[oluv_cg]

interior

@ vcube: i see you have similar problems as me regarding splotches. i think they are unavoidable when using enviroment light instead of arealights in the windows.
70 subidvision for imap is quite a lot. i assume my rendering-times would explode this way. i usually use settings (similar as "medium" in vray for max) and bigger renderings already take a bit too long sometimes, especially when using blurred reflection etc.

regarding banding: have you ever tried using hdri as output and apply exposure and gamma there? lately i only render to hdri, because i have full 32 bits per channel this way. and after having finished adjusting contrast and exposure, i switch over to 16 bit per channel to apply some shadow/highlight that i like most. i don't get best results with curves or levels. it would be cool if shadow/highlight could already be applied during 32bit, but it also works well after converting to 16bit.
only at the very end i convert the image to 8 bit per channel and save as jpeg for web or printing.

[andreas]

interior

@ Oluv:

Yes I have tried hdri output as well, however as you said exposure and gamma is the only thing to adjust when operating in 32 bit space. After adjusting these two i usually end up with something similar to an adjusted png file from the vray frame buffer, besides that I think all vray color map adjustments are overruled (I mostly get initially washed out hdri pictures) ,so I am not sure if there is any benefit in here at all...

Concerning the banding I am not absolutely sure what causes it since I usually do a lot of stuff in PS and actually I am not following a strict scheme here. Most times I start with levels, then apply auto match color (which I usually fade back to some degree) then do a gradient curve to add more light and contrast, then I apply an unsharp filter. Probably the procedures that enhance the contrast are the ones to suspect the most of causing the banding. I think I will try to make heavier use of the gradient curve in the vray frame buffer, also I think I remember to have seen some banding occurring here too.

Stay tuned for more?

Andy

[hitch_cg]

Re: interior

everything's great except woman - she's standing on her spike heels only - that's what happens when you make a reflection by simple mirroring

levels, contast, Bloom, exposure etc. done in PS

original resolution 2800 x 1400 rendered in appr. 3 hours ( irrmap/LC)





coments are welcome

Andy

[andreas]

interior

@hitch

good eye...

you are right!

Andy