How many people use Brute-force as primary bounce in renders???

[3DMK]

How many people use Brute-force as primary bounce in renders???

Have been frustrated with using LC & Irrad as my GI setup lately, so I have been playing with BF primary & LC secondary. The difference in lighting and details is amazing and I long for the day when I can efficiently use this everywhere. I am sure you are all aware of the noise problems with DMC GI but I am starting to prefer some grain from this setup over a lack of definition in the LC & Irrad. [99% of my work is stills]

What's everyone elses take on the Grain/noise issue??? Have you had clients say anything about it???

On externals I am getting away with as low as 12 subdiv but internals seem to need at least 50-60 subdiv [mostly for the flat white materials such as ceiling walls. Anything with a texture on it doesn't seem to need the subdiv so high as the texture hides the grain.

VLADO told me in a previous post that Vray will one day have per object GI subdivision controls so you can increase/decrease the rate to get the best results in much less render time.
PLEASE VLADO ! when will this be implimented????? As far as Vray GI goes I feel this is the major downfall in the current versions. The ability to optimise GI per object/material would make such a huge difference to render times no matter what GI engines you used, and I am sure that it would change the way we all work forever.
*Imagine if you only had a Global Subdiv setup to control all the glossy reflections/refractions on materials in a scene. Materials that only required say 10 subdivisions would all get 50 subdivisions due to that one material that you need high subdiv for. Now that would slow things down a lot wouldn't it!!

Any others out there agree/disagree???? Would like to hear your thoughts and if your keen your support to push the amazing Vray guys to make their fantastic software even better.

all the best
Jamie

[Mikokariadis]

"Vray will one day have per object GI subdivision controls so you can increase/decrease the rate to get the best results in much less render time"

That is a freaking wet dream for me......grass is driving me insane...

As for your question, I use brute force+lc for my own tests before sending stuff out to the render farm, also use it after material turn around to correct some problems that show up sometimes, then compose the "fixed" object(s) rendered with bf with the farm render and that is it. Sometimes even bf+bf on small things...sometimes just paint correct details that only behave weird a couple of frames in a sequence, whatever works.

Probably will be adding another i7 to speed up things over here and jump on board with RT when it gets opencl goodness in it. So probably a dual/triple sli sort of setup is coming too...someday.

[Morbid Angel]

we tend to use more of brute force then anything else since most animations we deal with have moving objects which means irradience map needs to be calculated and interpolated. If you have a powerful render farm at your hand brute force is most solid solution, hassle free just turn on and go.
Recently we did a project with a large area, forest, and an object which was shown from the outside and then camera went inside and showed the exterior through glass. All was done in one camera move. We tried irradience map and so on, but went with qmc since it was the simplest solution. Render times were not bad for exterior 720p frame 15-30 min and interior was 1 hour or so.

[peterguthrie]

I use BF & LC wherever possible, in fact probably 90% of the time. Only go back to Irradiance map & LC if I am really up against it deadline wise.

I love that you can switch from quick test renders to final renders just by adjusting the noise threshold, and I much prefer some noise/grain over IRR splotchiness.

[joconnell]

I'd go the same as above - anything animated is brute force and light cache by default. Interiors are a nightmare for brute force so it's out the window for anything animated. As you say you're going for stills so it's not a problem - I'm the same in that I prefer a bit of grain in my renders - it puts a nice level of small detail into your renders.

[Alan Iglesias]

>>I love that you can switch from quick test renders to final renders just by adjusting the noise threshold...<<


Peter, would mind elborating on this a little for those of us not familiar with this worklflow?

Thanks very much,

-Alan

[peterguthrie]

sure, Vlado's universal method

then typically:

-for previews I would set the LC subdivs to 500 and the DMC sample noise threshold to something like 0.05

-for final renders I bump the LC subdivs up to 2000 ish and the DMC sample noise threshold to 0.01 (or 0.005 if the final render size is quite small. When doing large output renders of say 3000px then 0.01 is normally fine)

here is an example render done with the preview settings:



Of course for me 9 mins is fine for a test render, others might not agree!

[Alan Iglesias]

Ah, I'm now understanding better how the Light Cache and DMC sampling are related.

Thanks very much for your time (and the cool pic), Peter,

-Alan

[Neilg]

Never for the primary bounce - if we do use it it's IR/BF

[simmsimaging]

I use BF/LC exclusively. We only do print/stills work so animation isn't a factor.

Like Peter I use lower LC and noise levels for test renders. Master Bercon's preview script is nice for that, as is SolidRocks (depends on your workflow), and Vray RT removes many of the 9min tests, which is helpful



b

[peterguthrie]

Ah, I'm now understanding better how the Light Cache and DMC sampling are related.

Thanks very much for your time (and the cool pic), Peter,

-Alan

Alan, just want to clarify that when I do a test render I lower the LC subdivs purely for speed (500 is a lot quicker than 2000) and when I do the final render I raise the LC subdivs in the blind hope that a better LC solution will speed up the rendering phase. Thats all, dont want to get in trouble for misleading anyone

Oh and like Brett, Vray RT has removed the need for most test renders, but I wasn't aware of Master Bercon's preview script, I'll have to check that out.

[Sawyer]

I keep wanting to be able to have a program that lets me paint in a higher priority for the areas I want and leave out the areas that dont need higher detail as a lower rendering setting. Or a modifier that lets me select individual geometry.

Wait this is sounding alot like the old radiosity engine that max used to have where you had to subdivide the objects and place gi points in each object face.

[Alan Iglesias]

Oh, thanks for the clarification, Peter. That's pretty much what I was figuring.

Hmmm...RT removing the need for most test renders...nice!

Thanks again,

-Alan

[3DMK]

Thanks for all the info everyone!

After using BF & LC for my latest project I am looking at using it full time now...... I just need some more computing power.

Maybe one day soon it will be viable to use BF for primary & secondary bounces......the ultimate quality, with virtually no settings to tweak....one day...one day