Grant Warwick- Mastering Vray: Material Ideas Needed.

[Sliver_Creations]

Updates on a couple of the multi layered metals

Sweet J***s I like the right one! I want it

[grantwarwick]

Just watched through your video whilst I was waiting for a render to complete. Great job so far fella! What I really was thankful for is that it follows what I have been trying myself from a few recent threads on this forum (thanks for everybody's help). It was just far easier to see cause and effect in a vid.

One little question though. In the first half of the vid, you were using 1-4 for the image sampler. I blinked and you had changed it to 1-8 (which obviously increased noise on the shadows and reflections, but also sped up the rendering). Why did you do this when 1-4 seemed to be working OK? By upping it, it meant you needed to increase subdivs on lights and materials to get back to where you were with 1-4.

It was a very simple scene, 8-25 is a more realistic value when using textures and hdrs. I simply didn't want to jump into lesson 2 with enormously different settings.

[fraggle]

Email the scene to me at
admin@sathe.com.au

This may be one of those rare cases where you need to adjust the noise threshold (Not the same as CLR threshold)

I'm also up for testing Adaptive Subdivision again and potentially starting a shit storm haha

The scene used Peter Gurthie HDRI "1934-dusk-sun-clouds".
I would like to get his agreement before sending the scene...unless you have it already.

[grantwarwick]

I use cg-source hdrs and haven't bought peters for a while now unfortunately, however he is going to allow me to package a watermarked HDR in with the lesson on tone mapping.
Probably best to wait though.

[tricky]

It was a very simple scene, 8-25 is a more realistic value when using textures and hdrs. I simply didn't want to jump into lesson 2 with enormously different settings.

OK. I was almost under the impression that changing values to anything other than 1-4 was largely pointless. I therefore bow to your superior knowledge and can' wait for the next instalment!

[grantwarwick]

OK. I was almost under the impression that changing values to anything other than 1-4 was largely pointless. I therefore bow to your superior knowledge and can' wait for the next instalment!

We're all here learning man, it's just that I look like the biggest idiot if I'm wrong

[voltron7]

I'm going to try and update a few of those bits, I've some free time now too so there'll be some proper run throughs.

updating that script? Nice!

[fraggle]

It was a very simple scene, 8-25 is a more realistic value when using textures and hdrs. I simply didn't want to jump into lesson 2 with enormously different settings.

Oh, Grant, sorry to get you over the lesson 2.
RENDER REGION IN THE CENTER ONLY:
8-25 definitively make a HUGE difference, in both quality and render time.

Just the specular remain noisy at this stage, AA sample rate is gone pure blue.

[peterguthrie]

I use cg-source hdrs and haven't bought peters for a while now unfortunately, however he is going to allow me to package a watermarked HDR in with the lesson on tone mapping.
Probably best to wait though.

sending you a link to that 1934 hdr now Grant so you can help fraggle

[Raven]

Hey fraggle

Can you upload the scene without the HDRi.
I cant seam to replicate your problem. So need to see the lights and their setups.

Thanks

[Raven]

Here is my test with one from Paul Debevec's time laps. Also a sunset.
Have not changed any of Grants settings.
Just getting some AA issues around the objects edges and shadow edges.
That fixes by changing Clr Thresh to 0.015

[cheerioboy]

I'm still fuzzy on adjusting the Adaptive DMC sampler. It's easy enough to understand that you want to smooth out your lighting & reflections to ease the sampler in the work is has to do. But how do you figure when to up min/max subdivs vs adjusting the clr thresh?

I suppose in due time we will find out

[glorybound]

Here's a real project I am working on, using what I have learned in the first video. Although I am seeing some red and yellow, I now know what to do to dial it in more. I started off with mostly red, which is to many samples, to mostly blue. Also, I carved an hour off the render time. One question: most of the red is coming from vray light materials and unless I turn on Direct Illumination, I don't have access to subdivisions. So, the question is, is turning on Direct Illumination good practice?

[fraggle]

Here is my test with one from Paul Debevec's time laps. Also a sunset.
Have not changed any of Grants settings.
Just getting some AA issues around the objects edges and shadow edges.
That fixes by changing Clr Thresh to 0.015

For sure that's noise free compare to my test. Mine is inside a room with only some opening. Having the object outside get full benefit of the dome vs only part of the ray doing their job when you use a dome for interior lighting.
Will share the scene asap I found time to clean it up.

[joconnell]

Here's a real project I am working on, using what I have learned in the first video. Although I am seeing some red and yellow, I now know what to do to dial it in more. I started off with mostly red, which is to many samples, to mostly blue. Also, I carved an hour off the render time. One question: most of the red is coming from vray light materials and unless I turn on Direct Illumination, I don't have access to subdivisions. So, the question is, is turning on Direct Illumination good practice?

Is the vray light material the small strip on the left hand side on the wall fixture? If so you're bonkers not just putting in a vray light plane since it's so heavily optimized. In terms of the subdivisions, direct illumination is meant as a way for a vray light material to emit light when GI is turned off and thus it needs some way to control it's quality. If you're using GI it relies upon the sampling of the primary engine you're using to determine it's quality. If you're using something like brute force and the area around the light material is the only thing noisy it makes little sense to up your brute force quality only to deal with this one area so direct illumination suits in this case to give you some more primary rays to start with. I'd always go for a normal vray light in cases like this where you've got the option though!