real sun/skylight

[natty]

That sounds like a challenge ..

[RErender]

Yes, I'd be happy to spend some time on it, Samuel's method above and a good hdri should produce some good results I would probably look at using photons as they transfer the skylight colors the best (almost to the point of "painting" the environment on the walls if your not carefull) . IMO the scene needs to be closer to the Maxwell above so we can compare at least one type of apple with another type of apple. Any chance of sharing the scene Richard?

I will be on it this evening, it is morning here now.

[samuel_bubat]

So here 3 little test (not the very best GI quality) produced with the method i described above. Well I think this gets quite close to maxwell.
Actually the skylight in these scenes had values between 10 and 15.
A little bit of glow was added with photoshop.





setting the right color tones is not as easy as i expected !

I have another question to Maxwell users.
What about network rendering ?
If you choose your quality by time and you have computers of different
speed how can you make shure that every picture gets the same quality...
just for curiosity !

cheers

[ezrhythm]

could you post MAX scene so we could all try different settings?

[samuel_bubat]

yep.

here is the file from the 3rd picture !

http://sorceress.netfrag.org/optix/IES_Test.zip

some notes:
max7 / vray 1.46.10
take a look at rendering/environment/Log. Exposure
most important part !
the bounces are set to 7.
expect high rendertimes
In my case rendered with DR in Bucket mode.
(DR in the last version seems quite stable.. cool) !!

cheers

by the way.. had some server problems recently. So the file and pics could
be temporarily offline.. sorry

[ezrhythm]

sweeet...

[Trapezium]

Hey Samuel, thanks so much for these tips

I assumed similar in the past but never got a good hold on VRay Color mapping. Now that VRay works with Max Exposure Control I'm really happy with the results in combination with IES Sun.

One thing I don't quite understand is why the results wouldn't be the same with a standard Direct and Log Exposure Control. Wouldn't the Physical Scale parameter just convert the Multiplier to match?

Also, does anyone know if it's functioning with VRayLights?

Thanks,
--Jon

[Trapezium]

Da_Elf, cool idea but I think you should try using the Exposure Control preview one of the sunny frames. Notice that the important orange bounce isn't so evident. It looks like your exposure settings have washed it out.

--Jon

[RErender]

Great proof of concept samuel, looks great

[ezrhythm]

jeez, i even forgot about exposure... last time i used it was in Radiocity age.
And RENDER preview in exposure control also works...

[BBullo]

I would really like to test this set up but I'm using Viz-2005 wich is equivelant to Max 6 . Can anyone convert it to Max 6. When I try to open it It tells me there are missing Dlls
Reactor.dlc
ParamEditor.Gup

Thanks

[Geddart]

Excellent samuel!
Looks warm and sunny. Seems Vlado silently gave us another Method to get our desired results. Cool!

[Trapezium]

And RENDER preview in exposure control also works...

Cool huh, it even says rendering Lightmap or whatever pertains

--Jon

[paulison]

so how about getting this effect WITHOUT using logarithmic exposure control?

surely theres a way using linear colour mapping?

[RErender]

You can do it with color mapping, just takes more tweeking.