real sun/skylight

[czoog]

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

I'm in the same boat

[paulison]

Ive got the same problem with opening the scene.

anyway, I was wondering....can you get the same result by lowering the light/dark multipliers to say 0.1 each and then cranking the direct light multiplier up to say 15 and using linear color mapping>? (rather than using log exposure control)

BTW is that scene using a plugin/ tool? star wars or something...u got any links?

I'd like to test these settings with this scene:

direct light, multiplier 3.0 with vray shadows + area shadow
linear multiply color mapping with dark/light multipliers 0.4/0/4
Environment colour 232/243/255 multiplier 1.5

[Da_elf]

my settings were quick and crappy. slight orange (not enough orange) direct light with a light blue environment light color with the multiplier on both being 1 and 1 then a 0.5 on bright color mapping at linear mapping

[RErender]

Hi Paulison,

The plugin is "greeble" and like I posted you can use color mapping.


http://max.klanky.com/

[paulison]

thanks RErender, so what advantage does using logarithic have? just the preview?

[richard_rosenman]

Hey guys;

Sorry, just looked in here after a couple of days and noticed how many replies had been made...

Nice renders, Samuel.

I think the key (to get something similar) is the combination of the warm key lights in conjunction with cool blue skylights (like some of Samuel's renders). BTW, I tried the movie but got an error. This contrast in color is what produces the illusion of sunlight hitting an object and indirect light acting on it as well. Like I said before, it's actually fundamental lighting for most of my production work. We are, coincidentally working on a spot right now which uses this type of faked lighting. Although I can't post anything now, I will make sure to do so when it's public.

Someone asked about networking - Maxwell it supports distributive rendering but there is a CPU number restriction per license.

Ok, take care and I'm very interested in these renders....

-Richard

[samuel_bubat]

Good old exposure

@Trapezium: I don´t know if it´s impossible to get the same effect with
a direct and multipliers of 1. So far I couldn´t get a similar effect.
It always ended in harming multipliers in a physical incorrect way.

@paulison: There are several methods to control the light without log. exposure. One is of course the vray color mapping that makes a similar
effect (but not interractive). Another one is to control the light in a
compositing program. Exposure in nothing else than a color correction
in HDR Mode. For example with Digital Fusion (should work similar with combustion or other Tools that can read 96bit files). You could render the scene without exposure in linear mode, activate unclamped colors and write to HDR or RPF File. The rendered picture will come out completely white.

1. decrease Gain until the details in your pic get visible and "very important" until the antialiasing of your shadows look good. This
will result in a quite dark pic.
2. Now use Gamma to brighten your shadows until it looks ok for you.
Now you will have a washed out image.
3. Use saturation to restore the colors.
4. Use Levels to adjust your contrast.
5. Add a little glow effect to your highlights.

That should result in nearly the same effect as log. exposure does.
So why should someone take such a complicated way ?
Imagine you have an animation that moves from an indoor to an outdoor scenery. You could control your light interractive and adjust (animate)
those parameters from above to fit the exposure to different light situations. Well, so far this is just theory, I never tested it but I´m shure it works !!

In general I think glow effects play a major part to get a realistic sunlight
feeling.

cheers

[samuel_bubat]

Just made a little test with the compositing technique described
I think not every step is always necessary but like this you have full control.
Another thing is the renderer setup. Somehow the antialiasing
looks very bad (Didn´t test all methods so far).And I think the qmc
sampler needs some adjustment, too !



Unfortunately Compositing Programs are quite expensive.
Probabely to expensive just for color correction.
And photoshop still doesn´t support 96bit files (SHAME) .
It should also work with HDRShop and Reinhard´s Tonemapping
plugin.. but I never tried.
The best I could imagine is an animatable 96bit color corrector
for max´s video post ! (Some programmers around ? )

By the way
I think I found a little bug !
Seems like DR is currently not able to Render unclamped colors.
Looks like only the buckets from my local machine stored unclamped.

[RErender]

So that ezrhythm doesn't yell at me for not doing my homework, and I apoligize for jumping on you man .

Here are some images basicly using the technique samuel has shown. Rendertime for the image and calc is about 1 1/2 hour, subsequent renders with saved imaps are under 10 mins. Logarithmic exposure is my new best friend, the yellow and blue are the same image just different Logarithmic settings. Not as pretty as Richard's Maxwell but I think it is within reach. I am thinking it would be a good workflow to have Maxwell render an "ideal" of a scene and then come back and emulate it in V-Ray for reasonable render times in an animation, I always find it easier to work backwards from a photo ...

[RErender]

Oh, and to add I believe Vlado said he was looking at speeding up bright scenes so this technique may become even faster

[richard_rosenman]

Although I can't distribute my Greeble scene, if someone would like to create a generic one, I would be more than happy to render it as a test in Maxwell. I can't, however, share rendertimes as Maxwell is in early alpha.

This would be an experiment purely for educational purposes.

-Richard

[plastic_]

here is another interesting thread:

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=202955

apparently people are trying to recreate the same thing with mental ray too.

[Trapezium]

@Trapezium: I don't know if it's impossible to get the same effect with
a direct and multipliers of 1. So far I couldn't get a similar effect.
It always ended in harming multipliers in a physical incorrect way.

Yeah some of my tests have shown the same. I'm also having problems in two other areas with Logarithmic Exposure Control...

VRay Lights
and
HDRI Reflections.

Hey Natty, should this thread be moved to another section now? I think it may go on for a while.

--Jon

[BBullo]

OK I had time to mess around with this one.
I tried to recreate a scene similar to richardrosenmans found at
http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/newsfeed.asp?nid=2440

Scene is found here:
http://www.nwlarchitects.com/vray_fo...20Test%20C.zip

Scene info:
Viz 2005 (max6)
1.45.70
Greeble Plug-in

I haven't had time to try an IES Sun. I've never had luck with IES in exterior shots. these images were created with a direct light with the color saturatio of the light turned up to aroud 5, and the skylight saturation turned up with a multiplier of 3.5.

Exponential color mapping was used.

No HDRI

A slight glow was applied in PS.



In this image I used a darker material and played with the saturation/contrast settings in Vray under Indir Ill Post-Proc.



Someone feel free to test this scene with IES and HDRI
Images took about 3.5 Min to render Maps and final pass.

[ezrhythm]

what about animation? as far as i know Exposure control works in camera space... means there will be loads of flickering. Is there any way to avoid that? Is there a global exposure control?