Help Needed

[BillyRaygun]

Hi everyone,

I need help again. Here is a rendering that seems to have a lot of potential. Rendered at the size posted, it took less than 15 minutes. For my industry, this is perfect.

Aside from some of the tricks presented to me previously, ie not having a pure white glow, to use maps to mix up the surface etc. What I am more concerned about is objects that appear to float in space or flat looking. Tiny details being lost or hard to see.

Another major concern of mine is the use of lights. Rectangular lights seem to work well to illuminate the entire model as a studio setup. But when it comes to focused spots, I'm challenged. What is very simple in other programs, is more difficult for me in Vray. I tend to lean towards rectangular lights to solve all my lighting problems. When all I really want is a focused spot light effect.

On the model, the bright white on the side of a counter is for a back-lit logo. The other super white areas are simply illuminated sign plex.

If you are up for the challenge, I would love some help.

[fpedrogo]

Re: Help Needed

Hi
For the lamp it is better to9 use 2sided material an put nan omni light inside the lamp and increase the intensity to get the desired effect. If you want softh shadow from the omni light just increase the radius to something like .6.
For the spot light on the area logo, don't use rectangular light, try to use spotlight.

For the floating shadow, I believe that the samples option on the Irradiance Map rollout is to high. If you use a high value for this option, you will smooth the shadow. I believe that the default value of 20 is good, if not you can increase the value up to 30. Also I don't know how are your setting, but to throw more samples on the detail and shadow area use -1 or 0 on your Max Rate on the Irr Map. But basically your shadows are to smooth.

Best

[BillyRaygun]

Re: Help Needed

Thank you! I actually stumbled across the lamp tutorial that takes you through the step by step process of what you just described. That helped a lot. I will try the other methods you mentioned next.

Thanks again!

[Alexander Petrov]

Re: Help Needed

Hi, for "flying effect" prevention you may also increase Dist threshold in IM menu from 0.1 to 0.3

[BillyRaygun]

Re: Help Needed

Thanks! I'll try this out also. Lowering my samples and adjusting my Max rate helped a ton to bring out more detail. So I am interested to see the results of changing the distance threshold.

What puzzles me now is, if I can pull out more detail by adjusting the max rate, why the need for detail enhancement? If I can reduce the "flying" effect by adjusting my samples, why the need for the distance threshold?

I'm not whining, I just want to understand why we need two, three or four different tools to control the same thing.

[fpedrogo]

Re: Help Needed

Basically Detail Enhancement calculate the small area with brute force sampling method, It is like use Irradiance Map for large and medium detail at the same time brute force for small detail.
Distance threshold, throw more sample depending of the distance, so if you are happy with your result by changing the min rate and max rate you don't need to use DE or Distance Threshold.

Best

[BillyRaygun]

Re: Help Needed

Thanks for the clarification! I will practice.