After years of sticking with the scanline renderer and using radiosity, I recently finally took the step to switch to Vray. I got stuck performing the same trick with every scene, and Vray just opened a plethora of new tools and way more advanced lighting, materials and rendering. Found a lot more joy in working this way.
Thanks to Lele for his tutorial on LWF and the 0.255 technique, in these images i used that workflow, and it works great and fast. Another thanks to all those posters on this forum, it’s a huge resource, and I haven’t had to post questions until now, since most of the answers are already here, and some of them are fun figuring out for yourself
Used vraysky, vraysun and physcam, the second image is exactly the same scene with just the sun repositioned. Materials (especially brick) need some improvement, all cars except the front one are RPCs and well… you know… All comments welcome ofcourse.
I prefer the first image, the lighting is really good. The gold BMW looks odd though, and the people on the second floor need a slight touch of red taking out of the skin. The second image is at dusk? If so it feels like it needs a bit of yellow/orange in the light to add warmth.
I am truly goinf to show my ignorance and I can wait no longer…What is LWF and am I using it already? LOL Where is this tutorial you speak of. And I swear if Dean Saddallah chimes in I am going to wring his little neck…LOL…small private joke
lol, LWF is Linear Work Flow, ie. ending up with a properly exposed picture with floating values instead of the fixed 0-255 range. That way you can alter the exposure in post if wanted.
There are a lot of ways to work in linear space, but the LWF in Lele’s tutorial describes a way to obtain balanced exposure, in combination with vraysun/sky and vray physical camera. This is accomplised by reducing the output of the textures and colors to match the vraysun and vraysky and setting the proper exposure values for the physical camera.
Tutorial can be found here: Checking your browser...
Discussions about it you can find all over this place, with and without flames
Enjoy that can of worms you just opened up for yourself
Leles tut isnt a LWF tut as such, its somewhat different, more like an addition and an incorperation at the same time
I suggest it would be a good idea to learn LWF first then follow Lele’s tut.
another LWF question. Am i right when saying the whole settings in max gamma/LUT section is only for display and has no effect on renderings?
because if I disable the max gamma/lut things the renders look exactely the same in VFB as before. only if i change the gamma in color mapping back to 1 then the image changes…
is it right that the lele 0.255 wf doesn’t work with interior scenes? what do I need to work in lwf? could anybody show an interior with lwf? I would love to see the difference, but I’ve never seen it.
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=160861#160861
It does work, as a concept, but you may need adjusting.
That is, do not stick to .255 (as it’s a fancy number, easy to remember, and working for exteriors) but keep the method.
Ie., lower the diffuse coefficient from 1.0 to something like 0.5.
I’d even add that interiors is where the bigger gain in rendertime is made, as bounces are dying out a lot faster than usual.
i agree, very nice work but i think most of us already did something similar to LWF before all of the ‘hype’ and i think you can produce this quality without following a strict method of working.
Indeed, and the only thing that counts is the result.
To me the real benefit is the fact with this ‘workflow’ is that you can reduce the output of materials and with that you get a faster GI, and still have a balanced lighting.
