Skindigo Begin-OR

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CTZn
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Post by CTZn » Sun Mar 08, 2009 1:11 am

Sorry I meant the fireplace, the white and clean contour around the bricks !
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blair
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Post by blair » Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:32 pm

The first scene settings are identical to the last full scene above. The only thing done was to move a few things around (I see I have a bottle floating) and then zoom into a specific area. The Skindigo Render Settings Output was set to View. The render time was 3 hours.
1-Nothing done in PhotoShop except reducing size by half and Save for Web.


The second scene was of the same area with the settings shown below.

Skindigo Render Settings Output was set to Width 800, Height 600 but it jumped to “View” 1280 x 765
All SketchUP default except for the following:
1-Lightened the scene just a little
2-White Balance F2
3-Brick: SketchUP Bump .05 (is it still to much and would displacement be better)
4-Floor: Phong, IOR 1.2, Preset Car Paint, Exponent None-500 (should I use bump)
5-Glass vases: Phong, Preset Car Paint, Exponent-None-60,000
6-Picture frame: Phong, Preset Shiney Plastic, Exponent-None-30,000 (how can I get a glassy appearance)
7-Red Leafs: Defaults were left at Phong, IOR 1.22, Exponen- None-9853
8-PhotoShop: reduced size by half, did an auto-level (which did a lot), sharpened 60% with Unsharp Mask, Saved for Web, then saved as a jpeg which I saw suggested for the forum elsewhere.
9-Render Time 24 hours
Attachments
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blair
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Post by blair » Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:52 pm

Pibuz

At my level of knowledge lacking just about any basic tut COULD help. I have made a list for consideration.

1-Based on what can be seen in my last +- 24 hour renders there are surely a multitude of observations that can be made regarding specific details that need serious attention. For example, until the mention of bump and IOR I had not given consideration to either. Now I have a little feel for both. I did a bump test, for brick, in the Skindigo Material editor using Bump-SketchUp-20 and whoooa the brick screams out. In the latest render I used .05 instead of 20 and the brick settles down however something less than .05 is probably even better. Based upon CTNz’s mention of displacement I can see that needs to be studied at some point. A simple suggestion (tut) for me may be nothing other than a how to showing what to do back in SketchUP for better results before even beginning a render. For those who have experience with rendering such tuts will be very elementary and boring, But, for someone like me, that knows nothing, the most basic-good start- tuts related to one scene are very helpful. I am trying to cram the learning of a little SketchUP (SU) and a little rendering into one small gob.

2- Color balance, can’t seem to get the ivory cabinets/trim right and brightness correct and image sharpness. I am not doing to well in that area either but maybe that is just naturally a PhotoShop’s job which I used this time with Auto Levels.. Some of this may be due to lighting or color back in SU. Not sure much Indigo should be expected to do. Maybe it is the lack of refined layer, white balance, tonemap slider adjustments or because aperture diffraction is not engaged. Maybe the render time is not long enough or perhaps, no matter how long the render time, a bit of work needs to be done in PhotoShop to bring a render forward a little further. I assume all of the above apply but at this point in time I can’t figure out how to get the best big picture before zooming in to maximize the details. I feel reasonably certain that my scene is probably not the best to work with. But, I am certain that Indigo can do a very good job if I give it respectable information to work with. I am not to impressed with what I have given Indigo but I am very impressed with what it was able to do with the information given.

3-I think one of my biggest problems, amongst many, right now is how to work with all the settings available. I assume that within Indigo that some settings are applicable to SU (others perhaps more applicable to Blender, Cinema 4D and such) and some are not. For those settings which are most applicable to SU (are there any?) how are they best used. Should one start with .05 or 60,000 for a specific material. I would like to add a little gloss to the trim and maybe the cabinets but Phong and car-paint just dosen’t seem right and the render wait for small changes could mean no sleep. Not sure if the floor should have a little bump or if displacement would apply here.

4-A tut regarding how to take something, for example brick starting in SU, and setting it up properly with settings there then rendering it and refining the settings in Indigo for a certain period of time then doing whatever might be considered normal in PhotoShop in order to get a reasonably good rendition of what should be expected seems like a good tut for me.

A tutorial that would take a project from SU to completion, including work in PhotoShop (if that is typically necessary), would be really good for a beginner like me and perhaps many others. It could be a very long on going post like the “Simple Rendering Thread”. A lot of folks would surely come out of that course knowing how to handle settings and render pretty good. Maybe a thread for different kinds of scenes such as interior, exterior, objects etc. Could even be one for Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced. Heck, everyone might want to just quit their day job, stock up on food/drink go on welfare and make Indigo a career. I am not suggesting that for my project but for A PROJECT of someone’s. Maybe many people working on the same PROJECT showing how they do or do not do things correctly or would do things differently is a thought. Maybe I should get out of here and write a book. Nay, don’t a naw ha ta rite ether.

Pibuz, any tut you offer will definitely be very helpful and greatly appreciated!

CTNz

I do understand that all looks very flat. One area in particular is on the base cabinets to the left of the fireplace. Even upon closeup there is very little differentiation at the point where doors meet. There should not be much but there should be more than what can be seen. Maybe this is partly due to render time.

Thanks for clarification about the chemena. If you do in fact see a “super-clean finish” it is certainly due to Indigo’s capability and not mine.

In a previous post you stated “ use supersample factor instead of manually resizing, frame buffer updates may become slower but the delivered image is better. Also, on rendering times: you rather want to lower yellows saturation than raising their luminance, wich multiplies light bounces and therefore noise. Maybe you can tune whites down on billboard ppl, to get a match.” Would you please take a moment and explain where I can “supersample”, “lower yellow saturation” and tune on a billboard? Would this all be done within Indigo?

OTHER:
In my look arounds I happened upon a screen exhibited by Whaat and shown below.

http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/fo ... c&start=90

Is this in a current release? If so, what does one do to bring up this screen? I see controls such as Cauchy B Coefficient, Enable SSS, Base Emission etc. and I see mention (understand nothing) of such around the forums but have never seen this screen in Skindigo.
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CTZn
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Post by CTZn » Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:30 pm

blair wrote: CTNz
[...]
Would you please take a moment and explain where I can “supersample”, “lower yellow saturation” and tune on a billboard? Would this all be done within Indigo?
I first have to say that I will not be able to give you a Sketchup/SKIndigo specific answer, apologies for that.

Indigo can resize images internally ! You will find the <super_sample_factor> exposed in inifile.xml besides indigo.exe. If that parameter was to be unaccessible from SKIndigo it's where it will be read from by Indigo. Either what, if the parameter escaped you gaze in the UI it will be written just as in inifile.xml, but into the <renderer_settings> tag inside the scene definition; it can be placed here manually, effectively overriding the inifile parameter alias (Indigo rendering options exposed in <renderer_settings> into scene definition take precedence over inifile definitions). You will find that <super_sample_factor> is defaulted to 2; 1 would mean "original size". 2 means that the resulting image is half the size of the actual render buffer; a value of 4 would make Indigo use 16 pixels in (internal) frame buffer to define the one delivered pixel.

I hope you can get a SKIndigo specific answer :)

Basically by "tuning" billboard images loading them in a painting application and lowering their luminosity, unless you can specify a different gain for the texture loaded into Sketchup, I'm sure you can. Because, they are the brightest objects in your scene, and as such are preventing you to use overally darker tones for the scene materials because then, either billboards would be burnt, or your scene would look too dark. However, darker tones will forcibly make convergence faster because bounced light would be reduced more; This consideration is true for luminance as well as for saturation (as in HSV) in regad with Indigo, I believe. That's what I meant by tuning billboards, etc.

The rest was more of personal considerations, I was thinking that a dry earth material over the fireplace's frames woud be very "Dali-esque", a bit like how your scene is to me !
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Pibuz
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Post by Pibuz » Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:05 pm

Ok Blair!
Here's my considerations:

1.
The best basic rule to have a good SkIndigo mat is to have a good ALBEDO texture. The ALBEDO texture ("diffuse map" for many of the others render engines) is the base colour texture. Eg: a brick image if you want to make a brick material. Then, after that, in Photoshop you can (more or less) easily extract the additional textures you need (BUMP and EXPONENT).

Good texture often means no standard/preset sketchup material :wink:

All of this given that you know that you can specify YOUR OWN TEXTURE for any SketchUp material. Please, confirm that you know that.

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2.
Color balance is a very complex topic, Blair. It depends:
a_ On the saturation of the texture you use (never use too saturated textures)
b_ On the time of the day: the more the evening approaches, the more the sun light becomes warmer. At midday you have an almost neutral lighting (but in my opinion not too good to obtain an overall great mood)
c_On the temperature of your additional light sources
d_On the white point you choosed as your preset during rendering.

Given that you have to chose a preset before starting the rendering, you'll never have a CORRECT white balance: you can tweak the various parameters to obtain a white balance you prefer. If your whites don't look as white as you want, you have to change your white balance preset, or your albedo map saturation, or your time of the day. If any of them seems to work, then you'll have to play a little in postpro.

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3.
Almost ALL the features of Indigo are covered by SkIndigo, thanks to Whaat's hard work. And the ones yet not covered are secondary, in my opinion; nothing that would prevent a good render, by the way. :wink:
Concerning the "good values to start" you're asking for, Blair, I'm sad to answer that there are no "good values". I mean, there are PRESETS which can lead you to basic parameters, but when you speak of wood floors or ceramic tiles or plasters (..and so on) the only way you'll obtain a good value for your maps is experience.
I can surely give some generic hints (such the ones that follow) but for most of the materials the choice is completely yours. This gives the huge amount of variations that I love :wink:
a_for subtle bumps on a surface, use a bump map. The value you input is in meters, so I usually suggest not to trespass the value of 0.03. I work with millimetric values in most of the cases.
b_for a more evident tridimensional feeling, try the displacement (value always in meters), which actually extrudes the surface out. ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT THE VALUE YOU SPECIFY IS REACHED BY WHITE POINTS ONLY; black points have no bump/displacement, grey points reach intermediate heights based on the brightness of the pixel.
c_exponent maps are really good to simulate uneven reflective surfaces (I use them mostly for floors, but they're really good for MANY other uses): consider as always that white points reach the exponent value you specify, black points have exp=0, grey points have intermediate values.
AS A GENERAL RULE, ALWAYS THINK GREYSCALE-MAPPED VALUES IN NUMERIC TERMS: BLACK MEANS 0=NO VALUE APPLIED; WHITE MEANS 255=TOTAL EFFECTIVENESS OF THE VALUE SPECIFIED.
This works for all weighted maps, such as bump, exponent and displacement maps.
d_Higher IOR means MORE reflections (metal behaviour), but what controls how much you see those reflections is the exponent value. So, apparently a varnished floor could be intended as a 1.2 IOR with a 2000 exp value. Instead, I recently work with a 1.4 IOR and a 200/300 exp value, for furniture in most cases, and it turns out to work really well. Again, it's only a matter of experience and personal taste. Do some tests on a cube, stick the result together and post it into the tut or wip section. That's what I'm gonna do, but the more the exemples, the clearer the understanding. :wink:

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4.
A parallel tut/wip is REALLY a hard work Blair! Most of all because none of us (I think) starts a work knowing that a certain parameter is correct, so for everyone is just trial and error: until we reach a good point we change things on and on, and reporting this in a wip/tut could even result in a misleading track.
BTW I'll try to make something similar just to see if i can be clear enough :wink:



I'd start writing some basic tuts on the use of maps, and the meaning of the various values, btw, which I find to match better the SkIndigo workflow. What do you think?

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Post by blair » Mon Mar 16, 2009 2:16 pm

CTNz and Pibuz,
Thank you both for taking the time tp provide very informative feedback. Pibuz, I don't know about others but the tuts you mention would be very helpful to me for I am so lost regarding a good starting point and what all should be used. Next weekend I am planning to focus on that scene again. I am slowly learning a little and being completely new to it all I am amazed by Indigo capabilities.

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Re: Skindigo Begin-OR

Post by blair » Mon Apr 20, 2009 3:05 pm

Is it possible to pause (or something like that) and make setting changes and then resume a render?

Also, what is the dummy proof method of pausing a render,need to do day work,then starting the render again before sleep?

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Re: Skindigo Begin-OR

Post by Pibuz » Mon Apr 20, 2009 8:39 pm

Unfortunately, It's not possible to launch a render, pause it, make changes and resume the same exported scene... It's not an INDIGO issue, indeed, but of the whole rendering business in general, Blair. :wink:

Can you explain clearer what you mean in your second question?

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Re: Skindigo Begin-OR

Post by blair » Tue Apr 21, 2009 3:21 am

Pibuz,

Thanks for responding! Once again, you have been most helpful. I thought perhaps "Tools > Pack Indigo scene" or "Pack Indigo materials" might be a way for the first question but your explanation clarifies my doubtful assumption.

More than before it seems that running a render really slows down my computer for doing other work. It is morning and I am into hour 12 of running the scene from above and do not want to stop or pause and possibly loose what has started but I must do other work.

The answer to my second question seems as simple as doing the following but I want to make sure I get it right.

With the scene rendering in Indigo go to "Render > Pause Render". I assume at this point I would leave Indigo open; resources would free up, and I could go on doing other things. Later, just before sleeping, go to "Render > Resume paused render" and that would be it. The part I am not sure about (if the above is correct) is whether or not I must leave Indigo open while doing other things or is it OK to close out of Indigo completely.

It looks as though a second option would be the following: Shut down Indigo and later reopen a new session of Indigo and go to "File > Open Indigo scene" or "Resume render from IGI" if it had been saved as such (some how) to begin with.

I must add, nothing new that you don't already know and others have stated, your final kitchen render was absolutely beautiful in every detail. For my eyes I cannot imagine it being much better.
I have learned some by dissecting the original kitchen scene which you so kindly posted. If I were to study the scene more and do extensive testing I could learn a lot but doubt I would ever achieve your level of perfection.
Last edited by blair on Thu Jun 11, 2009 5:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Skindigo Begin-OR

Post by Pibuz » Tue Apr 21, 2009 8:06 pm

Blair, don't be scared: often I have some unexpected results myself. The most interesting part is waiting for Indigo to work and see what comes out. Don't think I think of everything before launching the render: for me, a fundamental part of the rendering process still is luck :wink:
You wait for a result, then you obviously adjust some things and launch again. I always suggest to render small images overnight for the first test (this is basically time saving) and to use region rendering while studying the adjustments in front of the screen.
Then, one last thing to be said is that the refining curve of the unbiased render engines is..a curve and not a line: the noise of the image progressively decrease, but in the first passages it decreases more rapidly than in the next ones. I waited for 210h cos i could, but I', pretty sure that it was almost done in half the time.

Then, to answer to your question: yes, if you pause the render you should not have any memory consumption. Then, when you re-start or continue the rendering, then you should experience your RAM draining.

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Re: Skindigo Begin-OR

Post by suvakas » Tue Apr 21, 2009 8:45 pm

Pibuz wrote: Then, to answer to your question: yes, if you pause the render you should not have any memory consumption. Then, when you re-start or continue the rendering, then you should experience your RAM draining.
Are you sure?
A scene would still be in the memory, paused or not. Pausing a rendering frees your CPU resources, but not your RAM. You would have to close Indigo (or to close a scene) in order to free the memory.

Or maybe things have changed lately and Indigo unloads the scene while paused and parses it again when restarted?

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Re: Skindigo Begin-OR

Post by Stromberg » Tue Apr 21, 2009 9:35 pm

I think you are right suvakas.
Cause the geometry and such, get stored in the ram, until you close the program, and even then it will be some left in the ram.
But i might be wrong of course, but this is what i have learned atleast :roll:

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Re: Skindigo Begin-OR

Post by Pibuz » Tue Apr 21, 2009 10:40 pm

Sorry guys I didn't mean it.
Blair: if you want to get rid of memory usage you have to stop the render and exit indigo. Then you shoud re-start/continue the rendering with the traditional IGS and IGI files loading.
Sorry if I misled you!

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Re: Skindigo Begin-OR

Post by blair » Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:35 pm

Pibuz,

Thanks for your, everyones, feedback about resume rendering. After all was done (I let it go for 40 hours straight due to fearing a wrong click) I tried the “Resume render from IGI” but I am not clicking something right. I think my slow speed was from MS loading me up with something or something going on in the background for hours later all was operating at normal speed.

You have definitely lifted my sprits with words like “luck” and so forth. I often think I should have been born knowing how to do these things. Another good suggestion from you was about “region rendering”. I have seen that option but never thought about doing what you suggested until you suggested it. I did do some tighter areas as you previously mentioned and can be seen above (but I did it by zooming in not “region rendering”) and let them go for hours to see how they would look. In a previous post you said “Good texture often means no standard/preset sketchup material. All of this given that you know that you can specify YOUR OWN TEXTURE for any SketchUp material. Please, confirm that you know that” and I finally answer. I am generally aware of that option but so far I have only used that which is in SketchUP. I now believe I understand that it takes a good bit of knowledge and testing to do it good.

You mentioned somewhere something about, I think it was, not being into Art. If there is any truth to that statement I surmise that you are and perhaps just don’t know it. That kitchen scene, considering simplicity, composition, light, texture, color and on and on is a work of Art. CTNz mentioned something about Dali-I wish! Dali and Pablo were my kind of guys. They did it their way and were rewarded handsomely, financially, during their time. Poor Vincent, others have sucked up rewards, financially, from his efforts which are not my favorites but are certainly of respectful merit. In Florence Italy (is my recall and spelling correct) some where near the Pontiviccio Bridge I once saw an exhibit of Pablo’s work at the age of about 16 and he had already mastered being able to paint like a photograph but soon choose to find his on method of expression. When I saw that exhibit I learned and really admired his true talent.
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Well, it took longer to get back to this than I thought it would but that’s about it for me on this one for now. I think this scene is getting tired of me pestering it and the feeling has become mutual. If anyone has any suggestions, especially about settings, please pass them along for I am going to try another one along the same line and your suggestions will be helpful. I want to thank everyone for the very helpful suggestions offered which contributed greatly to making this scene a lot more than what it was at the beginning and could have been on my on. I have learned! This scene could certainly benefit from a masters touch and become much much better. If anyone would like to dance with this scene I will post the parts I have some where for downloading. Below is information about this latest render.

These seem to work very well together:
Indigo v1.1.18 (Really like the larger preview screen and other additions)
Skindigo v1.1.16

Other: (Settings from within SketchUP-Skindigo Material Editor unless otherwise shown left at defaults.
Render Settings: W1280, H1024
Picture frames: Type-Phong, Assign Preset-Car Paint, IOR 1.25, Albeto-SketchUP, , Exponent 5000
I wonder if more render time or a phong change would have created some shine. Maybe a chrome or gold frame would bring out such.
Picture & mat: Type-Phong, IOR 1.25, Albeto-SketchUP, , Exponent-2000
I wonder if more render time or a phong change would have created a more glassy appearance.
Brick: Type-Diffuse, Albeto-SketchUP, Bump-None .015
Does it need more bump?
Wood Floor: Type-Phong, Assign Preset-Car Paint, IOR 1.2, Albeto-SketchUP, Bump-None .0012, Exponent-1000
Does it need more bump and less gloss?
TV Screen: Type-Phong, IOR 1.25, Albeto-SketchUP, , Exponent-2000
I wonder if more render time or a phong change would have created a more glassy appearance
Glass Vases: Type-Phong. Assign Preset-Car Paint, IOR 1.72, Albeto-SketchUP, Exponent-60000
Not as glossy from a distance as I thought they would be.
Ledge Planter: Type-Diffuse, Albeto-SketchUP, Bump-.015
Floor Planter: Type-Diffuse, Albeto-SketchUP, Bump-.015
Birds+Cats: Type-Phong. Assign Preset-Car Paint, IOR 1.72, Albeto-SketchUP, Bump-None .0012, Exponent-15000
Red Balls: Type-Phong. Assign Preset-Car Paint, IOR 1.72, Albeto-SketchUP, Exponent-60000
Clouds: Type-Phong. Assign Preset-Dull Plastic, IOR 1.33, Albeto-SketchUP, Exponent-300
Is phong appropriate or should anything be done
People: Type-Diuffuse, Albeto-SketchUP, Bump-.0012
Should anything be done?
Base Type-Phong, IOR 1.52, Albeto-SketchUP, , Exponent-1000
I wonder if more render time or a phong change would have created a more glassy appearance
Cabinets Type-Phong, IOR 1.52, Albeto-SketchUP, , Exponent-1000
I wonder if more render time or a phong change would have created a more glassy appearance

White Balance: F2

Photoshop: Added “Homer” reduced size by half, did an auto-level (which did a lot), sharpened 60% with Unsharp Mask, Saved for Web, then saved as a jpeg.

Render Time:40 hours
I wonder what another 100 hours would do.
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40 hours
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Last edited by blair on Thu Jun 11, 2009 6:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Pibuz
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Re: Skindigo Begin-OR

Post by Pibuz » Thu Apr 23, 2009 10:18 pm

blair wrote: Render Time:40 hours
I wonder what another 100 hours would do.
I don't think they would matter at all, Blair. This already seems to be neat, so a longer cooking wouldn't add significant details I think.

If this scene hase been useful to you for the basic studies, great!
Now I suggest you try to bring realism to another level and model a "realistic" interior, with sun light, some light fixtures, etcetera. I do think that it will be very important for you. Try to model the small details too and to use nicer textures than the sketch default ones. Try mastering a little more materials, adding some bump and specular maps. I think this could be definitely your next step!

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