my latest project

[vasco]

Hello,
I' am currently working a relative big visualisation projekt in my architecture office and would like to get some feedback from the indigo pros.

In the moment I'am using a xeon e3 1230-v2 for rendering and my render times are very long. 200-300 hours for the first picture in bdir mlt mode. I have to use mlt because gpu rendering is realy slow with the instanced grass. Maybe there are some tricks for a shorter render times.

[StompinTom]

200-300 hours is waaay too long, especially for such an over-exposed and over-saturated image... That's like a week! I've never had any real problems with instances + GPU, perhaps post your other settings? A scene like this should resolve in a couple of hours, maximum overnight.

Regarding the image, it lacks a clear light direction, which would help give it more depth. There are about 2 shadows which indicate any kind of dominant light source, but they're so faint and hard to find that it doesn't help the image read. Not sure what's going on with the foreground blur... if it's DOF, then it's way too excessive.

I would broaden the shot to include much more context. It makes the building stand against something and the angle right now is a bit too tight and constricting. I also get the feeling that we're looking more down than straight on. Shift the lens up a bit (do not rotate it) to get more sky (figure-ground) separation.

I think a lot of this could come down to your choice of film response, it's just way too contrasty for this type of image.

My two cents.

EDIT: Second image is much better, however the sky is terrible. Comp in a proper sky map or use a better / more hi-rez HDR map. The glass boxes come out quite nicely, though. Good work!

[vasco]

Hello Tom,

thanks for your note, I know you are working with blender. Would it be ok when i send you a PM with a dropbox link to the file(including packed textures etc.)? Maybe you can find out why my render times are so long. Specifically the noise in the windows takes a long time to get clear.

[Zom-B]

Would it be ok when i send you a PM with a dropbox link to the file(including packed textures etc.)? Maybe you can find out why my render times are so long. Specifically the noise in the windows takes a long time to get clear.

Hey vasco,
use Glass Acceleration for stuff like that, this should help with noise behind glass a lot
Also give PT+BiDir a try.
If you create a pigs of your scene and send link via PM I could take a look too

In My workflow I often render in 200% of target resolution, the denoise carefully and reduce down to 100%.
By this I kill the little noise very nice that take ages to clear...

BTW. I remember that my (old) GPU has also issues with a lot of instances. Its on 100% all the time and the CPU waits for work (on grass instance scenes), but since my GPU is relay sh**, I don't bother.

[StompinTom]

Hello Tom,

thanks for your note, I know you are working with blender. Would it be ok when i send you a PM with a dropbox link to the file(including packed textures etc.)? Maybe you can find out why my render times are so long. Specifically the noise in the windows takes a long time to get clear.

Sure, though I can't guarantee that I'll get to it this week. Bit of an intense time right now, but I'll take a look!

[OnoSendai]

Hi Vasco,
If you send me a pm with the link, we can take a look at it here.

[vasco]

ok, now I found a solution by myself. I created the glass material new and now the rendertimes are much shorter. Maybe there were anything wrong with the material settings. Now the scene makes more fun again.

[vasco]

Okay, here are my final images.

EDIT: Comments and criticism are welcome.

[vasco]

Here are two new images, but its not my own design....

[Oscar J]

Very nice. They are quite moody and high in contrast - was that a look you were aiming for?