Hello tho this forum plus a few questions

General questions about Indigo, the scene format, rendering etc...
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Headroom
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Hello tho this forum plus a few questions

Post by Headroom » Thu Aug 09, 2007 2:05 pm

Hello,

I have played with Blender/Blendigo/Indigo for a little while now and finally registered on this forum yesterday.

After some frustration with Yafray and some successful experimentation with Yaf(a)ray I was undecided if I should rater stick with the other renderers, or try just another one. I am happy I did!!!

I admit that the render times scared me a little. I work on an core2duo Dell Latitude D620 notebook and Yafray and Yafaray usually totally block that machine effectively disabling me to continue to work on anything else.

However, I was happily surprised when I discovered, that Indigo lets me work quite nicely while rendering. So T H A N K N S OnoSendai.
Also as I work in Blender, a big round of applause for Blendigo.

I have attached a picture of one of my feeble attempts at CG. I started modeling my house in Blender as a starter exercise when I discovered Blender about 3 years ago. After collectiing some dust I picked it up again and decided to advance the model a little.

There are a few questions I have in respect to it. There is actually no glass in the windows, they are just empty frames. Are there any negative effects to that approach ? Should I really put glass panes in the windows?
I would assume in a daylit scene there is just a little reduction in light intensity concernig direct light, but of course there would be also some more indirect light radiating back out of the window because there is no glass reflecting it back into the room.

Also the window to the right actually looks out into the woods and you can really only see foilage from that view. What would be the best way to approach that?
Obviously I could attempt to model a whole bunch of large hickory trees in some tree generator in Blender but I really don't want to do that if I can avoid it.

In the current scene I have all "holes" plugged with exit portals. I understand that if I want to see something trough that window I have to remove that. How much of an effect would this have on the render time ?
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BbB
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Post by BbB » Thu Aug 09, 2007 7:06 pm

This looks fantastic. I don't have any experience with exit portals, but on your other questions, I would definitely leave the windows empty as glass will considerably increase render time. As for the foliage, my favourite work around is to position Blender in the camera view and from there add a plane. Then go into top view and drag your plane along its local axis (the axis from camera to plane) quite far away from the scene. Then go back into camera view and drag/scale your plane so that it covers the entire window section (ideally a bit more). Now apply a jpg photograph to your plane as a texture. Make sure the perspective of your photo matches the perspective of the scene (though if it's just foliage, it does not matter that much, only scale is important. You can also play with the perspective by dragging your photo around until it matches). Then render. If your scene is lit by a sun and the plane is quite far from the rest of the scene, the sun will nicely illuminate the photo, even if the light is facing the camera (just make sure the background plane is further away from the Blender sun). I find this workaround to work better than rendering with alpha channel as the background gets better integrated in the scene. It also has the advantage of not having to tweak the tonemapping a million times in order for the landscape not to be overexposed (as would happen if you were modelling the entire exterior scene). Have a look at the first pic on this thread for an example.
http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/fo ... highlight=

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Kram1032
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Post by Kram1032 » Thu Aug 09, 2007 9:26 pm

If you really want something, to be seen, outdoor, you, have to wait MUCH longer, for the scene - as long, as this is no problem, it should work fine...

rendertime * 10 - rendertime * 100...
how long did that need to render?
if you look arround older interior Images, in the gallery, and how long they took, you might get a feeling, of how much the time increases...
Also, there are many tests, in the (mostly) WIP forum.

I like that scene alot :) How long did you render, what're your exact specs, which modes? :D

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Re: Hello tho this forum plus a few questions

Post by SimonLarsen » Thu Aug 09, 2007 10:26 pm

Hey Headroom, welcome to the Indigo community.
Headroom wrote: However, I was happily surprised when I discovered, that Indigo lets me work quite nicely while rendering.
This has actually nothing to do with Indigo.
When Blendigo launches Indigo it makes a batch file with this code:

Code: Select all

cd /d "C:\Indigo08"
start /b /belownormal indigo.exe "office.igs" -t 1
Because "/belownormal" is added, it tells your OS that Indigo has lower priority than other programs and because of that, other programs will not be slowed down because of Indigo.

I suppose you can do this with YafRay too.
Just press Ctrl+Alt+Del, select the "Processes"-tab, right-click on YafRay og Indigo or whatever. Then there should be something called Priority or something. Select "Below Normal".

(I'm not sure all the button names is correct since I'm not using an English Windows.)

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Kram1032
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Post by Kram1032 » Thu Aug 09, 2007 11:59 pm

sounds fine, to me :)
priority is correct.

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deltaepsylon
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Post by deltaepsylon » Fri Aug 10, 2007 3:56 am

OMFG.
that looks EXACTLY like my living room. except for the chair, we dont have a chair there. :shock:

btw nice model, really realistic

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Headroom
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Post by Headroom » Fri Aug 10, 2007 4:48 am

BdM:
Thanks for the tip. I'll try that our over the weekend.

KRAM:
This scene rendered for 5-6 hours, Indigo test 3 with following settings:

<renderer_settings>
<width>1024</width>
<height>768</height>
<metropolis>true</metropolis>
<max_num_consec_rejections>100</max_num_consec_rejections>
<bidirectional>true</bidirectional>
<max_depth>1000</max_depth>
<logging>false</logging>
<save_untonemapped_exr>false</save_untonemapped_exr>
<save_tonemapped_exr>false</save_tonemapped_exr>
<save_igi>true</save_igi>
<display_period>20.0</display_period>
<halt_time>-1</halt_time>
<halt_samples_per_pixel>-1</halt_samples_per_pixel>
<frame_upload_period>60</frame_upload_period>
<image_save_period>120</image_save_period>
<super_sample_factor>2</super_sample_factor>
<hybrid>false</hybrid>
<bih_tri_threshold>500000</bih_tri_threshold>
<cache_trees>0</cache_trees>
</renderer_settings>

Simon:
You are right! I should not have blamed that on Yafray.
I will give it a shot with Yaf(a)ray.

deltaepsilon:
That is not very surprising. Half the houses in my neighbourhood have a very similar floor plan. Also, we did not have a chair their either until my wife started moving furniture, which was actually quite successful.

[/code]

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Kram1032
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Post by Kram1032 » Fri Aug 10, 2007 7:32 am

core2duo

1024*768
metropolis bidirectional
max_num_consec_rejections 100
max_depth 1000
super_sample_factor 2

5-6 h

Indigo V 0.9t3

ook....

you posted the settings, but not the specs^^
Anyway, nice - you should try higher num consec rejections, I'd say... there where renders with that on zero, that where noisier than the standard (dunno, why Blendigo standard changed) 1000.

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Headroom
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Post by Headroom » Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:07 am

Kram,

thanks for the "consec" tip. I have not changed those settings from the defaults yet. I need to re-read the documentation and browse the forum in order to get a better understanding of those parameters.

I guess I would have to ask you then what you mean with specs ?

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Kram1032
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Post by Kram1032 » Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:09 am

Ghz of CPU (most important part)
RAM
etc :)

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deltaepsylon
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Post by deltaepsylon » Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:11 am

prob. half the houses in ure neighborhood have the same floorplan, but my parents bought a european floorplan that is huge, and had the house built off that.

pretty big coincidence :o

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Headroom
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Post by Headroom » Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:26 am

Kram,

Ohhh, of course thaaaaat is what you mean with specs :roll:

Intel core2duo 2Ghz T7200 processor w/ 2Gig of ram. All in the Dell latitude D620 Notebook that I use here at work.

delta,

that is an odd coincidence.

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deltaepsylon
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Post by deltaepsylon » Fri Aug 10, 2007 9:57 am

yeah.
my house doesn't have the column thingy in the foreground tho, and that isn't the whole house, just the living room. behind the hole in the wall is the kitchen

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Headroom
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Post by Headroom » Fri Aug 10, 2007 1:00 pm

daltaepsilon,

not that that really belongs here, but I have attached a picture I generated in Yafray what gives you a better overall view of that "column thingy" I guess that's where the similarities end.

BTW, the overall lighting in that image is quite accurate, allthough of a cooler temperature. I tried to create more diffused reflections because the floor was too shiny. Also I had difficulties generating a sun patch with soft edges. In both instances I have not been successful, regardless of what tips I read in the Forum.

In my house the Kitchen is also behind the framed opening in the wall.
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Headroom
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Post by Headroom » Fri Aug 10, 2007 2:12 pm

Kram,

I searched the forum for some more detailled explanation for the render settings, but have been rather unsuccessful.
What I am looking for is not lower this to reduce noise, in crease that to reduce render speed. Those hints would be a good start, but they do not actually provide an explanation what they actually mean. The documentatiuon also is not much help.

Would you be able to lead me to a few good posts on this forum ?

I found one very helpful and concise tread explaining the different render mode combinations and their use (MLD, BDIR, PT).

That is the sort of info I am looking for.

I also came across abnother thread that mentioned that the wooden floor texture seems much darker in the Indigo render and seems to have lost much detail. The same is happening in my scene. The Yafray picture uses exactly the same texture, a diffuse and a bump map and the floor looks much brighter and ahs more detail.

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