CoolColJ's test pics thread

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Kram1032
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Post by Kram1032 » Sun Jul 22, 2007 10:42 pm

hey, that's nice :D

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CoolColJ
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Post by CoolColJ » Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:10 pm

thanks :D


I am doing a render of that building again without the texture, and with that green glass staue in it plus some metal material on the railings

anyway - I just did a MLT only version for 10 hours, looked ok, and I am halfway through the Path tracing only version.

One thing I noticed that the MLT version became nice and smooth in the glass area very quickly. The Path tracing version still remains rather patchy in the glass area after 1000 samples, but the floor area below the railing cleared up much quicker. Also the Pathtraced version seems to be much more accurate in the statue,even after half the sample count I can see details and highlights I can't see in the MLT version! :?

Now technically hybrid would get the best of both worlds, but it is a lot slower and it won't since most of the pic is indirect lit...
Now I would like MLT to be as accurate as the PT version, since the smoothness of the glass area is much nicer, now is there a setting to get it as accurate as the PT version?

Maybe large Mutation probbality to 0.9 and max change to 0.1 or higher? MNCR to 1000, bounce depth to 10000
I was using LMP of 0.1 to 0.4 and max change at 0.3 before, MNCR 500 and depth of 1000

pic of both versions to come - and I am experimenting with the above new values...

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CoolColJ
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MLT vs PT

Post by CoolColJ » Tue Jul 24, 2007 2:20 pm

here are the pics


top is MLT and bottom is Path tracing - both rendered to 2000+ samples around 10 hours on my P4 3.2ghz system

you can see the MLT is much smoother in the glass area, PT was very slow here and didn't start to smooth out until after 1500 samples, but is still grainy. But the PT rendering is much more accurate in the glass statue, you can see more highlights in the hands etc

I think if I push the large Mutation probbility to 0.9, and the max change to 0.01 maybe it will be as accurate?
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CCJ_BuildingStatue2000+samples_MLT_vs_PT.JPG
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CoolColJ
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Post by CoolColJ » Tue Jul 24, 2007 7:28 pm

starting to get a good handle on Indigo's outdoor lighting and tonemapping settings 8)


if you set Max mutation change to a very low figure like 0.005 to 0.002, you will find the caustics developing much faster and clumping together, very early within 150 samples as shown here

top pic is with a Max Mutation change for 0.9 and bottom pic with 0.0025 --> you can already see big chunky caustics after 150 samples :)

you can also see the normal smoothing issue I mentioned in the general section....
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CCJ_MaxMutChange_Comapro.JPG
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Last edited by CoolColJ on Wed Jul 25, 2007 11:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

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CoolColJ
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Post by CoolColJ » Wed Jul 25, 2007 10:19 am

after 6 hours of render time - 4400 samples.

plenty of caustics in the scene - on the mech itself, especially the top part, on floor, side and back walls. Caustics are still being added into the render right now, so maybe another 6hours and there will be more and smoother etc

yeah there are smoothing normal issues....
added some bloom

doing another render with the small Mutation Change value of 0.002 and see how it compares
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CCJ_BehemothMech_test.JPG
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CoolColJ
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Post by CoolColJ » Fri Jul 27, 2007 4:15 pm

Well I tried the 0.002 setting, and while it looked smoother in caustics, it also had other problems like orange spots, whch I couldn't get rid of even resuming with other settings...

here is what it looks like after many hours and 15000 samples! :)
probbably over 24 hours now, but not much more

I used a ton of different settings on each render resume so not really a valid comaprison... anyway not a whole lot different looking, yeah caustics are more dense , smoother and more developed. Plus a little cleaner and more subtle shading in the darker areas, but not 10,000+ samples better :P
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CoolColJ
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Post by CoolColJ » Sat Jul 28, 2007 12:00 pm

A texture test that went wrong, looks kinda cool :P
man if I only could get my textures settings as I use in Cinema 4D the same way in Indigo...this texture works fine Cubic mapped in C4D.
Trying to UV map this would take way too long and more complicated than it needs to be

right now I'm getting frustrated as hell with using textures in Indigo. It keeps telling 3 component jpegs not supported?! Jpegs are jpegs right? :?

So I convert them png files, ok renders it fine, and then next render I try, it will tell me the files are no longer png files and gives me an error!!! :evil:

So I convert them to BMP files, works fine for diffuse textues, and then I try it on bump map and it says 8 bit files not supported!!!! :cry:


arghhhh
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eman7613
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Post by eman7613 » Sat Jul 28, 2007 2:46 pm

1) pngs act funny at random times
2) bmps dont work
3) jpgs Do work if they are saved as full color (no index color, or grayscale formats!)
Yes i know, my spelling sucks

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CoolColJ
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Post by CoolColJ » Sun Jul 29, 2007 11:31 am

thanks - another day and I feel better now :)


Did this yesterday, I love the quality of this render.
It's of a Russian IS-2 WW2 tank

One thing I like that it doesn't look like a "toy". You can sense the weight and size of the tank.
Usually in GI renderers it would look pretty toy like

I'd imagine, when full textured, bump and specular mapped it would look pretty photo realistic :)

But right now I am in no mood to export such a high poly model and test render when I have to sit through 10 mins worth of normal messages from Indigo with a Cindigo exported scene :cry:
Maybe I will try it in Sketchup if the exporter works with the free version, I can't get my head around blender right now...

top pic was rendered in Path Tracing, 2.5 hours, 1500 samples
bottom pic in MLT mode, just under 2 hours 1300 samples
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CCJ_IS2_test.JPG
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Post by DaveC » Sun Jul 29, 2007 10:59 pm

You know, if you ever need help getting your head around blender, there are loads of people (myself included) willing to help you get started. And there's the brilliant video tutorials (I mean BRILLIANT) on http://www.blenderunderground.com . You should have a look.

If you just don't like blender, ignore this post ;)
The hardest part of BEING yourself is FINDING yourself in the first place...
http://thebigdavec.googlepages.com

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CoolColJ
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Post by CoolColJ » Sun Jul 29, 2007 11:07 pm

Thanks, well I want to like it, but it's like 180 degrees to my way of thinking :?

I'm more of a traditional pen and paper artist, rather an engineer/technical type...that's probably why :o

I'll probably give it a few more stabs

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Post by Zom-B » Mon Jul 30, 2007 2:16 am

CoolColJ wrote:A texture test that went wrong, looks kinda cool :P
man if I only could get my textures settings as I use in Cinema 4D the same way in Indigo...this texture works fine Cubic mapped in C4D.
Trying to UV map this would take way too long and more complicated than it needs to be
Cindigo just exports UV mapped Textures correctly (as told in the Cindigo development Thread!)
To convert your cubic mapped texture to UVM, do it by hand (lol) or simply check the attached picture ;-)

To get your jpgs textures working in Indigo sinply use jpg's and save them in basline mode,
otherwise Indigo wont be happy!
CoolColJ wrote:So I convert them to BMP files, works fine for diffuse textues, and then I try it on bump map and it says 8 bit files not supported!!!!
Indigo doesn't like 8bit textures to (greyscale bumps for example)... and if Indigo tells you, it doesn't like 8bit, don't be sad, but convert it to a standard 24bit picture :roll:
Attachments
uvm.png
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jpg.png
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polygonmanufaktur.de

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CoolColJ
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Post by CoolColJ » Mon Jul 30, 2007 11:21 am

well I normally use ACDsee to do all my image conversion, so I don't have all those options, that's why I got frustrated :)

man why can't Blender be as easy to use as Google Sketchup? Look at the flash video - so easy, hell why can't any 3D program be that easy to use? Google will rule the earth! :D

http://www.sketchup.com/?section=product

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Post by Whaat » Mon Jul 30, 2007 11:44 am

CoolColJ wrote:Google will rule the earth! :D
Well, I don't know about that, but SketchUp is by far the fastest and easiest modelling program I have ever used (except for organic stuff...). You can pick it up in a few minutes and be creating awesome models in less than a day.

And...if you haven't figured it out yet, the exporter works with the free version of SketchUp. :) . You can import 3DS and OBJ models with it so I assume you won't have any trouble getting your models in.

Whaat

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CoolColJ
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Post by CoolColJ » Mon Jul 30, 2007 4:49 pm

Whaat wrote:
CoolColJ wrote:Google will rule the earth! :D
Well, I don't know about that, but Sketchup is by far the fastest and easiest modelling program I have ever used (except for organic stuff...). You can pick it up in a few minutes and be creating awesome models in less than a day.

And...if you haven't figured it out yet, the exporter works with the free version of Sketchup. :) . You can import 3DS and OBJ models with it so I assume you won't have any trouble getting your models in.

Whaat
thanks for the exporter! I love it, I can even go and edit the script to change some default settings

Sketchup is so easy to use, within minutes I got this scene up in Indigo 0.9 Test 3 - imported the Indigo test scene Cornell box, changed a few materials using the sketchup factory material/textures, fiddled with some exporter material settings, and wham bam thank you mam rendered a few images.
LOL you can even export out the default Sketchup figure :lol:
Good for scale purposes though

first one rendered for 1+ hour in MLT mode, 0.4 Mutation probability, 0.03 max change, 530+ samples.
2nd one in 1.5 hours, 700 samples


That box I used some metal textured material from Sketchup, and turned it into a phong material within the exporter with bump and specular mapping from the same texture. Although I should have used the aluminium NK data
I drew a square at the back and made it into a 100w light, a flat circle above as another 100w light and off course the cube acting as an 100w emitter.

I was able to workout most things. Except for some reason I could not get the material applied to the floor/cylinder to work

SO easy and fast - and if you have a quad core you could have 2 or more test renders going at once! I had 2 with my hyper threading single core P4 8)
All this power and ease of use for free!!!!! I didn't even read the instructions
Man for quick visualisation of space and buildings/rooms you can't beat this. I can see why architects and such would love it

only problem is that is quite memory hungry, I couldn't import the tank into sketchup into it without killing all my memory at 40%, whereas Blender/C4D will have quite a bit of memory left. I have 1 gig. My new system will have 4 gigs though

--

Question Whatt how do I get the sky and sun up? I have it selected in the exporter, but I figure there must be something else I need to do?

now to work out how to save a camera position in Sketchup...

I finally have the setup I have longed for after mucking about in GI renderers all these years, gonna have some serious fun now :P
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