Things that would make Indigo the best render engine ....

[kwistenbiebel]

Hi all,

I've been using Indigo (and Skindigo off course) a lot lately and I must say I am very pleased with its output.
Even more, I like the output more than some commercial unbiased engines which I use.

Not only the output is great (thanks Ono!) , the usability of the Skindigo plugin is blazingly easy and fast thanks to Whaats fantastic coding.

Now where is this thread heading to?

Well, there are some things Indigo + skindigo are missing to put it on the top shelve of the render market.
Things that Blender users might not miss because they have some of the features within their host app, but Sketchup users don't.


Here's my list of features that would boost Indigo to leadership:

1. a multilight feature that includes also the abitlity to let you adjust the sun strenght. (= seperating the sun and sky and change both intensities on the fly)

2. displacement

3. various render channels:
- depth map channel
- ambient occlusion channel
- shadow channel

4.More HDRI background control:
- The ability to also use LDR images as background.
- Seperate channels for background renders: environment/
background/reflection/refraction/
- control of the position of the background image (rotate, shift
horizontal/vertical, etc..)

What do you guys think?

[Stinkie]

I agree. I even bought (I'll go hide after I've written this) M*xwell because of Multilight. And more importantly, because there's a Mac version of it.

So I guess I'd like to add "Mac version" to your list.

[SmartDen]

yeah, render channels could be very useful for some renders

[Kram1032]

I dunno what you mean with "Blenderusers might have that"....
Those are Indigo features, you're requesting, not really Sketchup-ones...

I just got a crazy idea, when I read the "1.":
What's about a generalized sun setting, allowing to get a completely custom sun-light system... If you set the settings to values, which really exist in one sun system, you could get *any* situation, you want to have. Huge giant stars, twin stars, stars of any life-stage (at least the visibly glowing ones xD) and distance to the planet.
Different atmospheres, resulting in a different sky colour and such. (Not only how turbid, but also, due to what)

Though, no real sky scattering or such, as this is very slow.

Ah well, a crazy dream, I guess^^

[kwistenbiebel]

Hi Kram1032,
with features Blender already posesses I meant displacement...which is not present in sketchup.

A sky-sun seperation is something Fry has and which is really handy.
You can easily render an overcast day by just lowering the sun slider (keeping sky strenght default).
It is also useful for interior scenes, lit through a window, to avoid burnt sun light on objects...

[Pibuz]

Hi all!
Yes, I think you Kwisten are right about a lot of things: i asked for a multilight system myself!

I'd also very like to have a displacement utility in SU, which maxwell exporter handles badly, at the moment.

I'd say that the EXR support (which bugs have been fixed in the Skindigo 1.0. is sufficient enough for my needs, at the moment, and it requires no further implementation.

About render channels, i think a shadow output should be useful for the composting phase; the depth channel is a little unuseful for me, as the depth cue can be easily set with the focal distance. In case this couldn't guarantee sufficient control for post-pro purposes, there is a very useful SU plugin wich is able to export a depth image of the scene (displaytemplate.rb)

The LDR background support idea is cool, but i think it's more of a SU issue, than a Indigo one. Hope this feature is available in SU7

[Stinkie]

I just copy them around manually. I'm old school.

[crojack]

I would like to see more hdri control. the rotate works again, (thanks Whaat),
but I still don't understand the size correlation. almost all the ones I use end up being huge and blurry, like they have been resized up in Inidgo. If there was some sort of datum, or starting point, than I wouldn't have a problem resizing externally and bringing it back in. I would also like to see a night scene other than just black. If Indigo can generate the sun, than could it generate stars, and the user could put in how many stars and the intensity.
But that might be asking a lot, I have no idea. I still think Skindgo is the easiest exporter there is and one of the main reasons I use indigo.

[cpfresh]

as far as using EXRs, I had trouble with the sizes of the images which result in skewed (squished or flattened) backgrounds.

One time the map was very large in the horizontal direction and very short in the vertical direction, so the result was a squished background. ...so is there an ideal ratio of hieght to width for EXR files?

dang this is nearly a thread-jack! sorry! i'll get back on track

the EXR rotation is definitely working nicely!

I can't even think of anything that Skindigo could add to be better ... Awesome Whaat!!

Yeah displacement map support would be cool for Indigo.

[neepneep]

shadow maps would be mmmmmm.....

[Richard]

I have to agree with what kwisten is suggesting regarding some sort of multilight feature.

Yes of course I'm a maxwell convert and have even been hoping there for the ability in the multilight feature to use both skydome and physical sky at the same time. Then in multilight blend the rates of mixing on the fly.

I currently for the better jobs run a render using physical sky and one using the skydome then blend in photoshop later! That way I get softer shadows and better detail from bump maps.

I know it may not give the "correct" result but I don't want the "correct" result but the "Best" result!

Displacement "yes" but how will this effect render times??? With Maxwell I'm finding it better to just model the detail, displacement there seems to generally quadrouple render times!

Richard

[crojack]

Just a thought for something i think would be pretty cool, especially for architectural renderings, would be the ability to use the sketchup Section feature and render the section. Think of a multi story house with a section cut through the middle, and than rendered. it would be great for arch.viz.

I know that it could be modeled, but to be able to set the cut and than render would be sweet!

On another note:

trying out the animation now. I found the easter egg, but didn't realize it was for.
Wasn't it supposed to rotate Happy Easter or something? (found that in the code)

[pixelminer]

Displacement "yes" but how will this effect render times??? With Maxwell I'm finding it better to just model the detail, displacement there seems to generally quadrouple render times!

Richard

Modeling detail works fine for "macro" details on surfaces but for "micro" detail it's out of the question. Let's say you want a statue which has tons of runes etched in to it on all sides plus chips/cracks etc. Modeling the grooves which make up the runes would take forever, especially compared to being able to draw the runes then apply it as a true displacement map on to a flat surface. A brick wall would make another good example.

phong.

[pixelminer]

BTW, was there any mention of being able to bake out lightmaps of a scene instead of a snapshot of the scene from one angle?

[crojack]

Well, I never saw the value of a multilight feature until now. I am currently working on a project that has rendered for about three days, and all of it, except one part, is lit great. Now I see why the multilight feature is important, I don't have time to re-render the whole thing.

So, throw my vote in for multilight.

Also, I was wondering,is there a way that lights could be isolated in Violet and adjusted separately rather than adjusting the whole image. I am all for keeping Indigo/Skindigo as simple as possible and maybe this is a way to do that.