Indigo needs YOUR tip of the day!

[skypa]

Hi,

as most of you know, radiance collected some quotations for the front page a while ago. Since this ain't a commercial product OR home shopping television, I think the current euphemistic quotes aren't that suitable.
A random tip of the day, displayed in the site's header would imho be a more useful approach.
I'm sure anyone of you who worked with Indigo, came across something he/she discovered in the process. A somewhat hidden feature, something that smoothed your workflow, something a new user could find useful.

Some examples:

"Tip of the day: Indigo includes a rich database for easy metal material setup: link"

"Tip of the day: Did you know that Indigo is free? "

"Tip of the day: Did you know, that Indigo supports distributed network rendering? [link to network rendering documentation]"


I'm sure you get where I'm going with this. Let's collect some useful tips, if possible with a link to the referencing documentation, for radiance to include in the banner.

skypa

[Maluminas]

"Start Indigo before bed to wake up to a nice noise-free render."

"The tonemapping parametre 'Burn' can simulate exposure control."

"To keep blackbodies from yellowing your scene too much, use the appropriate white balance."

"OnoSendai loves DoF."

[Marquis de Sade]

"Indigo can easily be used as your final renderer with most of today's 3D Applications" [link to plugin site]

"The lively indigo-community can help you with any information about the renderer" [link to forum]

"Did you know that indigo renders your scenes in a physical accurate way? [link to technical features of indigo]

"Indigo allows you to use environment-maps for extremly realistic lighting setup" [link to documentation for environment-maps feature]

hope this helps,
will add some tips everytime i visit the forum
Marquis

[DaveC]

"To make a perfect mirror, set diffuse to 0,0,0; specular to 1,1,1; and exponent to 1,000,000"

[manitwo]

"Avoid using pure white(1 1 1), the noise would stay much longer."

[ollle]

"start several instances of Indigo to render several images at the same time"

[eman7613]

"If it doesn't work, make it a jpg."
"If its twice the size, it takes more then twice the time."
"For uncorupted renders, keep cat AWAY from power cord."

[skypa]

"Indigo runs very well with Linux using wine."
"If your mesh emitter turns out black, flip its normals."

[Big Fan]

edited to remove all

[afecelis]

Indigo uses exr images for environment map lighting. To convert hdri images to exr use "hdr2exr" (command line app). http://hem.bredband.net/b230591/hdr2exr ... _win32.zip

[SmartDen]

To use both cores on a double core system use -t 2 command line option. So you can enhance rendering time

[[kothe]]

With the help of Himachi [Link: http://www.hamachi.cc/], you can help or get help with your renderings. Just like if you where in the same room!