Office Furniture

[alfienoakes]

Hello to all,

 

This is my first real go at Vray.. Been using Viz for a few years now.. but new to Vray, and it is great..

 

Anyway, I need this image to have a real phtograph look to it. Not too bothered about the outside at the moment, mainly the furniture and the shadows, floor etc..

 

The main thing that strikes me, is the walls and ceiling are a little grey, perhaps could be brighter. Not sure how to achive that overall "brighter" look.

 

Any thoughts on the wood of the furniture, more reflections, not enough etc..?

 

Thanks first to Tim (rmaytee) who has helped me to this point.

 

Tips / tricks / comments welcome... thanks..!

 

Andy

[JamesTaylor]

looking good in general.

 

i think you need to work on the chairs and table feet / legs. they almost look as if you are trying to have them as metal but they appear a burnt out white. i think that will make a massive difference.

 

second, the mouse mat looks as if it need some extra depth - a bit flat at the minute and maybe a mouse with more detail, or more expensive / modern.

 

BTW, if you need some materials for vray a pretty decent libruary can be downloaded from evermotion.org

 

James

[alfienoakes]

Thanks James,

 

Your right about the chair legs etc.. I added a Vray reflection to them, turned the glosiness up, but then never adjusted the % of reflection, so they are on 100% at the moment.

 

Mouse and mat also un worked, so yes, need to sort them.

 

Will definately change those. I only have Vray free, and from what I have seen, it would appear I can't use the Vray materials. Not sure though.. Do you know if that is the case?

 

Cheers

 

Andy

[JamesTaylor]

Andy,

 

your right about vray free, it doesn't come with any vray lights or materials. if your testing it out at the minute and thinking of purchasing a license i can only say good things about it, supurb piece of kit.

 

however, maxwell is being pushed very hard at the minute and seems to be growing in popularity, may be worth a look too, but will it ever reach accetable render times?

 

James

[luft]

How do typical render times compare with scanline? I'm thinking of getting it but worried that my 5000px wide exterior renders would take far too long.

[alfienoakes]

Erm.. well.

 

Now I'm sure someone may straighten me out here, but that image took 7 hrs to render. But I did turn a few of the settings up.

 

Having said that, generally from what I have seen and read about, it is faster, depending on the settings you use.

 

Like I say, I'm sure some of the other guys could give you a better idea.

 

Andy

[JamesTaylor]

i'd say that against straight scanline any GI renderer will be slower, although vray is probably the fastest GI render available at the minute.

 

as i'm sure your aware much of the rendering times depend greatly on a large variety of settings, both materials and rendering engine etc. so it is a bit difficult to yes or no on 5000px renders.

 

however i can say that i use it 100% of the time and have produced internals and external at hi res 4000px in reasonable times (i think! 24hrs) but have also sent test renders that have been stupid and have been cancelled after a week etc.

 

i'm currently working on an external housing estate and am test rendering at 2000px x 1000px with moderate render settings, its only taking 10ish mins to finish a render.

 

i have also produced animations again internal and external using Vray so it can be done. obviously the number of machines you have available and their spec will make a massive difference.

 

hope this gives a little insight for you!

 

James

[AJLynn]

I've found VRay to be very fast - my experience is almost entirely limited to VRay Free, but I've also been able to get time on a multi-PC system using VRay Advanced with distributed rendering, and it works very well. Largest render I've done was 6000x2000 with sky, GI and a bunch of reflections, IIRC it took about an hour and a half on 3 PCs.

 

Now, your render - I agree with what's been said, and would add a couple points. I like the furniture, except for that reflection you've got it down. The stuff in the background is what's really not doing it for me - looks like it's supposed to be an office or showroom setting, but it's very sparse, and the lighting's a bit off, that bright spot on the ceiling and the dark area in the back with the cobwebs where murderers can go to hide. If it's a furniture showroom, put some marketing posters on the walls or something, if it's an office, fill it out a bit. Or if it's just a photo studio, make it a photo studio. Also, see if you can scare up a better floor tile and a better PC screen graphic, that one is pretty blah.

 

That 7 hours render time is very high. Even if it's not a very new PC, it shouldn't take that long, more like 1 hour. You must have some really high GI and/or sampling values or 30 photometric lights in the next room or something. Medium GI quality and 1/4 sampling should be plenty.

[alfienoakes]

Nice points well made..

 

I will revisit the settings. As I said though, very new to Vray, so whilst I am getting allot of good tips here etc.. still trial and error, and techniques I know from radiosity..

 

It is actually a study for furniture, which is about getting the materials and the model to not look like its obviously been created on a computer.

 

Agree that the table tops need to be a bit more reflective, and maybe a touch more on the sides of the units.

 

The floor, I'm not sure what to try there. The original source I was given had a tiled grey floor, but you wouldn't have a tiled floor in an office anyway.. Maybe carpet would be better.

 

And I can't quite get to grips with the overall lighting of the scene. The shadows etc I am pleased with, but I can't seem to find a happy medium with the ambient light..?

 

Anyway, heres one I did last night... 11 hours.!!!

 

Gonna check those settings again..

 

Andy

[JamesTaylor]

getting better!

 

try posting some of your render settings. let us see if we can reduce the render times a bit!

 

James

[alfienoakes]

OK here are my settings:

 

Image sampler (AA) - Adaptive sub' min -1, max 2

DOF/AA Filter - Mitchell-Netravali blur / ringing .33

GI - on Refractive GI Caustics ON / Reflective GI Caustics OFF

First Diffuse Bounce - 1.1 / secondary - .5

Irradiance Map HSph subs - 50 / Interp samples - 30

Direct Computation subs - 1 / depth - 3

Irradiannce map presets - high

GI Environment - Overide max's 7

Reflection / refraction - Overide max's 1

QMC Sa,pler - defualt

System - default except render region divison 50 each..

 

Cheers

 

Andy

[JamesTaylor]

what size render are these settings for?

 

the two things that jump out at me are the irridance map set to high, whenever i've used it it does seem to take forever try using medium or low - still gives good results. and the irr map HSph set at 50. i tend to set this about 30 for test render and maybe up it to 40 for final again have used 50 before but does take ages.

 

i'd also leave the render region set at 64, its a case of trial and error as to the most efficient size for this on a per file/project basis

[alfienoakes]

Cheers,

 

Will try those settings out. The final image size at the moment was a 800 x 600. I don't know what the final required size will be..

 

Will test this over lunch...!

 

Andy

[JamesTaylor]

11 hr renders at that size are unbeleivable and i'd imagine unworkable at any higher resolution.

 

look over your material settings and see what the subdivsions are set to. anything much over 10 probably won't be noticable, but i have come across materials set at 50 before, could be the cause of your render times

 

James

[alfienoakes]

Yeah, thats waht I thought. Clearly I have something set incorrectly..

 

Subdivisions of what on the materials?? I am a bit confused.

 

These are basically viz materials, with the reflective ones using the Vray material.

 

Its Vray free as well, does that make a difference?

 

Andy

[JamesTaylor]

sorry going over old ground here! i think you already said its vray free.

 

when using vray materials in the full version it is possible to adjust the subdivisions of the refelctions and refractions. but you won't have the vray material in the free version i don't think?

 

if you want to post the scene file and maps i'll try and do a test render and have a look over it. see what my render times are

 

James

[alfienoakes]

That would be great. Where is the best place to post the scene. Is there a files area on this forum, or something similar?

 

I think the overall size will be about 10 Mb..

 

In fact had a better thought. If I post the blank room, with no furniture in it, that will still have all the settings, but is a much smaller file.

 

The reason the file is so big is because the original file I am taking the model from was created using ACAD poly meshes and faces etc, and i have had to turn up the surface deviation to get some of them smooth.

 

Andy

[JamesTaylor]

i sent you my email address via private mail, check your account.

[Tim Saunders]

or you could put it in a zip folder and post it here.

[alfienoakes]

Its about 5mb when zipped etc..

 

Is that OK to post directly as an attachment as a reply? I thought it may be too big.

 

If its not, let me know and I will post it..

 

Andy

[Tim Saunders]

hmmm. i've seen poeple do it all the time, but if they ask for your images to not exceed 100k, then it is probably true for zips too. i would like to take a look at it tonight. i'll get you my email as well.

[Tim Saunders]

andy,

i ried opening your file, but got a missing dll warning. not sure if they are plugins or my version of viz isn't up to date with yours. so it wouldn't open. sorry i couldn't help. i was real interested in figureing out why it took so long to render.