Oh, help...

[scanmead]

I did say I'd show up whining sooner or later. I've done the homework, read and tested and read some more, anything and everything I could find. With 4 projects sitting in limbo and no results to show. Just can't get past the lighting.. or maybe it's the shaders.. or the modeling..

 

If anyone (or everyone) could take a look at this partially finished image, and point out what I'm doing wrong? It really seems like it wants to be a good render, but something isn't working.

 

It's a Standard GI (very low settings as yet) powered by one Infinite light 150% and Hard Shadows, with one faint Omni (no shadows) for fill. I've checked all the Illumination and Mapping of the shaders, and have a Sharpen Post Effect at 15%

 

http://www.scanmead.com/temp/mountains.jpg

 

Tried to work through this, but there's something I'm not understanding, because I know from the work I see here, that Cinema can do better.

[Ernest Burden III]

Kill the sharpen effect.

 

Otherwise--what is the problem with the inage? Its hard to tell you how to improve it without knowing what you are trying for, and what isn't working the way you expect.

[William Alexander]

I'd say the next step is to up the GI settings. Working on getting the 'flatness' at the vertical corners of the wood at the exterior wall, interior corners and more GI influence at the chairs. Then make a decision about the need for an environment object/shader or propably better using area lights for the sky influence based on the results of upping the GI.

 

...just my humble opinion from what I see in that image... Your response to Ernest's reply would be far more valuable.

 

WDA

[scanmead]

Wasn't too sure about that Sharpen, but gave it a try.

 

Basically, trying for as close to real as possible. There are just so many ways to light a scene: bounces, GI, no GI, Stochastic, AO, area lights...and any combination of all of them.

 

Think this light set up is working? Colors too saturated maybe?

[scanmead]

Did a small test, raising the GI to 95% accuracy, and that may resolve some of the 'missing shadows' from the thin chair legs.

 

I do have an Environment Object, but it's at 1% and was set to white. Changed that to a pale blue.

 

When you suggest using area lights, do you mean replacing the Infinite with area lights at the windows?

 

This test render is going to take a while to finish... 5 minutes into the Prepass and the screen is still black.

[opay]

hmmm, 1st, what c4d version did u use? if prepass is still black maybe show illumination tab didn't check...

 

2nd. try to render it, without omni fill and environment. and look what happen.

 

3rd. 5 minutes prepass, for 95% accuracy, is quick, maybe very very quick. what GI setting did u use? try this. strengh 100, accuracy 70, dd 1 (or 2) ss 400 min 50 max 250, and look what happen

 

4th. don't forget, to "close" this interior. make sure every wall is connected

 

i hope this will help you

[Frosty]

Apart from the lighting, which is one half the required discussion, I think you should be looking into your materials as well.

1) The scale of your woods loks way off.

2) The horizontal and vertical wood surfaces read together without a visible break.

3) The wood should, I think, have some sheen, bump and reflection.

4) The leather on the sofa (chesterfield for strat) needs some sheen and bump.

 

Overall, everyone's comments are geared to you creating an image with more contrast and depth. Currently its quite flat and lifeless.

[scanmead]

I really appreciate the responses. I can always see the image isn't working, but not *why* it isn't. Brightly lit images are my nemesis.

 

The shaders and mats do need work. I'd just stopped working on them when the lighting became an obsession. Since I used panels to build up the large vertical area, the scale of the wood is easily changed.

 

The room is complete, and leak-proof. Running 9.6 with a decent PC. The black screen was just Cinema sitting at 0% forever. This went from a 10-minute render at 70% accuracy, to a 4-hour render at 95%. Those joins between panels were very slightly more visible.

 

So, I'm going to reduce the GI from 100% strength, and try changing the Infinite to a Spot so more controls are available. Try setting some Falloff, and maybe try Area shadows. Crisping them up might be easier than softening the Hard shadows. May give adjusting the Diffuse Depth a go as well.

 

Thanks so much for taking the time to look at this. Now if I can just get it right.

[William Alexander]

Lee,

 

Truth is you really don't have a bad start at all. Yes 'even' lighting is evil, LOL. First off lighting is never balanced. When it does look even there are subtle differences, intensity, shadow, color of the light/s. It's all about composing your scene...something has to be the 'subject'. Objects, space, the interplay of light in the space and or materials are fairly typical subjects for ArchViz, correct?

 

You have a good handle on the materials...so focus just on the lighting. Generally it can be advantages to just start with with lighting, get it 'right' then add materials, can save some headaches. So here are some examples...C4D render, settings & area lights for GI-sky influence see attached file and a Modo render. Used Modo to kind to verify and it's fun to play with .

 

Much more interesting even without materials...Good composition, well maybe not. Once you hit a point where there are dark darks (shadows) and lighter areas not in direct light you can use an omni set to ambient only to nudge the overall 'brightness' (luminance' levels) of the scene until it trips your trigger.

Or use lighting form fixtures in the room to brighten things up.

Or in comp-PSD take an image with just the lighting like these or use some of the multi-pass options to get just the light info and multiply the lighting over what you posted initally. Simply anything white in the lighting layer would not have any effect and anything approaching dark will darken the base image. Overlay works too if you need to both darken and brighten the image. In the light layer white screens 50% grey does nothing and black multiplies.

 

Anyway hope you can see what your image is missing, even if it's very subtle the shadowy corners and brighter areas from bounced light is what really gives that realistic depth in so many cases. Light itself has a greater impact than color, texture....light is what defines everything.

 

Lecture over ;0, LOL , hope it's of some help.

WDA

[ZFact]

Lee,

 

Truth is you really don't have a bad start at all. Yes 'even' lighting is evil, LOL. First off lighting is never balanced. When it does look even there are subtle differences, intensity, shadow, color of the light/s. It's all about composing your scene...something has to be the 'subject'. Objects, space, the interplay of light in the space and or materials are fairly typical subjects for ArchViz, correct?

 

You have a good handle on the materials...so focus just on the lighting. Generally it can be advantages to just start with with lighting, get it 'right' then add materials, can save some headaches. So here are some examples...C4D render, settings & area lights for GI-sky influence see attached file and a Modo render. Used Modo to kind to verify and it's fun to play with .

 

Much more interesting even without materials...Good composition, well maybe not. Once you hit a point where there are dark darks (shadows) and lighter areas not in direct light you can use an omni set to ambient only to nudge the overall 'brightness' (luminance' levels) of the scene until it trips your trigger.

Or use lighting form fixtures in the room to brighten things up.

Or in comp-PSD take an image with just the lighting like these or use some of the multi-pass options to get just the light info and multiply the lighting over what you posted initally. Simply anything white in the lighting layer would not have any effect and anything approaching dark will darken the base image. Overlay works too if you need to both darken and brighten the image. In the light layer white screens 50% grey does nothing and black multiplies.

 

Anyway hope you can see what your image is missing, even if it's very subtle the shadowy corners and brighter areas from bounced light is what really gives that realistic depth in so many cases. Light itself has a greater impact than color, texture....light is what defines everything.

 

Lecture over ;0, LOL , hope it's of some help.

WDA

 

 

What are shadow maps....?

[William Alexander]

Two kinds of shadows...raytraced determined by rays being cast from lights and shadow maps. I always picture shadow maps like this; Imagine a cube being black and the plane recieving the shadow being white and looking at through the light. Creating a image map from that view and projecting it back on the plane recieving the shadow from the point of view of the light...shadow map. It's not quite that simple in actual practice within the application but that's how it works.

 

So map size, like in C4D, is pixel resolution of the shadow map. Sample radius is how the square pixels are sampled to smooth then out, a form of antialiasing, and bias is how closely the shadow map matches the edges of the geometry it was created from.

 

Raytraced shadows are generally very sharp and well defined and in complex scenes add to raytracing time. Shadow maps can be stored, cached, they can be sharp or soft. Advantages and disadvantges to both. Shadow maps as a general rule are faster but not as accurate. Accurate even to the point of sampling as little as 2-3 radius/pixels in some circumstances actually create shadow leaks...light where there should be shadow. Shadow maps can mimic the 'umbra' effect of a point light source or very diffused light source at a very basic level.

 

 

WDA

[scanmead]

First, *huge* thanks to Frosty for mentioning the flatness of the image! Once I toned the GI way down, you could actually tell where the wall ended and the ceiling began! The wood is a problem: tiles on the Y axis all right, but not the X axis.

 

So, I've tried an AO render (so-so), a standard render (bland), and Area shadows, which sucked all the light out of the exterior bits. The hard shadows seem too uniformly crisp, though, and they wash out any bump on the fabrics and rug. Shadow-caster time?

 

Now I can't wait to look at that file! Modo renders are what got me started looking at Diffuse Depth (once I understood it meant bounces), and that made me learn Compositing Tags (color bleed), and gave me a vague understanding of how digital light works.

 

The "lecture" is much appreciated! You can bet I'll have questions once I dig into that scene.

 

A quick (read bad render settings) look at what happens when you turn down GI and strip icky textures: http://www.scanmead.com/temp/03.jpg . It's far from done, but now it actually looks 3D.

[erona]

I did a little experiment on applying AO to your scene using camera mapping method. AO can really make a huge difference when you want to add a touch realism in your scene.

 

 

[Frosty]

Awesome. You're making progress now:)

[scanmead]

Y'all are scaring me! How can you duplicate that room so fast? hmmm.. something tells me you've done this stuff before.

 

Erona, you made the AO look good, which isn't that easy. That's definitely one way to get the shadows to pop, or to tighten them up.

 

Now, about WDA's file. Well, it finally dawned on me what those area lights at windows do: simulate the scattered/diffuse/ambient light bouncing off all that dust and moisture in the outside air.

 

The camera angle really adds a lot by including that back corner of the hall. The room feels much more structured, and the hall more defined.

 

Can't quite figure out how that "up-lit" effect is working, though. It's always dramatic, but in this room, it also enhances the height and scale. I'll have more time this weekend to try and duplicate that.

 

Is there any set ratio for those area lights as far as falloff versus size? I tend to model rather...um... large.

[erona]

Y'all are scaring me! How can you duplicate that room so fast? hmmm.. something tells me you've done this stuff before.

Erona, you made the AO look good, which isn't that easy. That's definitely one way to get the shadows to pop, or to tighten them up.

 

I simply used Camera mapping in C4D to recreate the scene with just a bunch of cubes, nothing really fancy.

 

I did not do any much within AO. just tweaked some settings in the default to make it render dirty

 

render settings I used:

max ray: 300

accuracy: 50%

max samp: 75

rest as defaults... and with no lights!

goodluck

[William Alexander]

Is there any set ratio for those area lights as far as falloff versus size? I tend to model rather...um... large.

 

 

Inverse square falloff and whatever 'looks' correct. Using reference images of similar rooms and duplicating the lighting is one way to learn how they work...another is just study how exterior light behaves in a room, with your eyes and camera, no interior lights on.

 

Modeling to scale...may help in C4D to some degree, but not as much as it does in Modo and Max for lighting. Good habit modeling to scale for ArchViz though, anyway.

[STRAT]

i personally tend to use light ranges rather than falloffs as i think falloff looks too harsh (unless ur depicting a spot lamp or something)

[scanmead]

I am so slow. Spent most of yesterday discovering most of my wood textures don't hold up well in this lighting. This one is my poor attempt at procedural wood.

 

http://www.scanmead.com/temp/wip09.jpg

 

I've never used Ranges in Cinema. There's another thing to set up tests with.

 

I am happier with the lighting and some of the shadows in this one. Unhappy with the shader on the chairs and table, though. Gad, I just want to start loading this room!

 

If anyone can recommend a good pack of wood textures, I'm all ears. Haven't bought anything lately, having gotten some with very little that was useable in the past.

[William Alexander]

The wood textures aren't bad for the lighter end on the wood spectrum of brightness. Drop those image maps in a diffusion channel and see what happens. Diffusion tends to transfer the RGB values and over saturate.... A grey scale image generally works best. It's possible in C4D to adjust the saturation by using the layer>effects>hue/sat/lightness.

 

Long convoluted explaination....but the vast majority of image maps/textures take some finessing if not getting the big hammer out to make them work right. Unless you light a scene exactly the same way everytime A big part of the reason in choosing to set up lighting first, imho.

 

Moving forward with the scene!!! Nothing I haven't personally seen or done moving from point A to point B in developing an image. Generally my work looks like crap with "potential" until some how some way that potential is realized. I'm sure the likes of Ernest and Strat just make it happen in one or two test renders....

[scanmead]

Yes, I keep waiting for that image that works the first time through, just like that very first render. (We won't discuss how it actually looked.)

 

Well, after spending the morning delousing my machine, and wondering who decided I needed a backdoor trojan mucking things up, I now have a brand new browser.

 

I've become a big fan of the Filter function in shaders. Saves a trip into PS for desat and hue changes. I remember hearing a greyscale image works better in diffusion, but never thought to use it. duh.

 

Now that the machine isn't stalling and rebooting itself, I'll try that and the Ranges on lights.