studio2s Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 I have looked up and down for decent tutorials that use the Max 9 UI. I'm new to MR, but have used fR in the past. For a new user, the old tuts are completely obsolete as I have no idea what are where the various setting are and can be found. I have found a couple of tutorials, but I extremely surprised how little there really is. I seem to find the same 2 tutorials and the guy from the UK selling tuts (Brian?) that's aren't up to the questions I have yet. Can someone point to a really good interior (lit only from the exterior) scene? I am particularly interested in simplicity and speed. I believe that a simple and solid base are the keys to all good renderings. I always try render my scenes in "white model" mode first. That is the type of simplicity I am looking for. Any help would really be great. Heck, anything that would open the door to understanding the older tutorials would be nice too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 The FG tutorial that ships with Max9 is a very good start to get your head around rendering with MR. The presets for FG are a good start, "Low" will cover most senarios A good tip is to hide the glass in the windows when calculating the FG and then unhiding it when rendering the final image. For you materials use the Arch and Design material with the "Matte Finish" preset. I would change the grey diffuse colour from the 0.5 default to 0.8 Also do a search for Jeff Patton, he is the other Metalray guru JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studio2s Posted January 30, 2007 Author Share Posted January 30, 2007 As much as tuts that come with programs usually blow, so far, I'm really working off of that. I seem to be have a really dark scene. I have the multiplier on the FG at 1.5 and I have 5 bounces. What has me worried is that is it a good idea to mess with the overall multiplier and 5 bounces seems like a lot more than I am used to in other engines. What should a basic scene set up like? One light for the sun, and then a sky light? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 Also remeamber to use exposure control before you use the FG multiplyer. JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studio2s Posted January 31, 2007 Author Share Posted January 31, 2007 Also remeamber to use exposure control before you use the FG multiplyer. JHV HA!! I found the exposure control today and really like the results. So I have a decent rendering going now. Cool. My render time is about 22 minutes. Pretty long, but I haven't figured out why yet, but I can live with it for now. Current settings....started w/ DRAFT preset Basic: Multiplier 1.0 FG Density .5 Rays 100 Interpolate 100 Bounces 5 Advanced: Noise filtering: Standard Max Depth 3 (Max relfect/refract both 3) GI: Photon/sample 500 (defaults to this and I don't know what to adjust it to for speed or quality) I have changed nothing else. I am rendering 1200x800. One mr Spot as a sun and mr omni for additional light. The solution looks great. I'm very happy with the look. My big question now is NOISE. I have all sorts of noise everywhere. This is not bad sample noise or artifacting, but good ol' fashioned noise. I looks like added noise in Photoshop. How do I reduce that noise? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 Turn off Photons, you dont need them any more Try these settings Preset Low Multiplier 1.0 FG Density 0.8 Rays 150 Interpolate 30 Bounces 2 Max depth 20 Max reflect 5 Max Refract 5 The bounces are whats killing the render. Rather increase the Max depth which will allow the samples to travel further. The other killers are glossy reflections, refractions and overly sampled area lights. Have you tried the MR sun and Sky system, work very well, just say yes when asked to change the environment. JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studio2s Posted January 31, 2007 Author Share Posted January 31, 2007 Turn off Photons, you dont need them any more Try these settings Preset Low Multiplier 1.0 FG Density 0.8 Rays 150 Interpolate 30 Bounces 2 Max depth 20 Max reflect 5 Max Refract 5 The bounces are whats killing the render. Rather increase the Max depth which will allow the samples to travel further. The other killers are glossy reflections, refractions and overly sampled area lights. Have you tried the MR sun and Sky system, work very well, just say yes when asked to change the environment. JHV HOLY COW!! Your suggestion was about 95% dead on with colors. It also took some time off as well. I have realized that I can set my samples to 1/4:1/4 and blast through a test, so I'm unable to see exactly how much time it saved just yet. I tried the mr sun + sky, but I didn't really understand the interface. All of the tutorials I found were asking for an omni or area light at the window. I started with a simple skylight, and I didn't like it much either. Remember, this is my first MR interior shot, so I was stumbling over all of the settings at first. I really like what I have now, so I will stick with it, but the next one, I will try that. Thanks for your help. It is making the grind of learning this so much easier. Can you explain the FG map business? I know that I can save the solution, and if I check the freeze box after saving, it will essentially skip the first pass on the next render. Now, what if I have the read/write box checked, but not the freeze when I hit render last? Is it re-writing the file or only making changes...if any? While testing and building (adding objects to the scene), is there a savings here that can speed the work flow? thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studio2s Posted January 31, 2007 Author Share Posted January 31, 2007 Ok, you said to turn off the Photons. By that, I assume you mean the GI box under Caustics and GI. I didn't do that in my first tests, and that's when I saw the speed improvement. I turned it off, and WOW!! That thing took forever!!! 20+ minutes and the first pass wasn't complete. I turned the GI back on, and we are moving quickly again. When you said to turn the photons off, what exactly are you referencing? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 can you post an image of your scene, and your settings. JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studio2s Posted January 31, 2007 Author Share Posted January 31, 2007 http://www.studio2s.com/studio2s/gallery/images/10%20copy.jpg http://www.studio2s.com/studio2s/gallery/images/settings.jpg http://www.studio2s.com/studio2s/gallery/images/settings-02.jpg The image looks like complete junk and took 30 minutes. I have no idea how to fix the quality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 You're in the Draft preset for FG and your Samples Per Pixel are fairly low, try bumping up the max samples to 16 and going to Low FG. 30 minutes isn't very long, unless (as I said to somebody with a Vray render that took 32 minutes) you have a dual-quad Xeon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studio2s Posted January 31, 2007 Author Share Posted January 31, 2007 You're in the Draft preset for FG and your Samples Per Pixel are fairly low, try bumping up the max samples to 16 and going to Low FG. 30 minutes isn't very long, unless (as I said to somebody with a Vray render that took 32 minutes) you have a dual-quad Xeon. Ok, I'll try that. My office just received some videos from Autodesk specifically for Mental Ray, so I'm going through that. Man, I'm going to be able to do a serious tutorial for noobs if I ever get this sucker figured out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studio2s Posted January 31, 2007 Author Share Posted January 31, 2007 Turn off Photons, you dont need them any more JHV I am viewing a video from Autodesk about Mental Ray. It goes through photons and how they work. Then it talks about Final Gather. It says that you can obviously use either alone or both. Just photons with be really accurate, but may still have artifacts even at 1 million +. Just FG will have GI, but be inaccurate. It proceeds to say that both yield the best result and you will need only a fraction of the photons if you went just that route. In my scene, as I am testing it (300x500) my times for the default preset of LOW took 5:15 minutes. Simply by turning on the GI photons, a similar result took only 1:13. The photon were set at 500. I cranked them up to 2000 and the time rocketed to 1:17. Can anyone confirm my newest understanding that a combo of photons + GI will result is fast speeds with good results? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 Overall the light looks good, it's not as bad as you think The noise looks like you are using glossy reflections, you have two choices t o improove the quality 1) Using fast interpolate and set it to half resolution. Be aware though there is a bug with fast interpolate in some buckets will corrupt and become brightly coloured. 2) increase the glossy samples, and dont use fast interpolate. This will increase render time but not too much. 3) The Ray tracing trace depth sould have the Max depth = or > the sum of the reflection and refraction. these I would set to Max depth 10, Reflection 2 and refraction 2. ie there will only be 2 reflections of reflections and seeing that there arn't many layers of transparency the refraction can be quite low. increase this if you get black in your transparent surfaces. As for the DVD's, what version of Max are they using? Most are Max8 and before. There is a big difference in Max9. As for speed, 5 minutes is quite acceptable. I would go as far as saying that even Vray wouldn't be as fast, especially with all those glossies. If you are happy with the combination of Photons and FG then stick with it. First get your Photons looking good before you start with FG. Rather increase your Photon settings than FG. JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sergio_Pontes Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 Hi, You can use the AO effect ( I think the name is "Detail ...") found in the material editor in "Advanced effects". This will boost your image with low quality settings in the FG! As you, I also used fR but as it still does not have version for max9 I am using the MR and I am liking each time more! Sérgio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studio2s Posted January 31, 2007 Author Share Posted January 31, 2007 MR is very frustrating. When I take your suggestions, my noise doesn't go away, it just gets finer. If I wanted to render noise,, man, I can some seriously nice noise going on here. I'm going to redo my materials and see if I have better luck. Thanks for your help. I know the problems are due to my ignorance, but man, this is frustrating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studio2s Posted January 31, 2007 Author Share Posted January 31, 2007 Hi, You can use the AO effect ( I think the name is "Detail ...") found in the material editor in "Advanced effects". This will boost your image with low quality settings in the FG! As you, I also used fR but as it still does not have version for max9 I am using the MR and I am liking each time more! Sérgio I miss fR. Are you using the A+D materials or standard Max? Glossy reflections (or blurry reflections) are whats killing me right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sergio_Pontes Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 I'm using in my tests the Mental Ray materials, using the templates. Sérgio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 Stick to the Arch and Design materials. Is it possible to post the scene? you can PM me if you want to keep it offline JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 Thanks for the file Here are my findings 1) I changed the lights to a MRsun and MRsky. The omni wasn't emitting photons anyway and both lights area shadow samples were way too low. MR Area spots dont work correctly when set to direct light. 2) I hid the windows, these were stopping most of the samples from entering the room. These can be unhidden after the FGM is generated. 3) The glossie samples on most of the materials were too low. I also played with the advanced raytrace settings so take a look there. 4) I turned off the photons. MRSun&Sky are optimised for FG 5) Changed the exposure control and reapplied the MRPhysical sky There are a few other things. I didn't fix the blockyness on the ceiling and walls, These are just FG settings to be played with. I think you were trying to do too many things at the same time. A good process is to use the material over-ride set to a matte finish. Get the lighting good and right first. Generate a FG map and freeze it. then start on the materials. With a frozen FGM you will not have to wait long for renders. Once you are happy with the materials, unfreeze and delete the FGM and regenerate it with the render at half the res of the final image. Freeze and rerender at full res. JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studio2s Posted February 1, 2007 Author Share Posted February 1, 2007 Thanks a ton. As soon as I get the file back, I'll dissect it. I really appreciate you taking the time. Also, you answered, or eluded to another question I had. You say for the final image, render at half resolution to get the FG map. Is there any limit to this "cheat"? Or is a FG map the same at all scales? Again, thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 IF you go too small the FGM will blur too much resulting in loss of detail and artifacting. Some people say they get too many artifacts using this methode and swear by doing a full res FGM. Half is as low as I have needed without getting too rediculous. 2/3 will give more detail and full the most detail. Obviously 1/2 is quicker than 2/3 which in turn is quckier than 1. JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studio2s Posted February 1, 2007 Author Share Posted February 1, 2007 Thanks for the advice. I'm excited to see how you set up the scene. Send that bad boy back. I PMed you the email address. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 I already sent it , I'll send it to the other one as well JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studio2s Posted February 1, 2007 Author Share Posted February 1, 2007 WOO HOO!! Just got it. Thank you SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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