Mental Ray + Max 9

[Justin Hunt]

no problem, you may need to play with the exposure to get it brighter.

 

JHV

[studio2s]

I'll post an image when I get something decent.

[studio2s]

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

 

Another question along this line....In order to quickly get to a good FG map, can I do the first (writing) pass with my AA samples at 1/16:1/16 or something like that? I am assuming the FG map has nothing to do with the AA sampling, so just getting my FG map (at half scale, as you suggest) with little to zero AA is going to be fine?

 

Can anyone confirm this concept?

[Justin Hunt]

Cant say for sure. I think it would make a difference as I assume that FG is in some way related to AA. This is just a hunch I haven't tested it.

 

Bare in mind that you dont want to degrade the FG too much. By doing a 1/2 res FG map and upscaling it is already loosing alot of detail. The whole beauty of GI renders is the detail and sublty of the lighting. We push the speed as far as we need to with the concequence of a slightly poorer image. Just look at the differences between Vray, Mentalray and those of Fryray and Maxwell.

 

Dont get too carried away with speeding up the FG. rather cut render times by not having glossy reflections on everything, no refractions and clean efficient models.

 

JHV