Vray for Dummies? I need help with this interior

[3DIFX]

I am despirately in need of help lighting the interior of this space. It is the interior waiting area of a hospital and there are no exterior windows to the space. I've searched for and bought vray tutorials, but I can't seem to find any tutorial that helps with lighting the interior of a building with artificial lighting only. The rendering that I've attached took 2 hours and 15 minutes to render at 640x480 and as you can see it's not looking all that great. I'm using a few photometric lights where you see the big floursecent fixtures and a few more throughout the space. I even added some omni lights (not casting shadows)on the exterior of the building and a target direct fake sun. I removed the back wall to let some exterior light in. I really didn't want to do that though. Here are some settings that I used to produce this image.

 

My System:

Dual Core 6400 @ 2.13ghz and 3.50gb RAM

 

Software used:

3D Studio Viz 2006

vray advanced 1.50.SP1

 

Vray parameters:

Image Sampler - Adaptive Subdivision (min rate -1, max rate 6)

Anti alias filter - Mitchell Netrevali

1st bounce - Irradiance map

2nd bounce - Brute force

Irradiance map presets - High

Hsph subdv - 50

Inter Sam - 20

Brute Force GI - subdiv=50, 2nd bounces

 

I've tried various other settings (like light cache and photon mapping) but this was the only one that I could get to render quickly (2 hours, HA!). I am so frustrated because I need to have this done like today. I've used vray on exteriors and gotten pretty decent results. I've even used it on interiors, but it's always been a struggle and I always wind up doing a lot of work in post.

 

Someone please help me...I feel so stupid because nothing that I am trying works. Is there a "Vray for Dummies" book out there somewhere? I'd be happy to send anyone the viz file that wants to help.

 

WHAT AM I DOING WRONG? (yeah, I know you're probably looking at my settings thinkin "What are you doing right?" - I would love some help.

 

Thanks.

[dagor]

use vraylight instead of photometric. it`s faster.

[3DIFX]

See there....I'm still confused. I've read a lot of places that photometric lights (using vray shadow) work better and render faster than vray lights for interior renderings. Which is it? 2 hours for a 640x480 rendering that sucks is a long time for me. Sorry...I'm still frustrated.

[Jeff Mottle]

I know this won't help you now, but have you looked at Brian Smith's V-Ray training? I've seen some pretty amazing before and after images by some of his students. If you have not already done so, you can check it out here:

 

http://cgarchitect.vismasters.com/static/training/vray/video

 

I'm not sure about the settings, but it looks like you have some gamma/exposure issues in that image.

[dagor]

i`v shared only my experience.

it is your choice what to do with it.

 

also you can use light cash instead brute force. screen mode, 0.01 size, 1500-2000 subtives and filtering you like.

i use QMC AA min 1 max 4 thresh 0.01-0.007, and never use AA filter because they slow down render.

[Jeff Mottle]

You can fix a lot of your problems with a few curves in Photoshop. This is far from perfect, but about 10 seconds of editing.

[Stephen Thomas]

No wonder your render times are high with those settings. 50 subdivisions on your QMC GI is huge and totally unnecessary for a 640x480 render. Stick to light cache which is faster and much better at bouncing the light around your scene. Then you wont have to resort to using tricks to get more light in. Also your image sampling is killing you. You realise that a max rate of 6 equates to 64 subdivisions per pixel!

 

Try using these settings until you are happy with the lighting:

 

Image sampling - Adaptive QMC: min=1 max=4 / col.threshold=0.05

1st bounce - Irradiance map: hsph. subdivs=20 / interp. samples = 20 / med. preset

2nd bounce - Light cache: subdivs=600 / sample size=0.02

 

then try increasing them to strike a balance between render times and image quality. Maybe something like this, depends on your scene, render size and what you're happy with.

 

Image sampling - Adaptive QMC: min=3 max=6 / col.threshold=0.005

1st bounce - Irradiance map: hsph. subdivs=30 / interp. samples = 30 / high preset

2nd bounce - Light cache: subdivs=1200 / sample size=0.02

 

I would stick with the lights you are using and see how you go with more conservative render settings first. Just add only the lights present in the real scene and steer clear of omni fill lights as this will just give you a fake solution and not a true representation of the space.

 

Hope this helps!

[3DIFX]

Dagor, didn't mean to come off that way.... I am thankful for your advice. I just have a headache. I'll try some of those settings. Thanks again.

 

Jeff, Thanks for the link. Do you know off hand if there is any instruction on artificial lighting only because the image of the kitchen on the webite has 2 big windows in it. Very nice image kitchen render though. That's probably the effect from those omni fill lights instead of over gamma/exposure...I think.

 

stef.thomas, Wow! can't wait to try some of your setting suggestions. I appreciate it a lot.

[3DIFX]

Hi guys. I just wanted to post an updated image. It's not perfect, but it's looking much better. I changed the lights to vray lights instead of photometric, deleted all fake lights, and started off by using the settings that Stephen suggested. Stephen, those were some of the fastest settings that I've ever successfully tried in Vray. Thanks so much! Rendering times for the 640x480 ranged from 5 to 10 minutes. It could have been even faster if I rendered from the saved light cache file. Jeff thanks for taking the time to edit my previous image in Photoshop. Many thanks to everyone who replied with suggestions. You guys are the greatest!

[gods418]

i learn vray from chris nicholson vray training i suggest you grab one of those he has interior and exterior lighting.... but its for vray 1.4 or 1.3 i think coz vray 1.5 have some changes but its all the same youll understand it.

highly recomend..................