MentalRay help

[joske]

do not use the exposure control at all (or to brighten up the scene)

it oversaturates your colors and fades out and flattens the shadows.

 

your scene has no big windows or openings, this is not very easy to render.

loose the curtains (it only complicates things and will force you to use to much photons and thus render very slow)

 

try with only gray materials to achieve a good photonspead (to gain test time)

[mohamedberry]

well... lets take one at a time

 

Ras, i do tune the GI first but the thing is if you use small photon radius then you MUST use FG, as in my case... but i assure you that i dont try to config GI & FG at the same time

 

Phil, i cant lose a single thing, the client approved the preliminary scene and i cant change anything (company's rules), and i am not using any exposure control at all (although i brighten the image on photoshop alittle pit but it didnt contain any shadows at the first place)!!

 

here is an update too with some clients amendments

 

PS. almost forgot to thank Phil for his chair i'm using in this scene

[Ras]

Hi Mohammad

 

Alright - thats good. But you don´t need to use FG because your photons are that size. This is a misunderstanding! Clear this from your mind. The first thing to do is setup GI so the picture looks good. Then you can introduce FG - but not earlier. Make a good looking scene before you proceed with FG. If you cannot do this first it means that your control of GI is not adequate.

 

First of all you have to have enough photons in the scene. Then you figure out how bright they should be (energy) and then you set their blend of splat factor as I´ve talked about earlier. This should make for perfect blending photons of any size - but the smaller they are the longer the calculation time will be of course.

[joske]

not my chair or scene dude, only did the light setup (scene is from a mray thread over @ evermotion)

but have fun with it anyway

 

if you keep the closed curtains it will be very hard to have any photons inside (curtains blocks them) so you will need some sort of photon transmat shader to force them trough the curtain in some way

this is very hard to setup nice, and is a more advanced setup that needs lot's of time and experiments...

 

mabey you should just open the curtain instead...?

 

try and use photons that are at least bigger then 50 cm. if not you will loose a lot of render time for no reason

(bigger raduis can give the same spread with fewer photons)

so increase radius and decrease number of photons until you start loosing to much detail in your solution.

this way you can achieve an optimal balance between rendertime-detail in your solution...

[mohamedberry]

what an idea phil,how didnt i think of that !! simply open the curtain

thanx guys will try to work on it more, but i have to go now, will post my results 2morrow

and i have a quistion for Ras but will post it with the updates

 

dont know how to thank you... but you are simply the B. E. S. T.

[mohamedberry]

ok guys... time is up and here is what i had to deliver, tell me what do you think and how to correct the bad things

 

One final quistion, to have a sharp shadow in the beginning then fading out in the end, what are the methods to do so (note that i am using a raytraced shadows from mr area spot or omni).

[grungebob]

Another good idea to do is to place a plan with an opaque map of a tree branch or tree outside the window so it doesn't look like its on a 50th floor of a building. Of course, if it is then no trees because I don't know of 50 story trees.

[hardnozehockey]

Joske,

 

You really know what you are talking about. It was a bit hard to understand some of the fragmented sentences, but I made it through . Here is my scene with Joske's method. I used a MR Area Direct Light rather than a MR Area Spot because of the ill effect that the Spot created. However, I did use MR Area Omnis at each window and once in the kitchen (to the right of the image... can't be seen in the image). Excuse the glass because there was a modifier on that should NOT have been on. I'm still working on it, but when I am done, I will be making a video tutorial for others to view. I think it will help young CG artists that read these tutorials and don't fully understand what is going on. I know because I am one

[mohamedberry]

Stef...

 

well thats not what i ment... look at this: thread

 

the thing is, there is a difference between mr area lights shadows & directional shadows YES no matter how far you put your spot, its a conceptual matter, the spot sprinkles photons from one point and expanding ascendingly to a circle... the directional performs as a surface (plan for example) sprinkling photons from all over its area.

 

i saw an example of what i am trying to say thread

and here is what i am saying (attached)

Regards

[Hao La]

For exterior I alway use sunlight system , and the result looks not bad at all ...(^_^)

 

[Hao La]

These are some of my works , I using MR and still looking for a good setting

For this one i used a target direct light as the sunlight (only one light in this scene) . But the carpet looks really bad (still WIP)

 

[joske]

One final quistion, to have a sharp shadow in the beginning then fading out in the end, what are the methods to do so (note that i am using a raytraced shadows from mr area spot or omni).

 

just use a non directional mr area spot

spot higher away = less fading at the end of the shadow and the other way around...

samples let you set the quality of the fading (smoother result with more samples)

 

i hope that answers your question Mo ? pretty straightforward...

 

notice the shadow from the sun in the render goddam made.

as you can see the shadow keeps a straight line and does not fade out.

i reality this is impossible (no offence goddam, but it just is)

even if the sun is so far from the earth, you will always have a fading shadow indoors... (sharp near the window, diffuse away from window)

[mohamedberry]

i totally agree with philip, the shadows should fade, but it also should be parallel !! and to get fading shows i have to use MR spots, and to get parallel shadows i have to use Directionals !! guess MR have to develop something in thier comming version

[Hao La]

So MR 3.4 has came out with Max7.5 , what do u guy think about the new MR version ??? any good , any bad ???

[mohamedberry]

didnt try it yet to be honest, but i think it should be much faster in pre-calculations and support new max's additions. i'm still learning though so dont count on me

[Hao La]

I think it works faster in render , gotta test more on it ...(^_^)