BJMonkey Posted March 3, 2010 Report Share Posted March 3, 2010 Just testing Area lights and photons in a scene I've created (heavily based on the dojo in the Matrix) for a university project. Still WIP. Mostly poor colours and minimal textures as of yet. 23mins + colour editing in photoshop. Skymap in Area mode. 8 Area lights 800k*8 photons (6.4M) Macbook Pro 2.33 GHz using no rama. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardJoly Posted March 3, 2010 Report Share Posted March 3, 2010 Nice dojo, in fact, very nice dojo... Can't wait to see it develop. I'm sure many users crave the minute details of the setup so please keep posting your development with render time, photon count, sandwich eaten and all the rest. Could you post a wire of the top view so we identify the lights positions. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FelixCat Posted March 3, 2010 Report Share Posted March 3, 2010 Very nice BJ. Please, post your setups (and a photo of the sandwich). FelixCat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomas Egger Posted March 3, 2010 Report Share Posted March 3, 2010 Hey BJ, Lets see if we can help to make your render faster... Thanksss Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BJMonkey Posted March 3, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 3, 2010 Actually, I just recently rendered it using baked lights... Individually, the lights work well. Combining them in photoshop gives this (Ignore the bad colours, it's just testing for now, it's not a final piece) But if I try to render them all out at the same time I get this... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BJMonkey Posted March 4, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 4, 2010 Forgot to mention... 16 seconds to render all lights at once (with botched shading). 9 seconds to render them individually. So if I could avoid post-work it would be considerably faster... 71 seconds per frame plus post work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arketype Posted March 4, 2010 Report Share Posted March 4, 2010 Forgot to mention... 16 seconds to render all lights at once (with botched shading). 9 seconds to render them individually. So if I could avoid post-work it would be considerably faster... 71 seconds per frame plus post work. Hi BJ, Nice looking image so far! What are your photon map mode settings, and your photon radiuses? It sounds like you might have it set to "always visible". While this can be useable, the proper setting for a final render is "GI+Secondary". Inside the database feature is a checkbox to "render grid" which should be unchecked. (GI+Secondary will automatically turn this off). GI+Secondary engages the GI engine to shade the points identified by the photon map (or as defined by the baked database). The shading should improve with this setting. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BJMonkey Posted March 4, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 4, 2010 Ok, I'll try it with GI. (I know about the red lines, I was just showing where the artifacts lay on the grid) But, I don't understand why it works with individual lights, but not with them all working together without GI. I'll update this post soon with GI renders. Stupidly forgot to move the camera into place and change the render size back... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BJMonkey Posted March 4, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 4, 2010 36 Mins with GI on, and photons. I then promptly did a second render. Area lights only, no photons. 16 mins. You can't see the beams through the side panels being the main difference. I actually prefer the ceiling on the version without the bounce light. The Area lights are the render-time hogs I think... It's noisy because it's only on 20 samples per Area shadow! 100 samples will probably bring it back up to almost 2 hours per frame. Oh, and, ignore the white at the back on the photon render, that's due to it being a slightly unfinished model, I've just found out. *Question* Is it possible to make objects only visible to photon maps after they bounce? I'm gonna try using planes to emit photons next if that's not possible, but I'm guessing geometry area lights will take even longer to render... But I will get more bounce light accuracy as the photons won't escape through the windows :D At the moment the windows are added in in post because it's the easiest way I've found to make them look well lit at the moment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igors Posted March 5, 2010 Report Share Posted March 5, 2010 Hello BJ The Area lights are the render-time hogs I think... Yeap, kinda :rolleyes: They are in "RT soft shadows" category thus require hundreds of rays per each calculation. It's essentially same in any 3D app. Their difference (from others soft shadows) is a real life illumination model, but it does not make them faster/slower. The "Use GI sampling engine" can help a bit. *Question* Is it possible to make objects only visible to photon maps after they bounce? I'm gonna try using planes to emit photons next if that's not possible, but I'm guessing geometry area lights will take even longer to render... But I will get more bounce light accuracy as the photons won't escape through the windows :D The best way to have more accurate bounced light is to have more photons. 800K is a very, very modest emission. For comparison: in other app a tutorial considers 3 variants of photon map: 32, 64 and 128 millions of photons respectively. Also it's not clear what kind of accuracy you need. More intensive bounced light can be done with larger "Energy Bias" values and/or "Customize" options. Note that for test purposes you can visualize bounced light only: - GI off - mode "Always Visible" - "Store Direct Light" off We see no reasons to use Light Objects in this scene. If there is no complex light shapes - no necessary to waste extra time to analyze polygons (that Light Object does). IMO a good move is to use appropriate "Block Distance" and count of rays. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BJMonkey Posted March 10, 2010 Author Report Share Posted March 10, 2010 Sorry for the late reply, this project's on hold for a few weeks while I gather myself for other parallel projects. Thanks for all the input, I'll try it with the Area lights off when I get back to it. I've started getting some interesting effects using luminance maps on planes, I'll post them when they're more polished. ---- Brook Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomas Egger Posted March 10, 2010 Report Share Posted March 10, 2010 Ola, Great BJ.. we are waiting.. Thankss Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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