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I have to agree with you SCI FI Funk ------dimdedl's renders do look very nice and that BOT looks especially nice indeed. I cannot say I have acheived anything like that so far but still learning my way around as it were. It does seem to be pretty fast but setting up all materials in Octane seems like another big step. Although I wonder how integrated the plugin will be?
The reality is for Carrara users a really good plugin here ----would go a long way to keeping Carrara current and competetive as it were especially if we can keep a lot of Carrara within the process.
I would be curious to see or hear from the Otay folks or person working on the plugin what some of the plans may encompass.
rich
Just to say that I think a lot of what you were seeing was indirect light, rather than reflection per se. If one leg has red trousers on, then that is scattering red light (some of which goes in your eye so you can see it!), but some will bounce off the other leg, thus causing an indirect lighting effect of a subtle red glow. "Reflection" is the more directional bouncing of light and is the same phenomena as specular light, although in Carrara the two are separate and different, while in the real world, all light is treated equally. In Carrara, "specular" is reflection from a light source, while "Reflection" is reflection from other objects in the scene, so to mimic the real world, where you have specular (as in the shine on skin) then you should also have a low level of reflection, which I think is what DT would have meant.
In physically based renderers such as Lux and Octane, there aren't separate controls for specular and reflection, they are the same thing.
My thoughts too Rich. The signs are Carrara development is lagging behind it's competitors. However it is still a very useful all in one tool. Add in a brand new rendering process - Octane - and now you've got a killer renderer with all the tools you are used too, plus all that poser compatible content.
Could be a breath of life for Carrara.
Just to say that I think a lot of what you were seeing was indirect light, rather than reflection per se. If one leg has red trousers on, then that is scattering red light (some of which goes in your eye so you can see it!), but some will bounce off the other leg, thus causing an indirect lighting effect of a subtle red glow. "Reflection" is the more directional bouncing of light and is the same phenomena as specular light, although in Carrara the two are separate and different, while in the real world, all light is treated equally. In Carrara, "specular" is reflection from a light source, while "Reflection" is reflection from other objects in the scene, so to mimic the real world, where you have specular (as in the shine on skin) then you should also have a low level of reflection, which I think is what DT would have meant.
In physically based renderers such as Lux and Octane, there aren't separate controls for specular and reflection, they are the same thing.
Thanks Dart!
Sorry for the "reflection" confusion - I teach Remote Sensing at the local college, and often think/speak in remote sensing terms, where any indirect light (actually, anything we see) is reflected light from the source object. So in the case of a green leaf, we see a green leaf because all other colors (wavelengths in the visible spectrum) are absorbed by the leaf, and green, the color we see, is reflected by the leaf. In the real world, due to the added green from the leaf, there would be a slight color cast created from it, but not as great as in the image, mainly because the skin would absorb more of the green, rather than reflect it (keep in mind that the color of the skin is what is reflected, and the rest of the visible spectrum is absorbed to a certain extent) This is where it gets very difficult for even unbiased renderers to actually adhere to the properties of light absorbtion in the real world, but we are getting much closer!
I think Phil's explanation is great, and no doubt much less confusing than mine ;-)
My thoughts too Rich. The signs are Carrara development is lagging behind it's competitors. However it is still a very useful all in one tool. Add in a brand new rendering process - Octane - and now you've got a killer renderer with all the tools you are used too, plus all that poser compatible content.
Could be a breath of life for Carrara.
I agree with both of you. Hopefully the Octane pliugin will be a great success, and it will generate interest to develop plugins for other external renderes like Thea. I really like the idea of being able to use the same renderer with multiple applications, it will make life much easier.
Granted, Octane and the plugins aren't cheap, and compared to Carrara, Poser, and DS it's rather expensive. But the workflow is so much more interactive, and provides much faster results both in terms of setting up the render, and rendering the final image, that I think it's well worth the price.
The following is an example of the distinction that made PhilW, if I understood correctly: we have the same scene rendered both with IL checked and with AO + anything glows light; I have placed a glowing plane in the scene. As you can see the jacket is showing off more reflection with IL, while the glowing plane scatters the light (the so-called reverberation of light) on the guy's face more widely in the render with AO. The first regards the reflection channel while the second affects more the SSS, the shininess and the translucency channels in Carrara. The reverberation of light affects i.e. the lighting of your face such as when you're wearing a red sweater or pale green one, so that you look more healthy or sickly ( or more tanned with a blue sweater)
The render with AO + anything glows took half the time and may represents a viable alternative for animations imo
good news here
http://www.solidangle.com/arnold/
arnold available for everyone
Well.. the "free" version is a trial version and gets watermarked after 15 days.
Well.. the "free" version is a trial version and gets watermarked after 15 days.
yes but before 16th of january you had to ask for a private license now is public and affordable if you own maya or softimage; moreover you can dload the sdk, great news imo
Yes, there are a lot of renderers out there it seems now. Lots of choices . Some are a tad high priced for sure like Arnold. I am sure you could do awesome work with it but its in another league for me.
To me it seems Octane and Thea may be best values out there. But really if Octane is going to gives us a nice plugin that lets you use a lot of carrara in setting up renders -- it would seem maybe the best alternative.
Also for me --how easy to get animations done are is also important. And how fast. I tried Maxwell for instance as they have a noncommercial license very cheap --and altough it is very powerful it seemed like doing animations would be very lengthy in time albeit very nicely done.
rich
The speed of the mechanics of animating is down to how much you have animated in the past. You should be building up a library of how to's, mocaps and re-usable animation sections inc lighting rigs that can be used as a start point for further work.
The speed of Rendering is an interesting dilemma. In biased rendering it's a case of what lights you leave out (can live with), plus how you arrange the shot. For example I've proved that physically removing objects and lights will speed up the rendering in Carrara (vs. making them invisible).
In unbiased the speed of the GPU(s) outstrip the CPUS (not saying anything new here) apart from the ability to network on top of that. However (I think from a few experiments can someone confirm) atm the unbiased is only "fast" with few lights in the scene. i.e. sunlight. So atm it might be that magaremoto's post with IL checked and with AO + anything glows light; might be faster and look just as good in some cases.
If this is the case can we live in a parallel set up using the best of both technologies? That would be fab as I've had CPU and GPU rendering (Carrara and Octane) rendering simultaneously for maximum output!
Funny you mention the speed of the mechanics of animation increasing with time - as I've just been hand-keying animations this past week, only to find that I am blazing fast at it compared to not long ago - just from what I've learned by doing it so much - not only because of the enormity of my wonderful aniBlock/animated pose collection! Good point though. Keeping a good browser setup filled with organized clips can be a huge help towards animation setup speed.
I have also been finding that, sometimes using the Gamma Correction = 2.2 drastically increases the render speed. But that calls for an entirely different lighting set up at times. Sometimes it's fine with the lighting I've already had set up. I have really been pleased with my render times lately. Sometimes I'll see that a render is snailing along - out of the norm from how I usually render. A good, thorough analysis throughout my scene will often reveal the 'time-killer' aspect that I can fix to get the speed back up.
Yes, also I've learned that a lighting rig is PER SHOT not per scene. So the standard rig is fine for starting you off in the scene, but then you'll have to add, edit or take out to make that shot work. Too many lights are the most common reason for slowing down rendering imho, also overlapping bright lights are a great way of wasting rendering time.
Hi,
new preview video online:
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=36332&start=20
rk.
Thanks rk66 for link to new preview. This is awesome progress indeed. Thanks Otoy for your efforts with Octane for Carrara ---this is looking so very promising indeed for Carrara users.
rich
It's a big update from before. Good news!
I just hope 95% of any bugs are ironed out - hope the author is not rushed into an early (buggy) release.
Also I hope this is tested with large scenes. I'll happily stick some of my large scenes through it as a test.
I see the features are coming along nicely. I really want this to be my main rendering solution moving forward.
I agree with large scenes. of course this is the other side of gpu rendering--- vram. It is a little bit of a concern as for sure I think we probably need to have/get video card(S) with 3gb of more vram on the minimum side if one has any plans for sizeable scenes. I hope the developer squeezes every once of efficiency with the plugin so this can become ones final solution , if it proves to be able to handle decent size scenes on 3-4 gb vram video cards that its going to be such a very tempting purchase.
I currently only have smaller vram video cards so I really cannot test much with the demo right now -----for myself, but hopefully as we progress here --some beta testers will give it a shot.
rich
3gb will be ample. My episode 8 is around 3.5 gb and that's a pretty extreme scene. I managed to save about 1gb in textures by reducing them down when not in the foreground.
Awesome. Because if you read on OTOY forums there folks are always talking about pretty hefty video cards or multiple ones --of course I never know their scene sizes or resolutions of images. I do see some folks talking about 4k size images which is 4 times what I would want anyhow. Standard hd is about the biggest size for me.
Now that said still looks like for me to lock down a 3gb or 4 gb vram video card ie gtx760 or 770 sets you back some 300 plus usd and then the renderer and plugin about same ---so this is not exactly a cheap upgrade ----but it does bring a level of images not so easy to obtain in Carrara currently. So its one of those things how good do you want it to look and how much time you have to render it.
Anyone with more images to share from Octane render always appreciated.
The other nice thing I do like the developer of the carrara plugin --his work to date has been pretty comprehensive and I am pretty certain this guy is going to deliver a very nice plugin indeed.
rich
Ditto no.2
Plus FYI I bought a GTX760, Octane plus a DAZ license. In theory I'm testing now ready for when Carrara arrives. In practice I'm so far behind schedule that I have to concentrate on animating and rendering with Carrara.
However I've drawn a line in the sand. I'm using Octane from Episode 12 (which is a Blade Runner Apartment type scene). This will benefit greatly from looking photoreal.I'm currently on Episode 9.
Ditto #3
Wish I could shoe-horn a GTX760 into my laptop .... but I'm actually very happy with the performance of the 670M, just wish I had more texture slots.
Rich - here you go, nothing special but I'm gradually putting more stuff in my scenes with Octane. The DS plugin is a bit unstable, so I'm gradually working with it and making more complex scenes. The attached image took just under 2Gb of VRAM (just having fun, was done for a contest over in the commons) I would guess it has at least 150-200 materials. most are using shaders without unique texture maps. It used 44 color textures, and 8 gray scale (bump), so I still had room for another fully clothed human figure, or other stuff with 20 color slots and 8 gray scale left (with a Kepler based card you would have room for a little over 3X more textures than what I have in this scene). It took about 30 min to render, and it has a ton of reflective surfaces, and the large window is architectural glass.
Let me know if you have any questions. The most important thing in your video card is RAM, and getting a Kepler based card. You don't have to get the top end cards to use and enjoy the benefits of Octane, but the high end cards to give you a real major WOW factor. Mine is basically equivalent to a GTX 560 in a desktop system, and I'm very impressed with the render times.
Dustrider,
Your skills continue to improve! Love the fact that you've used colours only in places. The Glass is excellent and the light into the cracks - well - that's why we are interested in Octane.
The only thing that concerns me is shadows on the feet/floor. The figures look unrealistic against the floor. Or is it me?
ditto
maybe more bumps on the floor can enhance the poor shadows
anyway very good outcome indeed
hey thanks for info Dustrider. Looks pretty nice. Have you tried to do any kind of animation work ? and if so how does that go in Octane?
rich
ditto
maybe more bumps on the floor can enhance the poor shadows
anyway very good outcome indeed
Thanks ....... and thanks!! I spent so much time working on the shaders, that I overlooked the shadow issue, and didn't notice that the bump map on the pavers was inverted. Not 100% happy with the lighting, but at least there are shadows now.
I forgot that with hdr's in Octane the default gamma value is 1, which gives good soft lighting, but poorly defined values. I increased the Gamma to 1.5, and now there are shadows, and the lighting looks much more like it should based on the hdr, which was taken either at sunrise or sunset.
Thanks again, and let me know if you see anything else out of whack!
I haven't tried any animations yet, but it is on my list of things to do. I've got a walk cycle for G4 that looks great with dynamic clothing that I'd like to do.. I had it all set up almost ready to render using DS3, but it was just too slow to get the quality render I wanted. Now I have to redo it all because 4.6 won't open it.
Here is another one I did for the contest (a bit different view). This one has the entire Technopolis scene loaded, and I still had plenty of room in textures and vram for a lot more. This scene takes about 4.6 Gb of system ram in DS, and only 1.7Gb of vram to render.
Setup in DS, rendered in Octane
Aiko3 with Mila morphs and textures (renders very well in Octane)
Mech Girl for A3
Hover Bike from freebies at Rendo (re-textured)
Lit with and HDR and one mesh light
Both looking wonderful dustrider.
btw I watched this last thing last night. Wow and wow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etoS6daj20c
It's from May 2013, so I guess they must be much closer to delivering on these aims. I'm convinced this is the future, and if you are serious about the final output, the cloud at $1/hour per GPU makes a lot of sense. To put it in perspective, if you combine multiple GPUs (after testing locally to find the quickest way of rendering), your ANIMATIONS can be complete in seconds. Animations mind, not just still frames.
Now that would be a huge boost to my workflow. I'd render locally at some small frame size, content my self with incomplete images, then be prepared to spend up to $50 per episode to render it out in 4k. Inconceivable at home.
Also realtime physics? Are you kiddin' me? Now that appeals to an old-time programmer like myself.
Sci Fi Funk,
Indeed this does look very compelling. The cloud based solution seems like an amazing opportunity for small studios and independents or small groups to be able to really render out something awesome in a fraction of the time ---at a fraction of the cost of creating a farm.
Even if one does not have grand plans --saving time is so so important.
Rich
Nice one Dustrider -- looks awesome. So how long did that take in Octane ?