Post Your Renders - Happy New Year yall

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Comments

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584
    edited December 1969

    There are other factors - the i7 machine has much slower RAM for instance. I think it may be a previous generation chipset too, but I can't be sure.

    The GHz is analogous to horsepowers in an engine. The more you have, the more powerful it is. The cores is like strapping engines side by side.

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,799
    edited December 1969

    I guess I'm still confused on this. If I needed to see the lights, I'd just show the mesh in the replicator's general tab, then adjust the replicator's parameters as needed.

    I thought so too, but then assumed maybe Rashad was not aware of this? Sure he'll drop by soon to clarify.

    EP,
    You're right, there is no need to convert them into real instances. I was writing that tut from "memory "of sorts and was a little off in some of the directives. I;ve figured it out now, thanks.

    DUDU,
    Yep, you called it. I am going to start a new thread for this topic in hopes that it doesn't dominate this thread. See you guys in a bit.

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,799
    edited December 1969

    ep and I (as well as Garstor and Wendy) have had many wonderful discussions behind the scenes about lighting in Carrara. It's a wonderful thing. Although popular lighting guides and other software may use different terminology, Carrara impressively includes a vast assortment of ways to light a scene. I've just bought Phil Wilkes Realism Rendering course and he has some very nice translations in there from Jeremy Birn's Digital Lighting and Rendering guide for use in Carrara. But they're not straight cross-overs from the book into Carrara. Phil has gone far out of his way to get it right, and show some really "Real" techniques for lighting via Global Illumination with Indirect Light, techniques to do so without GI/IL, also with GI and the Ambient Occlusion form of Indirect Light. Pretty cool.

    But evilproducer has pointed out many methods to me over the years. Carrara (and evilproducer) never ceases to amaze me with new ways to get awesome results. Carrara truly can produce incredible realism with its native render engine, which remains to be my favorite way to render.

    VERY true. Carrara has incredible flexibility. I was indeed able to rig a 3d Fill Light in Carrara and it works just as well in Carrara as it did in Bryce!!!! This is a major wow for me. Go Carrara!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    ep and I (as well as Garstor and Wendy) have had many wonderful discussions behind the scenes about lighting in Carrara. It's a wonderful thing. Although popular lighting guides and other software may use different terminology, Carrara impressively includes a vast assortment of ways to light a scene. I've just bought Phil Wilkes Realism Rendering course and he has some very nice translations in there from Jeremy Birn's Digital Lighting and Rendering guide for use in Carrara. But they're not straight cross-overs from the book into Carrara. Phil has gone far out of his way to get it right, and show some really "Real" techniques for lighting via Global Illumination with Indirect Light, techniques to do so without GI/IL, also with GI and the Ambient Occlusion form of Indirect Light. Pretty cool.

    But evilproducer has pointed out many methods to me over the years. Carrara (and evilproducer) never ceases to amaze me with new ways to get awesome results. Carrara truly can produce incredible realism with its native render engine, which remains to be my favorite way to render.

    VERY true. Carrara has incredible flexibility. I was indeed able to rig a 3d Fill Light in Carrara and it works just as well in Carrara as it did in Bryce!!!! This is a major wow for me. Go Carrara!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Do you think that would also help with interior scenes in an un-biased renderer, or is this strictly for biased?

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,799
    edited December 1969

    ep and I (as well as Garstor and Wendy) have had many wonderful discussions behind the scenes about lighting in Carrara. It's a wonderful thing. Although popular lighting guides and other software may use different terminology, Carrara impressively includes a vast assortment of ways to light a scene. I've just bought Phil Wilkes Realism Rendering course and he has some very nice translations in there from Jeremy Birn's Digital Lighting and Rendering guide for use in Carrara. But they're not straight cross-overs from the book into Carrara. Phil has gone far out of his way to get it right, and show some really "Real" techniques for lighting via Global Illumination with Indirect Light, techniques to do so without GI/IL, also with GI and the Ambient Occlusion form of Indirect Light. Pretty cool.

    But evilproducer has pointed out many methods to me over the years. Carrara (and evilproducer) never ceases to amaze me with new ways to get awesome results. Carrara truly can produce incredible realism with its native render engine, which remains to be my favorite way to render.

    VERY true. Carrara has incredible flexibility. I was indeed able to rig a 3d Fill Light in Carrara and it works just as well in Carrara as it did in Bryce!!!! This is a major wow for me. Go Carrara!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Do you think that would also help with interior scenes in an un-biased renderer, or is this strictly for biased?

    Biased rendering only. Unbiased rendered scenes don't need any of this extra help.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Some more elements of my 'toon based animation. My 'toon cat and a very lightly 'tooned A4. I'm using the toonIII scene filter as it is quicker for me to set up than than YaToon which has been very hit and miss for me. The lighting is very simple as well.

    Picture_1.png
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    Flat_Cat.jpg
    720 x 480 - 112K
  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,986
    edited December 1969

    Some more elements of my 'toon based animation. My 'toon cat and a very lightly 'tooned A4. I'm using the toonIII scene filter as it is quicker for me to set up than than YaToon which has been very hit and miss for me. The lighting is very simple as well.

    thats fantastic evil. congrats! Care to give me a lesson in making these renders?? Looking forward to the animation.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,165
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    Some more elements of my 'toon based animation. My 'toon cat and a very lightly 'tooned A4. I'm using the toonIII scene filter as it is quicker for me to set up than than YaToon which has been very hit and miss for me. The lighting is very simple as well.

    thats fantastic evil. congrats! Care to give me a lesson in making these renders?? Looking forward to the animation.

    Yes, me too!

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    I'm still fine tuning my settings, but I have decided that minimal bump or no bumps gets rid of some noise in the filter.

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited February 2015

    Some more elements of my 'toon based animation. My 'toon cat and a very lightly 'tooned A4. I'm using the toonIII scene filter as it is quicker for me to set up than than YaToon which has been very hit and miss for me. The lighting is very simple as well.

    :) the long suffering expression of the cat holding a cup of coffee made me chuckle. Cool stuff, looks like a lot of fun.

    Edit: Oh hey look, I'm a 'power member' now. I'll try to not let the power go to my head :)

    Post edited by Jonstark on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,165
    edited December 1969

    Jonstark said:

    Edit: Oh hey look, I'm a 'power member' now. I'll try to not let the power go to my head :)

    Let it go to your head. Your contributions have been amazing!

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited February 2015

    Just try being an Addict. If you don't post enough, you get a bizarre sense of euphoria- just ask Dart. ;-)

    Or, if you're like me, your chubby little fingers hit the wrong frickin' keys. For instance, I meant to type a simple "u," but instead somehow typed an "r" and an "i." ;-P

    Post edited by evilproducer on
  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,986
    edited February 2015

    Just try being an Addict. If you don't post enough, you get a bizarre sense of euphoria- just ask Dart. ;-)

    Or, if you're like me, your chubby little fingers hit the wrong frickin' keys. For instance, I meant to type a simple "u," but instead somehow typed an "r" and an "i." ;-P

    yes my bette noir is whene I type the word 'wonderful'. You ever notice how close the 'k' key is to the 'L' key? Me neither...

    Ah so the ckue, evik, to your wonderfu'l' renders is kikkle or no bump ! Fenric shader doctor wikk come in handy, thankfu'll'y.....

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,537
    edited December 1969

    ep and I (as well as Garstor and Wendy) have had many wonderful discussions behind the scenes about lighting in Carrara. It's a wonderful thing. Although popular lighting guides and other software may use different terminology, Carrara impressively includes a vast assortment of ways to light a scene. I've just bought Phil Wilkes Realism Rendering course and he has some very nice translations in there from Jeremy Birn's Digital Lighting and Rendering guide for use in Carrara. But they're not straight cross-overs from the book into Carrara. Phil has gone far out of his way to get it right, and show some really "Real" techniques for lighting via Global Illumination with Indirect Light, techniques to do so without GI/IL, also with GI and the Ambient Occlusion form of Indirect Light. Pretty cool.

    But evilproducer has pointed out many methods to me over the years. Carrara (and evilproducer) never ceases to amaze me with new ways to get awesome results. Carrara truly can produce incredible realism with its native render engine, which remains to be my favorite way to render.

    VERY true. Carrara has incredible flexibility. I was indeed able to rig a 3d Fill Light in Carrara and it works just as well in Carrara as it did in Bryce!!!! This is a major wow for me. Go Carrara!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Do you think that would also help with interior scenes in an un-biased renderer, or is this strictly for biased?

    Biased rendering only. Unbiased rendered scenes don't need any of this extra help.Man, sorry to be a part of filling this "Post Images" thread with dumb words...

    You guys should check out Phil's Realistic Rendering program! His Indirect Lighting methods for interior scenes gets true Pro results, just like the discussion on the topic in Jeremy Birn's awesome Digital Lighting and Rendering text book and explores some interesting ways to work interior lighting - as well as a top secret LoREZ modeling technique to help fill the scene with even more realism without a lot of modeling involved... okay... it won't make sense unless you see it for yourself - but it's very cool.
    Anyways, it really opened my eyes to how incredibly realistic Carrara's render engine can behave. Ambient Occlusion in Carrara is fantastic. If you don't go through the process of creating an Occlusion sandwich, as per Jeremy Birn's lessons, using multiple outputs, Carrara automatically sandwiched the results anyways, so you may skip a whole chunk of workflow - and it does it very well. As to be expected, using true IL makes for even better, more realistic lighting results... but if you are animating and need the extra speed in exchange for but the most picky of true lighting, the option is there.

    The cool part is that Carrara does give us so many options between shaders and lighting that we can perform some truly amazing results using so many techniques that one cool certainly fill a rather large tome with no other subject matter - just for Carrara. As Birn points out in other chapters, designing a lighting system can be done in such a way to appear to entirely mimic the results of computer-generated GI with IL, while actually using lights in 3D that would be nigh-impossible on a real sound stage - and while such designs might take a bit more time to set up and tweak they can have the benefit of rendering so much faster and also offers a level of adjust-ability control that is not found in the GI/IL methods with the same amount of ease. There are ways to manipulate the effects of GI/IL in very predictable ways, but Light Linking and rig design can be a much faster technique when it comes to pushing the limits of true realism or especially leaving them behind entirely - which can often produce the more sought-after result. But with Carrara, and using the cool techniques that Phil teaches about creating our own lights from simple primitives or meshes, we are introduced to a whole extra level of control using the GI/IL system. The amazing part about this is that our setup times can be reduced dramatically, placing very few or perhaps even no lights, a few objects which can be very easy to predict, and just let algorithms and ray tracing calculations take care of the rest. And Carrara offers a slew of ways to help us get into habits that will still keep renders to manageable time frames.

    Add in the power that many of the after-market plugins for Carrara can offer, and we Carrara owners can sleep well at night knowing that we have one incredible system for producing incredibly real-looking CG effects, no matter what our reasons for jumping on board are or have become.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,537
    edited December 1969

    Some more elements of my 'toon based animation. My 'toon cat and a very lightly 'tooned A4. I'm using the toonIII scene filter as it is quicker for me to set up than than YaToon which has been very hit and miss for me. The lighting is very simple as well.
    I Love It, evilproducer! Just brilliantly executed, and I just Love that cat! There's no "not loving" Aiko, so that's an easy win there too!
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,537
    edited December 1969

    Just try being an Addict. If you don't post enough, you get a bizarre sense of euphoria- just ask Dart. ;-)

    Or, if you're like me, your chubby little fingers hit the wrong frickin' keys. For instance, I meant to type a simple "u," but instead somehow typed an "r" and an "i." ;-P

    You Swore! :ahhh:
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Just try being an Addict. If you don't post enough, you get a bizarre sense of euphoria- just ask Dart. ;-)

    Or, if you're like me, your chubby little fingers hit the wrong frickin' keys. For instance, I meant to type a simple "u," but instead somehow typed an "r" and an "i." ;-P

    You Swore! :ahhh:

    Prove it! ;-P I used other word with those letters. ;-)

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,583
    edited December 1969

    Just try being an Addict. If you don't post enough, you get a bizarre sense of euphoria- just ask Dart. ;-)

    Or, if you're like me, your chubby little fingers hit the wrong frickin' keys. For instance, I meant to type a simple "u," but instead somehow typed an "r" and an "i." ;-P

    You Swore! :ahhh:

    Prove it! ;-P I used other word with those letters. ;-)

    euphoua?

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Just try being an Addict. If you don't post enough, you get a bizarre sense of euphoria- just ask Dart. ;-)

    Or, if you're like me, your chubby little fingers hit the wrong frickin' keys. For instance, I meant to type a simple "u," but instead somehow typed an "r" and an "i." ;-P

    You Swore! :ahhh:

    Prove it! ;-P I used other word with those letters. ;-)

    euphoua?

    Laugh now, but just wait until it shows up in Scrabble. ;-)

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,537
    edited December 1969

    Okay, a render for the Render thread, eh?
    Just having fun with some content:
    I didn't do anything to the shaders at all... didn't open a single one - I did consolidate them though.
    Tossed in a couple lights really quickly, added a couple of MU Workers.
    One GIS Terminal wall setup, one walkway setup from GIS Pro, a Thunder Bike, and it's accompanying ladder.

    Notice how, without any specific lighting design and everything being light evenly, everything seems to meld together with no clarity.
    Normally I would light the wall separately from the walkway, and the thunderbike and workers lit specifically to make them stand out from the rest of the scene. Makes a big difference. In this one, everything just gets lost.

    I've saved the scene and will create what I would consider a proper lighting scheme later this week and post that ;)

    GIS-T-BikeTst1A.jpg
    700 x 540 - 347K
  • DADA_universeDADA_universe Posts: 336
    edited December 1969

    Some more elements of my 'toon based animation. My 'toon cat and a very lightly 'tooned A4. I'm using the toonIII scene filter as it is quicker for me to set up than than YaToon which has been very hit and miss for me. The lighting is very simple as well.

    Nice work EP

  • DADA_universeDADA_universe Posts: 336
    edited February 2015

    Tim_A said:
    There are other factors - the i7 machine has much slower RAM for instance. I think it may be a previous generation chipset too, but I can't be sure.

    The GHz is analogous to horsepowers in an engine. The more you have, the more powerful it is. The cores is like strapping engines side by side.

    Purrrrfect! I'm not gonna forget this one.....so cores are lots of horses running side by side to power your engines! I can almost imagine a steampunk render that would aptly illustrate this. :vampire:

    Post edited by DADA_universe on
  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584
    edited December 1969

    Think of an old wild west stagecoach - it's pulled by four (or six) horses. These are the "cores". If you replace the horses with ponies, that's "low GHz", replace them with big draft horses, that's "high GHz"

    Works for engines on a plane too - one 200HP engine vs two 180HP engines etc. ;)

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584
    edited December 1969

    Okay, a render for the Render thread, eh?
    Just having fun with some content:
    I didn't do anything to the shaders at all... didn't open a single one - I did consolidate them though.
    Tossed in a couple lights really quickly, added a couple of MU Workers.
    One GIS Terminal wall setup, one walkway setup from GIS Pro, a Thunder Bike, and it's accompanying ladder.

    Notice how, without any specific lighting design and everything being light evenly, everything seems to meld together with no clarity.
    Normally I would light the wall separately from the walkway, and the thunderbike and workers lit specifically to make them stand out from the rest of the scene. Makes a big difference. In this one, everything just gets lost.

    I've saved the scene and will create what I would consider a proper lighting scheme later this week and post that ;)

    Looks very flat. I was almost going to ask if you were using a toon filter! Look forward to seeing what you can turn it into...

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Well, here's a longer shot of the room with my cat drinking cocoa. I did some work on the textures to eliminate the bump, and to get rid of fine details in the shaders. They worked well without the 'toon filter, but when it is used it introduces noise and moire patterns. I still have some of that, but most of it is because apparently the 'Toon filter doesn't anti-alias no matter the AA settings in the render room, and I haven't found a setting in the filter control panel.

    Picture_2.png
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  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,986
    edited December 1969

    great work evil, love it! well I admire it immensely :) Looks like render at twice the size you need to get the aa thing fixed, could be a pitb
    post more, good to see someone working like this

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,986
    edited December 1969

    Okay, a render for the Render thread, eh?
    Just having fun with some content:
    I didn't do anything to the shaders at all... didn't open a single one - I did consolidate them though.
    Tossed in a couple lights really quickly, added a couple of MU Workers.
    One GIS Terminal wall setup, one walkway setup from GIS Pro, a Thunder Bike, and it's accompanying ladder.

    Notice how, without any specific lighting design and everything being light evenly, everything seems to meld together with no clarity.
    Normally I would light the wall separately from the walkway, and the thunderbike and workers lit specifically to make them stand out from the rest of the scene. Makes a big difference. In this one, everything just gets lost.

    I've saved the scene and will create what I would consider a proper lighting scheme later this week and post that ;)

    looks pretty good actually, ;) just need a bit of haze etc between foreground and background ... and is that Rosie in that space ship thingy?

  • JoeMamma2000JoeMamma2000 Posts: 2,615
    edited December 1969


    The Lesson here is:

    20 lights casting hard shadows renders faster and ultimately looks better than 5 lights casting soft shadows. I call this a win win.

    When devising indirect light for your fake GI scenes keep in mind that we are better off using a cluster with more points lights within in it while casting hard shadows than to use a cluster of fewer lights with soft shadows enabled. The reason for this is I argue is that the simulation that features very few lights remains crude in terns of diffuse and specular highlights, despite the soft shadows it won't look as real as it could with more lights. Multiple lights gives you soft shadows and soft highlights both at the same time.


    But honestly, without a common scientific terminology, I'm kinda scratching my head trying to understand the details of what you're talking about.

    Scratch no more. There's nothing particularly interesting or controversial about any of the concepts I've discussed so far. We are already on the same page.

    Sorry, Rashad, I've been away for a while.

    If you had just said you can use multiple lights in an array to simulate GI, then nobody could (or at least should) disagree. What I was responding to was the long treatise to support that simple idea, because it contained quite a few incorrect assumptions.

    So yes, you can use multiple spots in an array to simulate GI if you want. Nothing new, we were doing that back in the '90's when processors were dog slow and calculating real GI was often not a realistic option, and we had to come up with workarounds.

    But the question is, in 2015, what is the best and most efficient way to achieve your results given the present state of processors and software? Sure, if you're doing some processor-intensive stuff like landscapes and vegetation, then you may need to come up with workarounds like you suggest.

    Others might choose to run a full GI simulation if their goals and scenes support it. And others might choose to use a few simple spots with soft shadows enabled. No solution is perfect. All workarounds involve trade-offs. And each person needs to evaluate each solution the trade-offs they are willing to make.

    My point is that there is no "correct" answer, though folks here tend to search for the simple, "cookbook" solutions. I'm try to steer people towards a rational analysis of the tools vs. the goals in each situation.

    Personally, I tend to prefer using a few simple spots with soft shadows enabled. And I tend to disagree with your evaluation of what "looks better", but like I say there is no right answer.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,537
    edited December 1969

    ep,
    Looks like me and your Cat had the same plan! Yum! I've even got mini-marshmallows in mine (Rosie never misses a step)!

    Tim_A,
    I felt (and still feel) the same way - really flat.
    This little laptop is so slow that I'm testing things a bit differently just to see what the thing can do without crashing altogether. I'm actually amazed that it can run and render at all! LOL
    It takes a bit to run Carrara, but then Carrara seems to be pretty magical on such a low-end machine. I'm keeping up with my house cleaning every time I load anything.

    So here I used the exact same file, but duplicated the lights and linked them all separately to the different elements. All of the same lights from the first image were linked to the thunderbike. Then I duplicated them and linked those to the MU Workers. Duplicated once more and linked them to only the GIS props forming the rest of the scene. I also tweaked a few of the most prominent shaders.

    Then I went through and tweaked on the now linked lights a little bit - made some of the colors more or less saturated, tweaked the angles depending upon what they are linked to, etc.,

    GIS-T-BikeTst2AH.jpg
    1640 x 1230 - 2M
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,537
    edited December 1969

    While I like the colors, it still looks flat - and perhaps even too colorful. As Head Wax mentioned, the scene needs a little haze to create more depth perception, or even some depth of field.

    I went for some good ol' Carrara Fog. I know that some of you don't like using it - I love it! It can change in many more ways than Volumetric Clouds - ways that I really like to have control over in certain situations... like this one, perhaps. What I was going for is the idea that more tests are being performed on other vehicles, as well as just some ambient haze from other machinery, etc., going on. No... Rosie is not in this scene... but good eye! This IS Rosie's ride that they're working on!

    Added fog, tweaked more shaders and lights, added Gamma Correction = 2.2

    GIS-T-BikeTst3AH.jpg
    1640 x 1230 - 2M
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