Shiny Car Paint Problems

Shjak Monde · November 2014

Thank you so very Much MN-150374,
This was Exactly what I needed.
Very Simple to understand and you got right into the LuxRender Materials. I love this Tutorial.
It has uncovered many of my misconceptions on how the Presets are supposed to work..
It also brought to my attention some functions of the Surfaces ( while using Luxus Materials) that I did not know was available to me.
It Has also taught me that the LuxRender GUI may be the way I want to Render from now on. So much More control over the Lighting.
Also I would Like to Thank you for teaching me some of the LuxRender via Luxus Render Settings. They made a HUGE difference.

I followed your instructions, Step by Step and got the same results as you did.
This is such a breath of fresh air, knowing that finally, I must be doing it right.

I did stumble a bit on the experiment with the Car Paint however.
First was the Geometric Shell. The "Offset" at Default 0.10 was a bit much. But I cleaned that up by setting the "Offset" to 0.02.

Also in image 37 there is this "Blue glaze" over the entire image. I am assuming this is caused by the "Luxus Glass2 Blue Glass" Preset.
However I am not getting that "Blue glaze" in my Renders.
Do I need to go into Surfaces and on the Surfaces that I applied the "Blue Glass" preset to and make them Blue?

You had said:
Note: In the original experiment an Uberenvironment2 was used as Infinite Light. But to LuxRender it doesn´t matter what DAZ Light is converted over as an Infinte Light.
I found that your settings for the Uberenvironment2 Infinite Light. (250.0000000) were way to high.
I cleaned that up by setting my Distant Infinite Light to (15,0000000). This Created a beautiful reflection of the Ice Lake.
I am not sure if that has anything to do with the different type of light source or not..

In the Final Rendering I could not duplicate your image using your color settings in Image 38, for the "Fill", "Key" and "Back" lights.
Instead I went back to image 34 and use those color settings. (just the color and not its illumination.)
This resulted in a near perfect match to your Image 38.

I am not sure how long you allowed the Render to run to get your images.
I think earlier you may have mentioned 8 KS/p ?
Mine has been running a couple of hours now and I am barely at 1KS/p . Of course that may be because its 1000X1000 pixels.

I want to thank you so much for taking time to help me with this Tutorial.
I want to Bookmark this Tutorial so I can send my friends to it.
Surely I am not the only dummy having this problem understanding.
Once again Thank you very much.

MN-150374 · November 2014

Thank you very much for this feedback, Shjak Monde! :)

I´m happy that my tutorial is helpful and you produced similar results! The image you posted is excellent!!!

:red: Weeellll, you know :red:... like I said, those images were just some experiments I did ... so maybe I have choosen a different Film Response here and there or a different light color by saving those images out just to make them look better. ... I´m a bit addicted to play around with all those sliders and options in LuxRender. :-)

Those images were not intended to be the base of a tutorial, at the moment they were saved out and posted in this thread.
My apologies, but I wanted to give you these instructions as soon as I could. And did not re-render to get the correct documentation.

I will follow my own tutorial and re-create this scene from scratch to compare it with the current one. I will work out these inconsistency.
So we will know how those images should exactly look like and the tutorial will be updated soon. ;-)

The Glassball was rendered to 9 KS/P. The Carpaint-Ball around 6 KS/P. And the Shiny Surface/Geometry Shell around 7 KS/P.
Those are the numbers when I stoped the renders.
I started the Carpaint-Ball at night before going to bed and the Ball with the Geometry Shell in the morning before going to work.
Don´t know the exact number when they will be cleaned up and ready to stop.

Shjak Monde · November 2014

No need to apologies.
I understood this was an experiment you had done sometime ago, and you did it without knowing that it would become a tutorial.
Or even that you would need to re Vamp it for a dummy like me to understand.
I am just so grateful you did.

The only reason I mentioned the few stumbling points that I mentioned, was because this is such a fantastic tutorial that it is going to get many visits. From many artists.

Also I am much like you. It is easy for me to discover something new and immediately want to start experimenting with it.
I am afraid I am going to be very busy for a long while playing with this new found knowledge.

Once again Thank you very much for helping me to understand.
Shjak Monde

MN-150374 · November 2014

Shjak Monde said:
… I did stumble a bit on the experiment with the Car Paint however.
First was the Geometric Shell. The "Offset" at Default 0.10 was a bit much. But I cleaned that up by setting the "Offset" to 0.02. …
Like I promised, I rerendered the scenes and updated the tutorial. The images are still rendered with the default geometry shell offset 0.1. It looks very large in DAZ Studio, but I guess thats a question of individual taste.

Shjak Monde said:
… Also in image 37 there is this "Blue glaze" over the entire image. I am assuming this is caused by the "Luxus Glass2 Blue Glass" Preset.
However I am not getting that "Blue glaze" in my Renders.
Do I need to go into Surfaces and on the Surfaces that I applied the "Blue Glass" preset to and make them Blue?
You had said:
Note: In the original experiment an Uberenvironment2 was used as Infinite Light. But to LuxRender it doesn´t matter what DAZ Light is converted over as an Infinte Light.
I found that your settings for the Uberenvironment2 Infinite Light. (250.0000000) were way to high.
I cleaned that up by setting my Distant Infinite Light to (15,0000000). This Created a beautiful reflection of the Ice Lake.
I am not sure if that has anything to do with the different type of light source or not. …

In the original scene there was a weird rotation going on with the Infinite Light. The Infinite Light was rotated 90° on the Y-Axis and 90° on the X-Axis. To those who are interested, the old images are still in post#10 , post#12 and post#13 .

… In the Final Rendering I could not duplicate your image using your color settings in Image 38, for the "Fill", "Key" and "Back" lights.
Instead I went back to image 34 and use those color settings. (just the color and not its illumination.)
This resulted in a near perfect match to your Image 38. …

I reworked the description and all images have now the same light, color settings, film response and color space.

Thanks again for your feedback and the initial questions. You forced me to come up with something useful. Don´t think as yourself as a dummy. I would have needed such a tutorial only a few month ago. ;-)

Please check out the additional links and informations I have included at the end of the tutorial and the further experiments ...

MN-150374 · November 2014

In the first image you can see the Mirror - Perfect Preset applied to the Luxball.

In the second image you can see the Metal2 - Gold Preset applied to the Luxball.

In the third image you can see the Metal2 - Gold Preset applied to the Luxball and a Glass Shell around the Luxball.

In the fourth image you can see the Metal2 - Silver Preset applied to the Luxball.

In the fifth image you can see the Metal2 - Copper Preset applied to the Luxball.

In these experiments the Tropical Beach HDRI from HDRLabs is attached to the Infinite Light.
All Images rendered to 4 KS/P. This looks good when all lights are enabled, but turns out very poor with the Infinite Light as the only light source.

More experiments you will find in my Luxball Gallery.