Render Problem...

CodeWarrior69

Hey There!

Okay, I've got a crazy problem and I'm really perplexed and annoyed.  I think I've thrown a "switch" somewhere which is causing me serious issues.

I have a Carrara scene, I've been working on it for a while suddently it's not rendering right.  

Has anybody seen this:  When I render a BIG scene with the "Indirect Light" option set to ON, the picture turns out almost completely dark/black.  There's a few outlines here and there, but it appears most of the lighting has been turned off or switched to negative.

Of course, when I render with the "Indirect Light" option set to OFF, then it seems to render okay.  Of course, I want the best quality result so I want that switch turned ON.

The file I'm working on is big, it's about 4 GB.  Could that be the problem?  Is there size limitation in Carrara.

To make this even more madding this unwanted behavior is happening with my older backups.  However, it's not happening on my smaller files.  

This might imply it's a problem with Carrara, but I uninstalled and re-installed Carrara and the unwanted behavior didn't go away.  

I'm totally perplexed.  I spent over a week on this scene and now it's dead?  I can't begin to express my frustration.  

Please Help!

Daniel Carda

 

 

FifthElement

Hi Daniel, welcome to the forum.

Are you by any chance using AnythingGlows somewhere in your scene ? 

CodeWarrior69

Hey FifthElement!

Actually, yes I am!  I'm illumating several candles.  Any idea what the fix is?

 

chickenman

This CAR file is about 5-6 Gb currently and does not use anything glows and renders fine using sunlight and indirect it only has one indirect light and the Real sky selected under scene. It takes about a1/2 hr to 45 Mins to load and about an hour to save.

It is for the current Carrara challenge Wild Wild West.

Found at the following link  http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/68508/carrara-challenge-22-wild-wild-west-wip-thread/p1

 

FifthElement

No, unfortunatelly I do not remember the solution, I know that few years ago I had problem with indirect lightning and AG, maybe someone else run into same kind of problem, just make sure that surfaces which are emiting light do not cast or receive shadows 

evilproducer

I was wondering if you are using an hdri in your scene as well. If you are, make sure you are also using the Skylight option, or it won't treat the hdri as an image based light (IBL) source.

Dartanbeck

Also, make certain that "Light through Transparency" is checked.

3DAGE

I've not had any iisues with anything glows lights,. apart from the need to set each one to a uniquely named object,. Can't duplicate one to make many.

,

CodeWarrior69

chickenman said:

This CAR file is about 5-6 Gb currently and does not use anything glows and renders fine using sunlight and indirect it only has one indirect light and the Real sky selected under scene. It takes about a1/2 hr to 45 Mins to load and about an hour to save.

It is for the current Carrara challenge Wild Wild West.

Found at the following link  http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/68508/carrara-challenge-22-wild-wild-west-wip-thread/p1

 

Actually, this is good to know.  Means Carrara can handle more models and I don't need to worry so much about size.  Though, I will say it's pretty annoying in that it takes 20 minutes to save my scene file.

 

CodeWarrior69

BTW, I like your scene.  

CodeWarrior69 said:

chickenman said:

This CAR file is about 5-6 Gb currently and does not use anything glows and renders fine using sunlight and indirect it only has one indirect light and the Real sky selected under scene. It takes about a1/2 hr to 45 Mins to load and about an hour to save.

It is for the current Carrara challenge Wild Wild West.

Found at the following link  http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/68508/carrara-challenge-22-wild-wild-west-wip-thread/p1

 

 

Actually, this is good to know.  Means Carrara can handle more models and I don't need to worry so much about size.  Though, I will say it's pretty annoying in that it takes 20 minutes to save my scene file.

 

CodeWarrior69

Okay, I think I've found the problem.  But it still leads me to more questions.

First, I took FifthElement's suggestion about having the objects not cast or receive shawdows.  By itself it didn't fix anything, but it did seem like a good idea.  

The thing which really made it work was on the render page, and on the Render tab.  I clicked the radio button "Ambient Occulsion Only".  

I guess this make sense because my scene is basically inside a box.  I'm also guessing I had a "distant light" in the scene and deleted it which would (to me) explain why the solution worked. 

What it doesn't explain is why the "dark behavior" affected the backups I had made.  And, conversly, why the early versions did not initially show this dark behavior.  

So, it's working now and I want to thank everybody the community.  

I've also tried to attach one of the pictures I have been working on.  Hope it works.

Warm Regards,

Daniel Carda

chickenman

I like that picture. 

evilproducer

If you're scene is in a box, then yes, a distant light wouldn't work at all, unless there were a window in the box. For your scene, I'm guessing that the candle flames emit light with Anything Glows lights? Have you considered increasing the brightness in the glow channel for the flame shader? Full indirect light treats the glow channel as a light source.

TangoAlpha

As regards the time it takes to save & load, check to see if your file is saving compressed (you'll need to do a Save As to get the dialog). Uncompressed files save and load much quicker, although they are correspondingly larger.