villa rendering assistance

[raja]

hey everyone,
I'm new here, and I'm new to Indigo,
Is it okay if I post something I'm working on to ask some questions and get feedback?

I don't know the forum rules.

thanks

raja

[Oscar J]

Of course, bring it on!

[raja]

ok thanks

I'm doing this project but i have so many questions.
I don't know what to do with the landscape (ground). What kind of material can I use?
There's also a water-curtain that I've been trying to figure out but haven't succeeded. It just looks like glass or something.
The concrete doesn't look that great. I'm using materials from the online database.
I plan on using proxy trees, these are just for positioning

I'm kind of stuck at the moment.
Any thoughts/suggestions/advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

[bubs]

Firstly, welcome!

That looks like a pretty good model and it nice and simple lighting, which looks good. Your issues are with materials then... You can research this for years! The quality of the materials used is one of the main things that makes an OK scene into a great scene... The are many resources for getting materials, either for making them yourself, or buying pre-made ones (if you have the money!) For really good concrete materials you won't get much better than www.arroway.de if you are buying. If you are making your own textures then the main site for most materials tends to be www.cgtextures.com (although there are many others)

For the ground - what is it supposed to be? desert / grass / snow / stones... if grass then for the best results you should defintely use actual 3D grass (just where you can see it to keep the model size down!) there's a great tutorial for the way most people tend to do it at http://www.peterguthrie.net/blog/2009/0 ... ial-part-1 (just ignore the fact that it's for V-ray the modelling tips is what you are looking at here! )

The water curtain is again a texture or modelling thing... If you want to actually model the water droplets etc then do that and just apply a simple water material from the Indigo presets. If you are trying to do it as just a texture then I would think this would be more difficult to achieve, personally I've never tried one, but CTZN had a good few attempts at cracking it here http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... 0&start=15 He's probably a lot more help on this!

Good luck!

[Oscar J]

Water curtains should be a piece of cake, as longs as you know how to model it. What modelling package are you using?

[raja]

Oscar,

I'm using SketchUp (hence posting in the sketchup forum). I'm not sure if I know how to model something like that in sketchup. Any ideas?

Bubs,

Thanks for the welcome.

The ground is supposed to be a mixture of rocks/grass. I've made some grass, but my machine can't handle it at the moment. It is having a hard time handling the model itself! I had already looked at CTZN's water curtain, but I don't know how to do that in SU. I tried using a displacement map, but i'm missing something and it's not really working. I still have to make some tests. The problem is that it takes such a long time to get a sharp enough render.

I've made some progress.
I've also tried to get some trees going, and attempted the double-sided material for leaves, but it also didn't work, and i don't know how to solve the problems I'm getting.

I'm also doing an interior scene of the villa but it's taking hours to get an image.

I will post images tomorrow because I'm still waiting right now. Thanks.

raja

[raja]

here's where i'm at

[Zom-B]

Hey Raja, nice progress!
Here are some hints:

Your windows are super noisy, I bet you used some fancy glass from the MaterialDB here.
Please use a simple specular material and enable ArchGlass on it
(the Window mesh needs to have a volume, all normals pointing outwards).
This will render 7456 times faster!

Why do you post your renderings in reduced resolution, hard to watch at such Thumbnails of your work...
Please show us the full resolution, by that we can see & help better!

raise your HDRIs gamma up to 1.5 (maybe even more) to get some crispier shadows and less of a uniform lit look.

[raja]

this interior image took 16 hours @2393k samples! and it's still looking like it needs another few days! What am I missing here? Is it supposed to take this long? Is there a problem with the lighting?
I made sure all the materials were not oversaturated, and I used path tracing. My machine is running windows xp Sp3/ 2.5 GHz/ 2GB RAM. I have a GeForce 8400M GS with 256MB dedicated RAM.

[Zom-B]

What am I missing here?

As mentioned above use ArchGlass, thats the reason for your bad perfromance!

Is it supposed to take this long?

With Fancy Glass like that and no BiDir => Yes!
Stay away for CauchyB enabeled glass, thats mostly needed for gemstones and other special Glass...

Is there a problem with the lighting?

No, only the glass!
But for better results in Interrior renderings try BiDirPT and use ExitPortals for interior shots!

My machine is running windows xp Sp3/ 2.5 GHz/ 2GB RAM. I have a GeForce 8400M GS with 256MB dedicated RAM.

[raja]

ZOM B

I will try your glass suggestion. You were right , I did use a fancy material from the DB, but my windows do have glass volume. Do you think I can use exit portals in this kind of interior image (nothing would show from outside, right?).
I'm posting small images because of the 500KB upload limit. Am I missing something here?

Is there a way to raise the HDRI gamma inside Skindigo, or in Indigo? Or do I have to do that in an external image editor?

Any Ideas on those trees? I know the grass texture looks black in some places because of some terrain modeling issues (not sure what exactly).

Why are you shocked about my machine is it a dinosaur?

Thanks.

[Zom-B]

Do you think I can use exit portals in this kind of interior image (nothing would show from outside, right?).

Yes at the moment it is just like that. You also can make EPs not directly behind the glass, but behind the balcony for example, that also should help showing furniture etc. on balcony and still getting quite some EP benefits!
BTW: better EPs are in developement, but still not released: http://indigorenderer.com/content/rende ... -indigo-38

I'm posting small images because of the 500KB upload limit. Am I missing something here?

Yes, I think this limit is different in the Artwork subforum, but very annoying around here!
Maybe give your renders some more JPG compression to allow higher resolution or host them somewhere else. The better we see, the better we can help

Is there a way to raise the HDRI gamma inside Skindigo, or in Indigo? Or do I have to do that in an external image editor?

All there methods "should" work, but I'm not sure if gamma controle is already in Skindigo Exporter (I'm on C4D). Try editing gamma in the GUI:

Any Ideas on those trees? I know the grass texture looks black in some places because of some terrain modeling issues (not sure what exactly).

in That thumbnail resolution its impossible to give an answer to this question

Why are you shocked about my machine is it a dinosaur?

Quite an old laptop!
You are a tough guy doing unbiased raytracing on something that belong to a museum
Just take care not to overheat it!

[bubs]

To change the Gamma in Skindigo use the properties of the EnvironmentMap material in the Material Editor.

Oh and you should be able to upload images up to 4mb as long as they are jpeg. I think the lower limit is only for .png

[raja]

thanks guys for your help.
still working on the interior images.

What do you think of this?
I found some pictures from the actual location, and used some photoshop trees. I know it still needs some work, but I wanted to try something without using 3D grass and trees because my machine is having trouble handling so much.

ZomB
I don't have the money now to get a good computer. I was thinking about maybe upgrading my machine, adding some RAM...maybe

[Zom-B]

I found some pictures from the actual location, and used some photoshop trees.

I very much preferred the previous approach!!
The photoshoped Trees are lit wrong for your scene, and would need way more PS love to get some nice look!

I know it still needs some work, but I wanted to try something without using 3D grass and trees because my machine is having trouble handling so much.

Use Instances for trees and Skindigos Scatter tool for Grass, spaming your scene this way should be possible even on your rig!

I don't have the money now to get a good computer. I was thinking about maybe upgrading my machine, adding some RAM...maybe

I can understand that absolutely mate, please don't take it as an offense!
I just wanted to point out that you'll have some hard time with such low specs, and stuff like interior shots can be quite a pain!
If you have some finals to render don't hesitate to ask (PM), I can cock them on my 3 Systems for you (if I have free CPU time!)