first render. LOTS of noob questions

[Vampyre]

hi yall, thought i'd try out indigo. My first impression is the same as when I first tried blender years ago. The potential of this program is awesome(':shock:'), as is my frustration at not being smart enough to use it correctly(':oops:')


So here's my first scene exported from blender rendered in indigo 1.0.4.. its not finished rendering, but at 96 hours, im taking a break (probably forever from this test scene)...

So here's my questions.

1) How many samples per pixel are usually required before the noise goes away? This scene is at about 15,000

2) How come when I turn smoothing on for my glass surfaces, they render black? I had to turn it off on my glass cylinder on the left over there. tbh i only let it render for half an hour before i realized it was black, would the black have dissapeared?

3) Is it possible to have part of a mesh smooth, and part not-smoothed? is this indigo or blendigo giving me problems with that or just complete user ignorance?

4) does anyone have any tips on material development with regards to bump mapping? Some of my bump maps are too deep, some dont show at all, but if i have to wait 96 hours to tell for each render, it would take years to get the settings right?

5) Last question for today, is it worth buying one of those new fangled quad cores i keep hearing about? I'm on a 1.5 gigahertz machine with 512 megs of ram. Im gonna buy a new machine, is it really worth the extra money? How much speed would I gain in render times? How much does ram influence render speed?

[Zom-B]

Hey Vampyre welcome to the unbiased side of 3D!

A quite nice first Rendering!

1) it seems you are using Hybrid mode, or an interior scene enligned with some background light.
So disable Hybrid mode if you use it, and use ExitPortals if you are using an interior scene lightened through windows etc. (search forum for exitPortals for more Info!)

2) Turning Black menas there are issues with normal smoothing, the angle between your polys is to high, try to devide your mesh higher...

4) generating a fast rendering texture preview setup is maybe the best way,
to learn how the settings affect the bump... a b value of 0.001 to 0.003 is often just enough for me since a long time...

5) yes, Indigo scales nearly linear with raising MHZ count and CPU (core) count. Having a quad with 4 x 2.4 GHZ in Indigo is like rendering on a single ~9GHZ CPU

[Kram1032]

+1) For most scenes, 3000-4000 samples (if you use 800*600) should be enough. But this one looks quite tricky, so, it'll take, like, forever

+2) use the edgesplit modifier on your glass cylinder, and everything with sharp edges, and you should be saved

+3) see 2

+4 and +5) see ZomB

[Marcofly]

Hi and welcome! it's a good image, indeed..

About the noise.. for a test render usually 700-800 samples\pixel are enough, and after the 3000-4000 samples it takes centuries to see any difference in the rendered image.. Most of us use to render at a higher resolution, and scale down the pic. You can also use Violet (make a search in the forum) to 'filter' the noise, balance the tonemapping, before scaling it.

ciao!!

[Vampyre]

so much helpful information, thank you all! I'm going to play around with edgesplit and see if i can put together a material setup scene.

I can't complain too much about the noise in this image, it was designed to really stress indigo. there are lots and lots of meshlights, some of which are texture mapped, many behind the camera The center crystal has couchy b turned on, there are a bunch of reflective materials.

[Kram1032]

a test, what Indigo can do and definitely not one, how fast it can do so
Good that you're patient ^^ - many new users think, the noise is a bug xD

[Vampyre]

Patience, and an extra pc. two things a raytracer fan can't live without. I got my introduction to 3d in the early days of povray (back when dinasours roamed the earth and telephones still had cranks on them)... so spending a week raytracing an image isn't such a shock. and as far as the noise goes, I think it gives the images charachter. in the right image, a little 'iso noise' is a good thing.

hmm, i wonder if the noise is random? or if u render the same image twice for the same ammount of time would the noise be the same? has anyone experimented with layering images to eliminate noise? hmm... off to play

[Kram1032]

It should be about the same, whether you render it twice or once with double time.

The noise is randomISH A computer can't simulate pure randomness.

[BbB]

Hi Vampyre and welcome. I highly recommend getting a bigger config. I generally render at 2400x1800 pixels on my quad and most images clear within 8-20 hours. Getting this quad changed my life.

Indigo doesn't allow you to smooth part of a mesh and not another. For sharp angles on a smoothed mesh use edgesplits, as the others said. Also always check your normals are pointing outwards on speculars or you'll get the black mesh of death.

I often render the same image twice to improve the noise level, but it's the same as letting it render for twice the time. I use this more as a "resume" function (whenever I forgot to save an .igi). Running images through Violet is a good idea whether for noise or tonemapping. But if you render at very large resolutions, this will generate a gigantic .igi which Violet will choke on so it's not always an option.

[Zom-B]

Indigo doesn't allow you to smooth part of a mesh and not another. For sharp angles on a smoothed mesh use edgesplits, as the others said.

I don't think you are right here BbB!
I don't answered this Question because I don't know much about Blender,
but for the C4D Exporter Cindigo this is no Problem!

You can configure a general angle where smoothing should take place,
AND also define Edges where Normal Smoothing shouldn't be aplied for the same Mesh
using the C4D Tag called Phong and "Function > Interrupt Phong Shading"

So Maybe the Blender Exporter doesn't support this feature, but Indigo does!

[Kram1032]

In this case, Blender is the problem.
Nobody of the exporter writers was able to figure out, how to correctly export the "autosmooth" option. something is wrong with it and images render very very weird, if you enable it.
The edgesplit modifier is just better, in this case, or a multiple subdivision, which bevels the edges...

[supraserv]

BbB is right about the quad. I got one yesterday and it's soooo much faster than my not so old D930 @ 3Ghz x 2 cores. Even 3-4 times faster in some applications.