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UPDATE: See the final version on page 2 of this thread

 

Decided to re-render "Window" with real radiosity instead of the old version's manually-placed lighting.

 

One light, sixteen passes, six hours:

Window2005A.jpg

 

The only light leak I wasn't able to address was that bit under the lip of the table . . . I chalk it up to it being geometry that was modeled six years ago. Otherwise, I'm impressed. Working GI in A:M. Ain't that some chit?

 

Thanks to Yves P. for his radiosity primer.

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much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much BETTER!!!!!!!

 

And I though the first one was totally amazing when it first came out. Great!

 

Dimos

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It is a wonderfully gorgeous image - (Chris - I think Brian said 6 hours, in first post) -

 

Speaking of rendering times - given that these images take so long to render - Brian: What is the process that you go thru to tweak your settings ? I haven't tried this photon stuff as I have a hard enough time when an image takes 1 minute to render...

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Thanks for the feedback guys, here's what I'm calling final:

 

WindowB2005.jpg

 

I think the composition reads a little better this way . . . or it could just be because it's different than what I'd been staring at for six years.

 

Fixed the light leak on the table in A:M, tweaked a few little things in Photopaint, including a few subtle pieces of floating dust. Stopped the render at 21 passes because it looked good enough, and because I needed my computer back :) render time on this one at 1280x960 was 12-ish hours, but I increased a few of the radiosity settings more than I probably needed to.

 

As for how to work with heavy scenes like this, it's actually pretty painless to do preview renders if you keep the settings low while you work. It only takes about 15 seconds to throw 80,000 photos around the scene, and with final gathering samples set to minimum, I can do progressive renders pretty quickly.

 

edit: the white background on the forum destroys a lot of the shadow detail in the image . . . try saving it to your PC and viewing it on a black background to see what's going on in the darkness.

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Looks terrific - tho I must say I would have a very hard time picking which one I liked better - the first (2005 new) one that you posted has a different - more dusty feel to it - this new render looks cleaner - crisper - Love them both - also can't decide on which orientation is better - must mean the composition is PERFECT.

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thanks for the feedback Nancy. I just now went back and bumped up the bottom end of the tone curve a little bit, and added a bit of the noisy bloom that the first version had. It's subtle, but it brings the image more in line with the image in the first post.

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Hey Brian,

 

That looks really good. I, too prefer that one to the old one. Lot more moody.

 

I see two areas where a tweak would help:

 

1) The light leak under the table could be taken care of with two methods: a) The right way is to increase the sampling area size. But at some point, you would need to increase the number of photons too. B) Another way is to cheat a little and set the radiance of the patches under the table to some lower value.

 

2) The Photon Mapping algorithm does not store photons on their first hit. That means that the spots where the sun directly hits the table top, the wall, the floor and the chair, do not contribute to the indirect illumination while they should contribute the most. There is a simple way to correct that. It is to use a special light rig, two klieg light back to back used as sun. One is pointing in the room and the other is pointing on a mirror that reflects the photons back in the room. And since the first hit in on the mirror, the wall, table top, etc will store the photons. I have designed such a rig and you can find it in the following thread:

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10029&st=15

 

Good to see you use photon mapping. You get really good results. And thanks to your attention to realistic details, texturing and composition.

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I'm going down the list of comments here and thinking I sure can't think of any constructive advice -- in fact WHO COULD after all this is Brian Prince then I come to Yves -- yep! the one person that could actually make some valuable suggestions --

 

The whole scene is so photo-real that I smacked myself to make sure I was real. I like the last render the best, probably that left to right writing thing, but it sure flows better for me. Really excellent picture!

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brianswork.jpg

 

I tried putting a black matte around it for you. I ended up having to shrink it to fit it nicely in the forum. I downloaded it and saw it on a black background, and the difference was huge. I was hoping to save some people the effort. It loses some of the effect, but I think you can see the darks better.

 

If you'd like me to take it down, I'd be more than willing.

 

I love the lighting. This is a great piece.

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  • Hash Fellow

Are these new images intended to be similar in illumination level to the non-radiosity version? The new ones look very, very dark.

 

It could be that my monitor isn't set right, but I have to really crank the gamma to see the details in the new versions, whereas almost any other image I view on the web is fine.

 

?

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Brian,

 

Did you apply some Gamma correction in this image?

I bumped up the very bottom of the tone curve, without touching the absolute blacks. It's definitely a dark piece, but I think that's about what you'd get if you pointed a camera at a similar scene.

 

It's always tricky working in the bottom third of the luminance gamut . . . there's so much variation there from display to display.

 

robcat: this one is meant to be darker, but it may be too dark . . . I think I need a few days away from it to get a fresh eye.

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Nice Brian! I did'nt think that your still life could get any better. But I stand corrected ( As I often do). Man this thing is Wicked Awsome!

 

And hay Kenh. How did your render go with the volumetric artifact? I never saw how it turned out in the end, or if you got it fixed. I would love to see it.

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Hey brian, I saw your entry in the Expose website. Good luck! I have some digital paintings in there too. I was looking at your painting of a tower illuminated by sunset, not realising that it was yours, thinking "Damn! I don't have a snowflakes chance in hell".

 

I think you could be in for a chance. Tough competition though. Real tough.

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I'm not counting my eggs before they hatch either John . . . we'll see if anything I threw decides to stick.

 

As cool as the Expose books are, they seem to have a habit of going a bit ga ga over anything with a lot of detail . . . CGTalk is the same way. Tough to get noticed unless you drench your image in noodly details.

 

I'm more selective with my detail . . . there's a lot to be said for just capturing an impression.

 

edit: and good luck to you too, man!

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I have been inspired beyond belief. I will now spend the next 5 years trying to accomplish a fraction of the beauty of the final render. Then when im 17, I'll have something, and if its 1/8 as good as that, I'll get some college money from a magazine

 

 

Thanks for the inspiration. The final looks amazing.

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Stopped the render at 21 passes because it looked good enough, and because I needed my computer back :)

So how do you stop a render and keep the image it's rendered so far?

If you can fit the whole thing on screen, just hit printscrn and paste into your favorite image editor. Do it before you abort the render though, as A:M seems to occassionally empty the frame buffer and hide the image when you abort a multipass (I wish it didn't).

 

bentothemax: Glad to be able to provide some motivation for you. Find something in CG that interests you greatly and persue an in-depth understanding of it. People will eventually take notice.

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Stopped the render at 21 passes because it looked good enough, and because I needed my computer back :)

So how do you stop a render and keep the image it's rendered so far?

If you can fit the whole thing on screen, just hit printscrn and paste into your favorite image editor. Do it before you abort the render though, as A:M seems to occassionally empty the frame buffer and hide the image when you abort a multipass (I wish it didn't).

Thanks Brian,

 

That's what I thought, but was kinda hoping there was a place it saved the image as it rendered each pass (it shows up in my images folder in the PWS as it's rendering...).

 

Btw, for any Mac users seeing this, we would use command+shift+3 (that would grab the whole screen), or just for that window, use command+shift+4 (and you can outline the area you want to grab).

 

Greg

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