At the moment I'm really trying to experiment with render options to optimize my renders.  I'm looking for crisp yet smooth renders, and I'm curious what settings you guys out there prefer (your own user settings, basically)....so if you don't mind letting me (and others) in your secrets, I would love to know!

There are a few renders I've done where I really felt I nailed it (one is a picture I did recently called On the Banks of the River Hyaur) and yet when I change to other atmospheres I really feel like I lose the realism.  So I guess in some way I would also like to know what hints people might have for atmosphere settings.....anyway, any helpful hints would be appreciated!

Hi,

If you look at this thread it has two of the best throwing in ideas, also what version of Vue are you using etc. And possibly a link to a piece/s you've seen that you are trying to achieve.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2738883

Hope this helps and i'll be more helpful when I can see what you're trying to achieve, because your gallery is excellent anyway.

Chris

Quote - "when I change to other atmospheres I really feel like I lose the realism."

Many books could be written about what makes an image realistic… :-) It's not only about atmospheres, it's also about materials, scale, light, shadow, ...

Regarding render settings, which you refer explicitely, here's what I typically do:

I always use "user settings", I never use any of the standard modes because I think they are not balanced (for example, Ultra has a too high advanced effects quality for most purposes but a poor anti-aliasing; others have other unbalanced settings).

I change my render settings depending on the image I'm doing. If I have complex clouds or many plants, I typically raise AA quality to 95%, min subrays to 8 and max subrays to 20 or so. If I have simple or no clouds and no plants (or too far away), I go with 80%, 4, 12, respectively (good for portraits, for example).

I never use texture anti-aliasing, except when I detect artifacts in textures (which happens rarely).

I have "optimize volumetric lights" and "optimize last render pass" always off, as they decrease the quality of the final render, IMO.

Normally, I have advanced effects quality at 46%, except if I have radiosity, in which case I raise it if I detect the so called "light leaks" (I raise it gradually until they disappear).

I typically never check "blurred reflection" nor "blurred transparency" nor do I use materials with those effects in my images because the render time increases dramatically. If I need to have blur, I simulate it with a very fine bump, it's much faster and the final effect is almost the same (and I have more precise control over the effect).

In AA settings, I typically use "Sharp" mode.

A very important "companion" setting to the render settings is the quality slider in the light tab of the atmosphere settings. I typically leave that at around -0.5 or -0.7 for the final render (-2 for test renders). The difference in render time between -0.5 and 0 is dramatic. If I detect blotches or other irregularities in the shadows, for example, I increase that until it disappears. With radiosity, I sometimes have to increase to 3 or 4 to get rid of those.

About stuff to try to make an image realistic, here's some of the things I do:

Lighting model: I never use standard nor global ambience. I always use AO, GI or (rarely) GR.

Atmosphere model: I never use standard. Sometimes (rarely), I use volumetric (colors and textures seem to be richer), but most of the times I use spectral.

Sky dome lighting gain: I typically never set it to zero. Most of the times a value between 0 and 1 is enough, other times I go for 4 or 5, depending on the image.

Secondary light sources in landscapes: I very rarely use them (almost never). I try my best to use only the sunlight but if I absolutely cant get the effect I want, I consider using a secondary light, very dark. I think that realism is heavily affected if in a lanscape there is lighting inconsistency, as if there are two or three suns. Even if you dont see it at a conscious level, subconsciously you see it.

Ambient light: in a cloudy day, I leave it at 50 or 60. In a sunny day, I set it at 80 or 90. In this latter case, I increase the sky dome lighting gain a lot to make the shadows richer.

Shadow softness: in a sunny day, I leave it at zero or very low (0.1), like in real world. In a cloudy day I set it between 1 and 5, depending on the effect. If I have shadow softness, I always increase the quality slider of the effect in the light source properties.

Shadow: I typically set the sun shadow at 85%.

Clouds: Vue has many non-realistic clouds. It's very typical to see images in the galleries here that have non realistic clouds (although beautiful). I built my own cloud material which I use all the time, with variations. Lately, I very rarely use other clouds. I can share the settings I use, if anyone's interested.

Details: if you want a realistic landscape, you must have details. Those are the kind of things that you almost dont notice but, if it's not there, you feel something is wrong. I'm talking of pebbles spread around, variations in the grass and mountains, etc.

References: I typically compare my images with photo references from the net, before, during and after the creation process. For example, a very useful site is www.istockphoto.com. Even if you dont register in the site, you can still see the images (with watermark, but for reference purposes it's not important).

Scale: to have a sense of scale, a good use of haze and fog is very important. The distant objects should partially fade in the haze or fog.

That's what I can remember for now that I do, typically. I hope they're useful but, like I said in another thread, every Vue'er will have a different opinion about many of these things. :-)
 

Halelujah Rutra,

We think alike brother!  Amazing how similar our settings are.

I usually start of with a a spectral atmo, turn the balance all the way to ambiance. Then I imagine what the scene would look like on a cloudy day. Ramp up the Sky dome gain, Artificial ambiance and Light intensity until I find a convincing balance. Then I turn up the sunlight / ambiance balance to somewhere between 10% and 35% until I get this nice early morning / late afternoon feel.

I do a lot of character rendering, and settings saved for that purpose quite often do not work on landscapes. There is no universal setting!

I live in Northern Europe and I realise that depending on where you live on this globe your light reference for reality will be quite different. My sunlight is always soft, somewhere between 1 and 3 degrees. Also what is your reference medium? Film, digital camera or maybe your own eyes??

Happy rendering :-)

Quote Avanz - "I live in Northern Europe and I realise that depending on where you live on this globe your light reference for reality will be quite different. My sunlight is always soft, somewhere between 1 and 3 degrees."

Quite an interesting point you raised, Avanz. I live in southern Europe and I'm used to brighter sunlight, with sharper shadows. In fact, that may influence the way how we work in Vue and what each one of us considers as "realistic".

Quote - can share the settings I use, if anyone's interested.

Please do!!!!

Thanks!

Instead of sharing the cloud settings, I just uploaded an atmosphere file, it's easier. This is just the default atmosphere with these clouds added. Feel free to use it or change it (it would be nice if you could give me credit if you use it, but not mandatory, it's up to you).

Word of warning: these clouds are slow to render and they tend to be grainy (specially if used with volumetric sunlight). You should raise AA settings to at least 95% and max subrays minimum 16.
These clouds generate godrays very easily. Just put the sun in front of them and enable godrays and very likely you'll see godrays. These were the clouds to generate godrays in "shepherd of dragons" or in "road to tertius: between the sun and the moon".

http://download.yousendit.com/7ECDFBB41190D369

This file will be online for just 7 days and then it will be automatically deleted by the host.

Thanks for that - and for the render settings.

Yes, thanks everyone for your advice....I'll be doing a lot of experimenting today!

Quote - I'll be doing a lot of experimenting today!

Wear your safety goggles!

I've been really pushing my rendering time....(Im a mental ray user)

basically I start with default light......till get my vegetation worked.....making sure im getting rid of all procedural patterns from vegetation...

then I pick my enviorment/sky/.....I tend to like atmospheric spectral stuff........from out of the box.......(godrays, spectral sun and sunsets).....

BE Care full alot of the skys automatically have renderosity chosen.....I immediately dial it down to like global ambience with preview setting.....make some quick checks for atmospehere and haze.....and direction of sun...

and start to work back up the ladder....doing tests at preview to broadcast to superior to ultra...

eventually I set off a renerosity render at ultra......with a 4K resolution overnight (8-20 hours)

if you want the good look you got to work for it....

I've been woefully out of the Vue habit for a few years, but having taken advantage of the current half-off sale for V6, am getting to know an old friend all over again. It's amazing how much you can forget when you don't work with an app regularly!

Rutra, your response is very helpful, thank you for being so thorough with your recommendations. I wonder why you feel that optimizing final render pass decreases image quality though? I admit that I haven't looked to find specifically what the optimization does, and had assumed that it was just fine anti-aliasing, usually a good thing in my experience. What do you see as the advantage of not selecting this option, in terms of image quality?

Thanks,
Dean

xoconostle, here's what the manual has to say about this option:

"Optimize last render pass: selecting this will optimize the last render pass, making render up to 3 times faster, but leaving out minuscule details on occasion. You cannot generate G-Buffer
information in this mode."

In other words, the render engine "cheats" to make the render faster. In practice, I notice some blur in areas with high detail.

Generally speaking, whenever you see the word "optimize" in Vue, you should suspect. Generally, that word means "less quality". Just search the Vue manual for "optimize" and you'll see that there are almost always some kind of trade-off between quality and speed.

Some times, the optimization doesn't translate in any visible loss of quality (for example, the "optimized" in the dialog box "anti-aliasing options", as oposed to "systematic") and some times it's really important that you select it or you'll be facing impossibly high render times (liike in GR, the option "optimize for infinite scenery"). But generally speaking, you should read "less quality" where you read "optimize".

Thanks Rutra. I had mistakenly assumed that "optimized" implied the opposite: Improved detail, slower speed. I'm checking out every instance of "optimized" in the .pdf guide (which I assume is the same as the boxed version printed manual?) and see what you mean indeed. Thanks again!

I don't know if the pdf version is the same as the printed one, as I only have the pdf (which I prefer, because it's easier to make searches... and you save some trees :-)).

Great infos here! Thanks Rutra to share your experiments with render settings! :)

I feel the same about 'optimized' stuff in Vue, faster, but you lost something in exchange ;)