I still not satisfied with the shadows. Guess I need to do some more research on this. 483 lights this time, but I think its overkill.

I'm still not satisfied with the shadows...I hate typing. ;)

heyas; what's wrong with it, the sorta fan-fold shadow lines? you might be able to soften those using soft shadows, but with a few hundred lights, that'd take, what, about 145 days to render? :/

I tried that bloodsong, or started to anyhow. It started out saying 37hrs and I knew it was going to jump to 137 before it was all said and done, and that was in final mode. No thanks! ;) The only thing I can think of is to move the dome up higher and use some fill lights at the level of the objects with shadows turned off.

Excuse me but what's wrong with your shadows ? And what is GI test ? I am very interested by your work trying to simulate radiosity (I presume ?) But it appears to be something like a theoritical work since real objects are always in a real environment... Yves

I think it looks pretty good there, Rich. So how long did it take to render?

YL: GI=Global Illumination. It's a similar thing to radiosity but I'm not sure what the technical differences are. I think both try to simulate the light that is reflected from an object after it hits it, but in different ways. Mike: It took a little over 37hrs to render at 640x480, Ultra mode, 16 subrays, quality threshhold up about 3/4 on a P3 500 w/ 384Mb ram. I should noted though that my hardrive is in dire need of reformatting. I think I'll set up a simple interior scene next fully textured and see how that looks. Hmmm...maybe I can incorporate this into this months challenge. Rich

Hi Rich, I think that your GI is excellent. It reminds me of Cinema 4D renders. The only problem that I can see is that there are too many shadows going in different directions. Try to reduce the shadow density (down to 5%) or turn it off on some lights. Is "483" lights necessary ? sound's a bit excessive... Can't you do this effect with 30 point lights (power:20/shadow density:5%) around the objects and 10 spot lights (power:80/ spread:40/falloff:50%/shadow density:10%) around the scene ? If there are 483 light, I think that you can turn shadow off on 95 % of them. It won't be noticeable and you will reduce the rendering time to a few hours. Eric

Hey, thanks Eric! :) I was thinking of turning shadows off or at least down as they get further down on the dome. The other idea I had was using the original light dome of 161 lights but move it higher up so the light from it isn't coming in from the sides and using some fill lights at the same level as the objects in the scene with shadows turned off. I'll give your idea a try as well. The problem is, most of the info I've found on this tends to be very general, so I'm left with figuring out the fine tuning by trial and error. Rich

Hmmmm... they say that ray tracing is calculated by the computer by "following" computer-generated light rays from the source to the camera, and past/trhough anything else in the way. Something like that. But how is global illumination/radiosity calculated, since in theory, light is coming from literally everywhere, direct, reflected and ambient?

I think in true global Illumination/radiosity it actually calculates the light as it bounces off an object, taking into account the surface properties, so the object itself becomes a light source.

...a little over 37hrs to render... You're a braver man than I! :o You might want to get a copy of Digital Lighting & Rendering by Jeremy Birn. It discusses just about every facet of lights, some portions are more in-depth than others. I think you'd especially find interest in what he explains about "area" lights, something Vue doesn't have, but he offers suggestions for faking their output.

I'm saving my pennies for that book already. It looks like there is a lot of good info in it on all kinds of things. 37hrs isnt' so bad since I have two pc's. I just browse the net while I have a long render going. Rich

One thing, it's good to hear these stories of these long Vue 4 renders that complete without a crash! ;)

I really don't have any problems with Vue. (knock on wood) Still using the 4.02 patch. The only thing that bugs me about it is mixed mats swapping high/low altitudes.

I don't have that happening anymore. Must be a 4.05-02 thing that fixed it, but really I think it might have been solved by 4.03-02. If you're still on 4.02, I'd say you're lucky to not be having crashes on those long renders, because it seems to me that that was one of the things 4.03 fixed. Maybe that was render to disk though...I can't remember now. But you know, looking at this today again, I think it looks pretty good. I was loking at some Cinema 4D and Lightwave pictures, and I swear, this could probably be passed off as one of those.

Rich :

try the 4.05-02 update... I think it's safe. Besides, the rendering seems to be faster... did anyone noticed it ?
I don't know what e-on did but with the 05-02 update the same scenes render much faster on my win2k 1GHz 256MB PC.
I even use "final" as "preview" mode !

Eric

Yeah, I think I will give the 05-02 patch a try, Eric. I dunno Mike. I've never had any problems rendering to screen or to disk with 4.02. Vue funny sometimes. ;)

Just a quick note on the difference between what your doing and what radosity is. . . Raytracing and radosity are both subsets of GI the big difference is that Raytracing assumes all surfaces are polished and shiny where radosity assumes all surfaces are difussed and with radosity the direction of light doesn't matter only the intensity. Not that any of that is going to help you but what might is using kickers. Kickers are lights that come from beneth a scene and help to diffuse the shadows. I'll dig up a render done in poser that uses a form of GI using kickers and you will be able to see the difference. Another good idea and this was mentioned by you is to raise your lights above the scene. On the rare occasion I actually use GI in a program that does not have IBL or radosity I always raise them high, it consentrates the shadows more so the kickers remove the excess shadows. Don't know if any of this will help but it will give you more to play with at any rate. Attached is a quick render in Vue using only four lights and one kicker.

Looks good! :)

Are you saying put the kickers beneath the ground plane? Wouldn't that block the light and not affect anything above the ground plane? I bought Digital Lighting and Rendering since this thread and I read about what you're talking about but I haven't had a chance to do any experimenting yet. Still reading. ;) That's a cool render btw. Rich

Kickers are below the ground plane, yes! TURN OFF THE SHADOW CAPABILITY of the kickers and they will not stop at the ground plane. Experiment with that a while. . .you'll like it. Four bulbs above 100% shadows, wide apart, two directional lights below, no shadows, one in front and one behind. If you cut down the shadows of the four bulbs to 90% each you'd have now shadow at all below the sphere. Keep experimenting. . .your headed in the right direction. Darrin 91101

Duh! That should read, second paragraph, second sentence. If you cut down the shadows of the four bulbs to 90% each you'd have NO shadow at all below the sphere. Obviously they are not tooled in or you would have a perfect single shadow below. Have fun Rich!

Wow, very interesting. I'm gonna have to check this out. 6 lights, only four having shadows turned on would definitely render faster than hundreds of them with shadows. Thanks for the info. :)

One thing that would be great is if we could change the color of the shadow that an object casts.

The render time on the sphere pic was, according to Vue, was 9 seconds. Compared to 30+ hours I'd say that was faster! I have not had Vue very long and I'm just learning it. Here is the key to success in any program you use. . .Learn it's strong points and it's weak points and then how to work around the weak points and there will be no stoping you! Have Fun! Talk to you guys later.

Definitely some good information. Thanks alot the3dgm! You bet I'll have fun with this! Rich

By the way, the name is Darrin (it is a lot shorter than the 3D Graphics Man - the 3DGM):-)

Sorry Darrin, I just get used to looking at usernames. ;]

Nothing to be sorry far, I eas just letting you know. I forgot I'd put it on one of the earlier post. :-)

Well, Darrin, for someone who's not had Vue for very long and is "just learning it", I'd say you're off to a roaring start! Don't be a stranger. Come back and visit us often. :) Mike

Will do Mike and thanks! Actually, your one of the reason, so to speak, that I bought Vue 'Final Vue' is yours right? Great render! I've had it just a few months and am now only starting to play with it. I've done three renders, the first I think you guys burned (lol), the second was the Millennium Falcon and the third is 'I've found Ensign Perez' and you can see it in my gallery at Rendeosity. Talk to you later.

Wel,, thanks. Yeah, that one was mine, but that was way back in the old days of Vue 3.1. I commented on your Ensign Perez pic, but that Millenium Falcon pic looks very good too. Very real, that is.