Hi Pete, err . . . again: with the very same quality settings, but with 4 lights less (i.e. 21 lights instead of 25 lights), the image rendered perfectly fine in about 5h, two days ago. I don't see how 4 additional lights (120% increase in light sources) will result in 135h total rendering time (2700% increase in render time), especially considering we've already had 21 lights to begin with which took the abovementioned 5h to render. ;) I know very well how vue's percentage, time estimate, and render steps work. As mentioned before, the first pass took close to 5 minutes, but the second pass, rendering about 10 lines of no-transparency, no-reflection, no-softshadowed textures, didn't proceed further than 6%. I don't know whether these 10 lines took 7h or 5 minutes to render, as I was in bed by then already. My guess would be the later, and looping for close to 7h afterwards. It's not as if I weren't used to 12h+ renders at high quality settings. But, again: 130h? If almost the same scene took 5h, previously? Clearly something fishy here. Are we really talking 5 days rather than 5 hours, due to 4 additional, no-shadow lights? Oh, btw, only one light actually casts shadows to begin with, the rest are fill and bounce lights. Even if the additional lights would increase rendering time by 2700%, this still doesn't explain why already the second render pass took 7h for 2 additional percents--corresponding to about 10 scanlines--when a similar scene was fully rendered including FSAA in about 5h, before. But that's not really the point of this thread. We've got the other one for perfomance questions. :) This is a thread about how to diagnose lock ups or dead loops. The render I mentioned was only supposed to serve as an example, not as a problem to be solved--if it takes 100h to render that image, fine by me. :) But: I am still wondering how to GENERALLY diagnose loops of death if they occur. Will Vue crank CPU usage up to 100%, will it simply crash, will it interrupt a render automatically (as it should)? Error messages? Any idea? ta, -Sascha.rb

Well, yes--but the image didn't render, really, but stopped progressing at 6%. The only thing it updated was the render time accordingly to its progress. The first 4% were rendered in 5 minutes, but the next 2% (mark without anything special in that part of the screen) took 7 hours . . . My guess is that it encountered a loop of death, i.e. reflections that went too deep. Funnily, though, in the area of the screen that 2% took 7h, there was no reflection and no transparencies--they are further down in the image. (glass bottles, reflective floor). I should also add that the very same scene, with different textures and 4 lights less, rendered just fine in about 5h at same quality settings, the day before. ta, -Sascha.rb

Hey! I like the tile-rendering idea! Finally a creative approach to enable "network rendering". ;) Will hook up my old P3 over the weekend and give it a shot . . . thanks for the hint. ta, -Sascha.rb

Addition: CPU usage was on 98%, this morning. Hence: deadlock, not crash. ta, -Sascha.rb

Well, most hast already been said. For good renders, use a higher quality setting (best is user settings with everything enabled) and higher anti-aliasing settings. Also, if you're using dim lighting, you might encounter render artifacts. -Sascha.rb

Christmas in Outer Space, perhaps? ;) Naaaa, too stupid. But great theme, perhaps I'll participate this month . . . Cheers, -Sascha.rb

Attached Link: http://www.nggalai.com/tutorials/tut_01.htm

What Pete said. Generally, if the spotlights are only meant to provide more speculars to the car, get them closer to the object and crank up Power. Also, what spotlight settings did you use? How high is Falloff? Try using quadratic spotlights, too. I would change the relative positions of the two lights, too--cancellation is mainly due to symmetry, and if you look heads-on on the car, having two lights completely symmetrically, the car will be lit pretty flat. I don't want to sound too much like a salesman, but check out my lighting tut for some more information on highlights and lighting scenes with spotlights. Especially page 4, "lighting the glasses" might come in handy. -Sascha.rb

Attached Link: http://www.3d-worxx.de/tutorials/vue_lighting_tut/vue_beleuchtung.html

Hi there, for you German guys: a translation of the tut is online at 3D-Worxx.de. Enjoy, -Sascha.rb

Congratulations, Irene! And also many thanks to the other participants--great job. ta, -Sascha.rb

Damn. My ISP has bungled it--the DNS entry for the site has been changed to another page alltogether . . . should be fixed by tonight, so if you either can't access the tut or can't see any images (or download stuff), please try again later. Sorry for the inconvenience, -Sascha.rb

I vote for #17, too--as well done as the other atmospheres are, this one is the only that actually makes me "feel" the weather as asked for in the outline of this contest . . . ;) ta, -Sascha.rb

Hi gebe, already did two days ago. ;) ta, -Sascha.rb

Hi Yves, well, yes. I have been approached by a German 3D community to translate the tut into, well, German, ;) but I'm also working on a radiosity faking tutorial and a "lighting basics" tut with stuff like "improving your geometry" and "tweaking Vue's shaders." Might take some time, but, eh. It has been fun writing this tutorial, so why not do some more? ta, -Sascha.rb

Regarding Fix / Fill / Bounce lights, I concoted a quick comparison image. (1) uses only the primary light source. Mark how dark the right side of the sphere appears, and how much depth is missing from the image. (2) added one dimm fill light (a spot light) to add definition to the right side of the sphere. Much better than just cranking up ambient light. Still, the sphere looks somewhat "added" and not part of the scene. (3) uses three coloured bounce lights, in addition to the fix and fill lights. I exaggerated the light strength to show the point. ;) Now, the sphere integrates far better with the scene. ta, -Sascha.rb

That's funny--I've made a "radiosity" study yesterday night using a white ball on a piece of cloth. :D seems to be a popular concept. fill lights have nothing to do with Vue, specifically. :) "fill lights" are the second tier of the three-point lighting approach. The "fix" light (first tier) is the main lightsource which illuminates the focus of your image, produces the "natural" shadows etc.. If you don't use ambient lighting, this of course results in rather dark images with a high exposure / contrast. Say, a pot lighted by one spotlight will have a very bright spot or specular, but almost black shading at the back. To make "lost" detail visible, you add more lights, the "fill lights" or secondary light sources (second tier). Fill lights usually are a lot less intense than the fix light--average ration would be 1:4--simply because they are not supposed to really light the scene, but to provide additional shading. In the "glass" picture, I used 6 spotlights as fill lights to lighten up the room some, and "chisel" the shadows as well as the contours of the glasses. I'll provide seperate screenshots with only fix lights, fill lights, and bounce lights in the tut. You're right about the polygon count on those glasses. Each glass consists of just about 10,000 polygons. In wireframe mode, you can hardly make out the individual triangles. ;) Eats up memory like mad, but is well worth the effort, I'd say. ta, -Sascha.rb