you should be able to click (twice?) on it for full size... There is still a lot to do, the final render (when ever that will be!) will be 1920x1200 tho...

The only thing I notice with this latest scene is that the tops of the test tubes seem to be 'corrugated', which doesn't seem to be visible when looking at the mesh view? I just checked, and it seems to have been like that all along... (I've done test renders on several different versions of the download), so not sure what's happening there...

thanks for the link, I will have to check that out!

Which do you prefer, this version, or the one with the tomb reflected in the mirror?

`¬)

...so this is the overnight run (10h) with the 'standard' glass, the only addition is the background (which needs to be made the right size to the room, as it shows in the globe at the moment as just the plane it is! - will be sticking to a tomb theme tho... just need to apply the 'scene' to the whole room to get the reflections and refractions to look correct) I'm quite surprised at how well the glass has come out compared to the hyper real, I guess it will be easier to tell once the lighting etc is sorted and I can see the differences. This run I have put the tomb image behind the table rather than having it reflected by a mirror in that position... Not sure which I like best at the moment...  (any preferances?) still a lot of things to do tho! this could turn into a long project? (only getting to spend a little time on it each couple of days!)

@SuperBoom; thanks! I notice your latest also has some 'sparks', not sure how well my using primitives is going to work, I did try making lightening with lots of cylinders once! ...I may try using Dformers this time?

@Paolo, Thanks! it is fun, although there are some strange interactions which are making it a bit more complicated... Hopefully tho, the final result will be ok! 

Glad it is moving forward! I've just set running for overnight; maybe tomorrow we can see about starting to set some of the glass / liquids if we want some more detail... the top image above actually does have the hyper glass and liquids as water... so will look at a comparison. The brain is quite glossy, but so far it has a tendancy to clear up, so here's waiting to see what happens! `¬)

testing some globe lighting in the previous scene, and the globe is still intersecting the tube rack... little bit of noise in this one due to adding the cylinder light sources in the globe, but its a start! (liquids are set to 'water' and glass to hyper realistic) - three 'black' books, and the black antenna...

This is the scene from the latest download, Paolo has moved the tube rack out from the globe and I have transfered most of the materials etc... all the glass is set as 'standard' glass, and the liquid is also 'standard' glass... as mentioned above, if I use hyper real glass or water, then the three books go 'black' and one of the radio antenna... I will finish transfering the textures etc and decide what to do from then! (the '666' is a suitable reminder of the 'mad lab' - I'm sure it's coincidence?)

Quote - So.  I tripled checked all my glossy settings and specular settings.  Everything is nice and low.  I started another render and I think the flask exploded.  Every pass the scene gets worse, with more white stuff.  I'm at a total loss, I have no idea what's wrong.  Please help?

Not sure what happened to your flask! Firstly de-tick any of your glass settings is you have them set to 'hyper-realistic' and switch all your liquid settings if you have them set to water, to be standard glass as well, just for a start.

I have gone back to the latest download of the scene of Paolo's which has the test tube rack and glass globe moved apart (they were intersecting at one point). This is so I can now move all the textures and settings over one by one (I know I can save the settings and re-load them all in one go, but I want to find out what is causing the 'black' book and aerial. I left all the glass and liquid settings alone until I had set all the other objects. (Some items do default to standard glass, but they should be ok on the latest download)

I then found some very strange interactions with setting the flask liquid, if set to wwater the odd books and aerial went black, as also happened if I set hyper-realistic glass... I haven't had time to further investigate, but that alone seems odd, particularly as several people are getting the 'black' interaction. I did also find that when setting an item from glossy to water, the clour remained correct, but if I then turned it back to glossy, both the specular and the glossiness went to 255,255,255. So if you are changing materials back and forth it is always worth doublt checking your specular has changed to something crazy. I had to 'reload' studio setting to nmake it revert. It also felt that it was the original glossy material settings for specular (41,41,41) that seemed to be making the book/aerial black somehow... I do not know enough about the files to check what's going on, but there is definatly something. I don't know if it is related to the splitting up of the containers / liquids from their initial grouping or not... I will need to do the same tests using the original download from the original challenge site, as although the liquids etc are all one material, I suspect they may not give the same issues.

As a start though, set your glass to standard and water/liquids to standard glass too and see what happens... (I notice you have one of the aerials black! `¬) )

I'll check back at lunchtime, got to work now!

Quote - sbt.. i'm a complete noob at using reality's water material.. i'll get the hang of it sooner or later.  along with the 2 or 3 dozen other features of reality that i know nothing about

Quote - There is nothing special about the Reality water plane except that I took the necessary steps to make it work. If you look at the geometry of many environments, the single surfaces are very low-poly. For example, if the scene has a rectangular swimming pool, the water plane there might be even a single polygon. In many cases it's a matter of single-digit resolution. You cannot displace something that has such low resolution, no matter how much you subdivide it.

The Reality water plane has fine geometry which gets even finer by the default two levels of subdivisions applied by Reality. That allows the surface to be displaced nicely by the ripples effect. You can add any piece of geometry to Studio for water effects. Just make sure that:

• It has fine geometry that can be displaced (look at the Reality water plane for help)

• The normals are oriented correctly. Where the normals point to is consider "exterior," the other side is the interior of the water volume.

Follow those two single steps and you can model any shape. Remember that you can create any primitive in Studio with subdivisions. Look at the window that pops up when you create a cube, a plane etc. A well subdivided cube with D-formers applied can work pretty well. Otherwise Blender/ZBrush/modo are your friends :)

Hope this helps.

 @Sharkbytes...

If you go to this link... http://fav.me/d57fqrm there are links to three quick tutorials that I did for using the Reality water plane and some Dformers in daz3 (they are also in the Reality plug-in at Deviant Art 'tutorials' folder...) if you follow all three, you will be able to create the final image, even if you have not used Dformers before... The whole setup for the three tutorials (if I remember correctly) took one weekend to get to starting the final render...

(I'm sure I posted this only a short while ago, but for the fact it is relevant to your new rig and exploring the water material... `¬)

The set up below might look a little complecated (?), but if you follow the previous two tuts, it should become clear... If you give it a go, and have any queries, just ask! - either here or on the post at the link above...)

...must try and do some mad science work now! `¬) - double click for full size -

Quote - SBT.. yes.. xandi has now attained her own adjective.. she has Megafluxed her render.  I don't think I've ever seen 22k passes.  most i've every personally done is 5500 on a slg render.

I don't think those are fireflies that are not clearing up.. i think it's been rendered so long that lux is now picking out and highlighting individual molecules.

This link will provide some details, as well as a link to an entry that shows some comparisons http://fav.me/d4cvy3x

This was an image I did some time ago, just to see... 126,320s/p using Lux 0v8...

I thought I had posted it here at some point, but I may be mistaken...

@xandi

some great advice from SuperBoom... if its any consolation, here is an example of my first render with the scene in comparison to have played for the last two weeks...! `¬)

The biggest thing was to go round reducing the specular and the glossyness strength. The table top was pretty bad... The top render below just ended up as a total white out - the perfect example of materials out of control!

The lower render is has had a bit further work done to it, but is about where I was a couple of days ago...

Quote - Another Lab render

...coming along nicely! `¬)

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - God, I remember messing with assembly language back in the 90s. One of my first college programming courses. I used the built in dos text editor (can't even remember what it was called. I just typed in "edit" at the prompt and up it came) to edit autoexec.bat to load things during post. 

 

That's what it was called, Edit...  I still have a set of Dos6.2 disc's.  If I remember right it was 11 or 12, 3 1/4 floppy's.

hah I've still got Dos 4.0 and the 4.1 fix

My first programming was on a C64

 ...floppy dos and disk basic, anyone?!? (on a sharp mz2000 which a japanese character keyboard... `¬)

Quote - This is my first pass at the Mad Science Challenge. I used a camera focal length of 5mm and moved the camera in really close for a unique perspective on the scene. One mesh light from front-left-high, rendered to 1100 S/p. (postwork in PSP to despeckle)

I want to do some texture work, as well as fill in the environment a little (a background or some wall textures). I'm not very comfortable with texture work so we'll see how it goes :)

 

Cheers,

Michael

like the antenna sparkles! `¬)

Quote - All the tracking info in for the new puter parts.. ~happy dance~  mobo in tomorrow.. rest of the parts in tuesday.  funny thing is.. the motherboard is being shipped via fedex from a supplier that is 35 miles from here.  it's getting routed through chicago and then back here.  since fedex flies most of their stuff.. it'll fly from walker, mi to chicago.. the back to grand rapids, whose airport is 10 further away than walker, to be put on a truck to come to my house.  i wish i would have known about these guys, i would have just driven to their shop.  new beast should be up and running sometime tuesday..  glossy metals, hyper-real glass, water planes and complex scenes here i come.

Looking forward to seeing some new superfast renders! `¬)

Someone at deviant art has opened the original obj file in 3ds max, (I think it was the obj file), and in that instance all the objects actually are seperate objects... (they posted a screen shot with all the items moved apart.) I assume it is a characteristic of Daz Studio that makes the import of the obj file all one mesh? I'm going to carry on with this single mesh tho...

@Paolo; I notice you haven't posted the challange on the Reality Plug in Group on DA, are we going to put the final images into the challanges folder, or are we going to create a challanges folder somewhere here on Renderosity? (or just leave them in the thread?)

Quote -  Loving your latest here, Martin, and glad to see you're still refining! I haven't gotten anything started in several days as I'm rushing and writing like a mad man, trying to get a novel done before the end of the month. 

Thanks Superboom!

I looked again, and think the environment perspective is wrong (at least if the desk and environment are all squrae, and as a reflection); I think it should match the direction of the table, so have just reversed it. The light has had to swap sides as well which looks very starnge at first, but will post later to see a comparison... `¬)

I also need to complete the book texture, as if I get the book to work that is against the brain jar, its texture is reversed, and looking at the example I posted above of the original download I can see that the top edge of that book is still showing the colours/letters from the texture; I need to fill in the book edge on the bottom left of the texture image! I will have to see If I get time to do that in the next couple of days...

Quote - Finally getting to play with this

First working render in progress

Glad someone else is having a go! (I was beginning to wonder!) Are you using the original download? I must admit my first attempts nearly put me off, but seem to be getting around some of the issues I've been having - which may or may not be partially my own making?! I see you have a correct tube holder! hopefully some of the comments I've posted will help if anyone has problems... `¬)