I guess what I liked.......is the easy you moved around in cry as opposed to Vue.....how sweet it would be to naviagte and draw on a Vue scene like your were in a cry engine.....instead looking at that mini preview window!.....

Then click render with a real render.....

I have worked in games and movies....and realtime renders are getting close....with realtime GI and displacement....but i wouldnt see anything for atleast 5 years........(unless wavelets are used)

resolution will always be an issue......love all the comments from hopefulls and the cynics (you are both correct in a way)

so its all hype yet again from the game market?

I liked that island they demoed...

Yeah would make a killer DVD tutorial......"optimized renders for mattepainting" or the real dirt on Vue's render...

Quote - Just another outstanding thread here at the shop...
I wonder if one could stuff the best threads here into a pdf. for all to have...
You know, "The Best of Rendo" or something...

WOW...incredible work.....I think the image is very close if you had my trees. (I noticed you had like 231 billion polys!)

I will never just use the base setting in an atmosphere again...

I will be using a check list on all this new info....

This really is an intensive thread!

One of the things that really scares me is in the FX world.......the post sup or superviser will zoom in %200 and inspect your matte....(they will definitely flag alot of images on the forums for stupid stuff)......its really important to hammer out all these render options....(this has become a very valuable thread)

Your right Im being too purest.....(but I was testing it)

Ill delete the area light, dup the sun, and blue it...

Thanks everybody

The panel trick is old school! Thats something from Eric Hansen's playbook! I love it!

I was just partial to Area lights from Maya.....(1 because they were native Mental Ray lights) (2 they were the only lights that actually resembled realworld lights...kinoflows)

I guess its stupid because Im not using Mental Ray......although I havent tried using Vue with Maya MR

My big complaint with any CG lights is they have nothing to do with real world lights......it was always some voodoo science for a lighting artists to match the lights on the DPs set. Then HDRIs were invented and people started paying attention to real world lighting from the set.....a buddy of mine is working on creating a whole catalogue of Mole Richardson into Mental Ray lights.....

www.mole.com/

One question why would you make the light Blue? (I assume its for bounce light in the shadow?) Alot of the bounce light from a forrest canopy would have green in it too....from all the leaves....

Quote - Area lights are great for creating certain types of lighting but you do need to change the settings in Vue to get a good render with them.  They are not a good way of creating a fill light at the moment except in small scale scenes.  For a vast landscape I'd go with Chipp's suggestion of an infinite light with its power controlled by changing its colour. 

If you were working on a close up the old tricks for simulating area lights with arrays of point or spot lights work well and allow you to control the brightness.  The added bonus of that method is the render times are significantly less than an area light.  Personally I'd only ever use them when the light is visible in a render, is very close to an object that is in the render or will be reflected by an object in a render - the rest of the time an array of lights is far more efficient.

Thanks for the info....Chipp

I tried the second sun trick once.....(duped sun, turned off shadows)...but couldnt find the level control......so switched to an planar light........(which are really great lights in Mental Ray)....will give sun another try......

That fill light is the biggest problem with Vue lighting.....I think I will definitely always need a fill light in my scenes...(I tend to light for magic hour)

......in Mental Ray you have the ability to create a true lighting simulation.....which means you can shoot photons that calculated real bounced light......(color bounce and key bounce).....

Vue bounce light is a little weak.....it doesnt have a real GI or photons.....

(But then again I havent tested severe hi-end settings of the render to get better bounce fill)

(but then again Vue's version of GI is a  fake Global Illumination, along with its Ambient Occlusion)

Also....THANKS FOR EVRYONE'S INPUT! (great discussion)

Quote - Paul,

The second sun is the same as Rutra's directional light. You can control the power of it by changing it's color to dark blue- as he suggests.

The Ranch renderfarm has all of the necessary Cornucopia files, so you don't need to worry about them not being available.

best,

Chipp

Artur,

Yeah the image plane was for some fill. It comes from being a Maya Mental Ray user.......(I like to light with Area lights) the are very similar to kinoflows (which are commonly used on set )...you might have found the reason that file is going through the roof......

Chip recommends using a 2nd sun...but I didnt notice any power controls on the 2nd sun.

So what did you do about those custom trees I bought? I was going to send one to the Ranch full radiosity...with your settings........but if the ranch doesnt have those assets.....it wont render the right trees.....

Have you ever used the renderfarm ranch? (Also dont kill yourself with all this work)(although it is kind of fun to really test Vue no?)

Its actually a 2K map...set at 1K lol

Is the scene optimised ? ...No....it isnt....

it was fast and loose...to get results as quickly as possible...much like a working enviorment in a studio.....(which was my objective as a test)

Quote - One very last thing before going to bed. I also noticed you have your terrain set to 1024x1024. That's completely unnecessary because the terrain is not visible at all (it's covered with plants). So, it's just cluttering your file with unnecessary polygons.

cleared and uploaded to you send it

There was a thread on "grain in shadows" that something at lower settings...

+12 really does knock grain out + Artur's recommended settings.

Quote - Interesting.

Does it look dramatically better on +12 or can we see a comparison image?

Where do I find shadow density for an option?

what is a .bak file?

I have 2 files the Vue file and then a .Bak file

Just to let you know I got 10 billion more polys in that scene....with sever haze in it...

(I noticed haze and fog really jump render times)

trying to email....but its over 234 megs compressed

Shadow density at %40
Yes I put it on Global Illumination
Quality boost of light tab: 0%

Its hard to compare scenes...the only true scientific test is I email you the file and see if it takes you 40 hours to render. I assure you I have a pretty incredible computer.....I paid $7,000 for the build in Jan 2007....

Like I said those quality settings were not my first choice.....when render times started going through the roof....I halted at ultra

Im sure your suggestion settings will solve all this....I will try a render on the rent-a-farm with some of the settings you suggested.

Which comes to my conclusion....to produce really hardcore pics that compares to *Yusei Uesugi and ILM.....

you need da render farm!*

I would add these arent my optimom settings....I would have used custom settings...but I stopped when it got to 40 hours......(which is why I didnt tweak the clouds...my test renders where like 20 minutes)

What is fustraiting is things look better small.....(like the clouds) and you wait 40 hours for a final render...and its like OUCH!

now that I know I have to use a renderfarm for final render...I can kick out the jams with those killer settings discussed in older threads

Settings used for that render:

artificial ambience: .30
shadow density of sunlight: 40% (default ultra setting)
sky dome lighting gain: .50
light balance and ambient light: 81% and 50%
atmospheric setting: Spectral
volumetric sun and godrays: NOT checked.....

(Now Im gonna pay the 10 bucks to get a renderfarm render with proper settings)

IMHO
Vue has arrived......the only draw back is if you dont know optimizing tricks...the program can become slow.....so slow that you could matte paint the traditional way...

I hope this helps people trying to do larger professional size mattes