Forum Coordinators: Kalypso
Carrara F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2024 Nov 05 6:06 am)
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Duh! I should completly read your first post before responding! Well that is exciting then. Increasing the photon count will probably help - but it may start driving the render time up longer than you'd like. However, there are two other things that I would try: 1) select the geometry in the vertex modeler (you'll need to convert it first) and crease the whole object to make sure Carrara understands that it's a completly flat surface, or 2) place a cube behind the far wall and allow it to intersect the wall slightly to prevent any "light creep" that may be occuring at the corner.
Selecting Full Raytracing doesn't allow Carrara to "cheat" and save time while it's doing it's calculations. Using Full Raytracing forces Carrara to calculate the full path (4, 8 or whatever raytracing options you have set)of all rays instead of thinking, "these two light paths are similar so I'll only figure for one of them". Likewise, Interpolation for global illumination does something similar. Since doing the complete calculations for global illumination is very complex (takes time), interpolation accuracy simply tells Carrara how much "educated guessing" to do resutling in saved time. The default is 20% percent accuracy which is a bunch of guess work. That's why some renderings look so blocky - the guess was inaccurate. Eliminating or reducing the interpolation plus forcing Carrara to calculate all of the light rays gives a better result - but it will result in an increase in render time. Mark
The render settings in Carrara are pretty ambiguous. But the manual does mention that rendering with "Improved Edges" checked will reduce the shadows in corners. I've never had to check that option to remove corner shadows (I call them ashes). I will post a render with the settings I'll be using. Right now I'm fixing the objects in the scene that have their texture brightness turned off. I imported the 3DS file after finding their OBJ file a nightmare to work on (it's all one piece).
www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG
I rendered the atrium just now with 5000 photons (I think this is Carrara's default amount). I had ashes everywhere when using the Fast Quality Lighting setting. Using the director's camera, I noticed that the atrium model is pretty small. The diameter of the lens on my rendering camera is as wide as one of side hallways. I resized the atrium about 4-5 times larger and rendered again (with 5000 photons using Fast Quality Lighting). No ashes this time (or just very small ashes, smaller than a penny). Now I'm going to use 30000 photons to lighten up the darkened "cave" areas in the atrium (I probably only need 20000, though) and use Best Quality Lighting for my final render.
www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG
I think once you have textures turned on you can get away with much lower render setings because they mask the ashes quite will. I was wondering how to import the model without the need to crease all of the edges? Also how do you apply textures to this model in Carrara? It look like it will be an absolute nightmare.
That last atrium scene was very good. It's interesting to note how Carrara render times differ from Shade (Curious Labs) in regard to photon count. E.g. a Carrara render with 20,000 might take the same time as a Shade render with 1,500,000. I get the feeling that the two algorithms must define photons differently, and that Shade is undercalculating the effects as compared to Carrara.
I've been using: Ambient Lighting: 0% Sky Light: 570% Using a very light blue background (almost white). Indirect Lighting: 100% Photons: 20000 Best AA 1 pixel, 1 pixel Best Lighting 1 pixel Rendering with no textures, over 7 hours on my PIII-1000Mhz 512MB system. Came out looking perfect. Couldn't save it though (Unknown error occured). With textures & bump, over a day probably.
www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG
I've never had a problem rendering to TIFs on either platform. What problems are you having? And I agree about rendering to a file. If I have a large memory hog, like GI, then I render using the batch queue. Much safer, especially for animations, and more reliable for saving the file. If I'm just doing some tests, then I'm usually not interested in saving the image anyway. Just my 2 cents! :D
Yes. I gave up on the Sponza model. Parts of the floor were missing in the render.
www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG
I think once you have textures turned on you can get away with much lower render setings because they mask the ashes quite will. I was wondering how to import the model without the need to crease all of the edges? Also how do you apply textures to this model in Carrara? It looks like it will be an absolute nightmare but you seem to have managed it well..
I used the .3ds version because of the smaller file size. There are already shading domains on the geomtery and the textures - if you download them from the Sponza site - simply go where they are supposed to. I don't know if the model has been opened without the textures, whether Carrara will "find" them, though. There was one bit of strangness for me. Some of the objects with the textures was pure black. I discovered that for some reason the intensity of the the maps was at zero instead of 100%. I just slide them to where they belonged and everything was fine.
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I've been looking at this weblink:
http://hdri.cgtechniques.com/~sibenik2/
the Sponza Atrium part of the website, which I'm sure most of you already know about. You can download the model in various 3d formats and then play around with various lighting settings.
I'm really interested to know whether any Carrara users have attempted to light the Sponza atrium scene, and hear from people who have used various techniques of lighting. Whether that be HDRI alone, and the careful placement of lights in the scene.
I've played around a little myself, but would be good to hear from some of our more experienced users here, as well as some of our less experienced users too.
If you have already rendered this scene in the past, I'd certainly like to see your images! (of course only if you're happy to post them as examples.)
I feel quite confident that Carrara is capable of rendering this scene just as good as those more expensive apps.