Hey,

When you are working with stills, what settings do you use to produce high quality output? Anyone care to share their settings and post what they use? 

I am rendering right now but will get mine posted up soon, just interested to see what settings people use when they have that all important awe inspiring work.

Jon

Err, I haven't forgotten about this thread, but I did forget to take a screenshot of my settings before I started my next scene, will post something soon :)

Jon

Sorry about my delay in replying to my own thread :) 

Anyway the settings below are what I used in my River's Edge scene, normally I will use these settings for most 'finished' work I do, occasionally with turn of blurred transparency and reflections but depends. 

i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp114/jonj16111/RenderSettings.jpg

Jon

Looks like everyone's ignoring this thread. 
How rude

:b_unbelievable:

Hehe, its ok, I guess it depends if you really have an interest in render settings or how to achieve a good time/quality ratio. 

The settings I posted work well for me and if anyone else finds them useful then its something :) 

Though as with most things, there will be people with different settings and other ways of doing things, like you can turn down atmosphere light quality etc to speed up render times. I am not really here to say whats right or wrong or to say this is how to speed up your render, just wanted to post settings that give a good quality render. 

Thanks for commenting though Gill :) 

Jon

I'd post my settings but I tailor my settings to the picture (except where Preview or Final is enough for something) so I can't really post anything...

Yeah, I kinda thought many people did, I do change my settings depending on the scene but for the most part I keep the settings I have. A lot of my scenes are nature and work well

Jon

I rarely use very high q render settings, as I usually do a fair amount of postowork - I've never liked renders out of the box from any programme I've ever used and it placates the traditional painter in me !

I have a saved setting which is just final but with the quality boost turned up. That's usually enuff

Interesting Gill, I have never post worked anything apart from adding a sig, I have thought about it but I am not proficient enough in Photoshop to really do anything with it. 

Also I am using Photoshop 6, can't afford the newer versions just yet :)

Jon

Now it's mostly colour and lighting enhancement, though sometimes I do take renders into Painter and play around with them a bit more.

Here's one I just posted.  The top is the outofthebox render, below is the finished article.

Quite a difference Gill, more than I was expecting. Years ago I used to view postwork as cheating as it wasn't out of the box. But in recent years have come to learn that you can make some powerful images with the right tweaks in the right places. I know its something I really should try and put some effort into but need to learn the right things to do first I guess. Playing with filters is fun but I am sure not everyone wants a landscape wrapped around a sphere lol

That's funny - having started out as a traditional artist, I feel that plopping things around a scene and hitting the render button is cheating :lol:

I know there's more to it than that but you know what I mean....

I don't do a lot of post work usually - not because I disagree with it but because I usually end up making the picture worse rather than better :rolleyes:

Hehe, with you there Impish, can't grasp the filters or levels personally, but thats just me

It's not all filters and levels

Quite a bit is airbrushed or repainted by hand if I'm not happy with it. 

BUT a really good 'filter' for lighting adjustments is AutoFX Mystical Lighting.   Radial Light Caster and Shader can put .... well - the light and shadows where you want them. 

Levels can help define lighter and darker areas.

Unsharp Mask can bring back some details that may get lost in all the futzing

Its the retouching I can't seem to get the hang of - filters and levels I can often get what I want from but anything more than a few simple tweaks and I just end up with a really nasty muddy looking mess.

That said I do sometime take a quick render into Creature House Expression (I've never gotten round to bothering with the Microsoft version) and draw a picture using the render as a starting point.  But thats not really post work more a complete rework.