Hi everyone,

I have read loads and loads regarding different render settings but cannot find the answer I'm after. I see all the beautiful landscapes here that have a kinda "painted" feel but can never seem to emulate the final look of my images, they always seem a bit too "rendered".

I play with my lighting and atmosphere settings and read somewhere that enabling shadows and using shadow map in light options should help but all my attemps have made really no impact.

I generally use the ultra preset option when rendering, do you think this could be why?

I realise that this is kinda vague but would be really interested and grateful if anyone could give me some pointers.

Thanks in advance

I never use shadow maps as it's less precise, IMHO :)

1. set any light to use only 85 to 90% shadows, usually

2. sun to 1,5 softness for noon, 3 to 5 otherwise and 5 or more for a low sunset
   5 to 15 for candles etc

3. I have a tut on my site about actual render settings, but lighting is crucial!!! :)
   most recent outdoor type render I did, I'm no expert on such though

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2046072&user_id=7541&np&np

It's not always down to render settings.  Some of us postwork to make that painted effect

The key is adding the right amount of haze.  Both thickness and height.

Hi -
IMO there are no "right" render settings - it all depends on what you want to achieve. Much also depends on the atmosphere settings. Again there are no "right" atmosphere settings - a clear day at high altitude looks different than a foggy day in a swamp etc.

Personally I use mainly custom made render settings - "User Settings", with the most notable difference from the Vue presets being "Crisp" AntialiAsing (AA) instead of "Automatic", and somewhat better/higherAA than the "Final" preset. In "Ultra" e.g. you get a lot of high settings that may not be necessary (high transparency tracing and reflections), all of which adds to the render time.

There's nothing wrong with shadowmaps (again just my opinion), they can add a certain "painted" look. True, that they aren't as precise as raytraced soft shadows, but it depends on what you want.

Two examples of soft shadows for an "oldfashioned" look in my landscape renders:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2015644 
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1925939

And one with raytraced shadows:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1848692

For atmosphere settings, use "Outdoor Radiosity" and pay attention to the skydome colour and lighting gain, I use much higher settings than in the preset atmospheres (mostly).
This will make pleasant and realistic indirect skylighing effects in the shaded areas (no need to lower the shadow intensity, unless you want an overcast look). You may take a look at member HowardFarkes in the Carrerra gallery as well, he uses high skydome lighting gain (or the Carrerra equivalent) in his brilliant landscape renders.
(This is one of the things they've changed from Vue 7 to Vue 8, the atmospheres in Vue 8 has more skydome lighting gain by default (at zero), and increasing it takes much more effect.)

• Lars "bigbraader"

Should be "howiefarkes", not "HowardFarkes" - sorry

 Hi bigbraader, and all!

Thank you, the "old fashioned look" is exactly the term I should have used. I always knew that my long render times could be reduced by using custom settings rather than ultra but haven't really got to grips with what everything does and therefore found myself moving sliders and ticking boxes without knowing the consequences!

The examples you have given are absolutely spot on and indeed beautiful, great stuff btw, and illustrates the look I'm trying to achieve.

I actually realised when trying a render with your grass pack, and I speak for every vuer when I say thanks!, that the colours and quality did not match all the other renders I've seen using your pack, mine looked rendered and to be honest, pretty nasty! Howiefarkes gallery has some truly awesome work also, each with the finish I'm trying to replicate and can't wait to try these settings out. 

Would you say you use the same ballpark settings for everything you render?

I'll certainly be trying your suggestions and want to thank you for taking the time to reply, very much appreciated.

I'm glad to be of assistance, don't mention it :)
I don't have any general "atmosphere scheme", but I do have a custom "basic sunshine" atmosphere that I use for startup. I have a few "User Settings" render modes saved, and my favourite of those are used for the majority of my final output renders. It may change as I learn and the posibilites improve.

My best advice would be to study the real world, and pictures (photos or paintings) with the look you want to achieve.
Then make a simple scene, and play with the atmospherics and light settings to get a grip of what the sliders do (one at a time!).

Thanks, I went to try your sugestions and was wondering if you could cast your eye over these settings and let me know these render settings look about right?

Here's the Atmosphere Editor Settings, I couldn't find "Outdoor Radiosity" but Selected "Global Radiosity" and selected "Optimize for outdoor rendering" instead.

I bumped the "Sky dome lighting gain" to 2 from 0, is this generally enough? "Shadow smoothing" I left at 100%, is this the same as the soft shadows setting you mentioned?

Thanks again

First a few remarks.

1. "Shadow Smoothing" is not "Soft Shadows", it has to do with shadow dispersion in indirect lighting models. Soft shadows is a property, softness, applied to the light object (sun etc.).
2. I wrote from memory, no such thing as "outdoor radiosity". "Optimize for..." is right. But do check the indirect lighting also.

A couple of screendumps of the settings from the "Bridge over..." scene
(  http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2015644  ) will follow.

I agree with Lars "bigbraader" in almost everything he said (I just don't use texture AA). It seems we have similar ways of looking at things, interesting.

3Desktops, IMO the lighting is much more important than the render settings. I think that's in the lighting settings that you should focus more intensively. In the render settings, I think you should basically try to achieve a good trade-off between quality and speed. Your render settings are not optimized for speed, at all.

For example, in the vast majority of cases you don't need texture anti-aliasing. You're just wasting CPU cycles with that. Texture AA is typically necessary when you see Moire patterns (visual interference caused by repetitive patterns). Otherwise, don't use it. In all my images, I only used it once.

The advanced effects settings are way too high. You only need it that high if you see, for example, noise in procedural terrains, light leaks from radiosity, and some other circumstances. I typically use around 42%.

Regarding lighting, there's no "right" setting for the sky dome gain. It all depends on your scene. For example, if you have a high light balance, you probably need higher sky dome gain. In your case above, you have a low light balance, so you should probably have also a lower sky dome gain than 2, unless your sun is very low in the horizon (in this case you might need more than 2). You really have to understand what each thing does, and that's by experimenting.

You must also play with your materials. If you increase the sky dome gain, you're increasing the ambient component in your materials. Some materials are more sensitive to that than others. For example, the fabulous grass pack from Bigbraader has some cases where the materials have a sum of diffuse and ambient components higher than 100%. If you use a high sky dome gain, this grass could look washed out. You may need to decrease the ambient component of the material. I do that a lot. Almost all bigbraader grass that you see in my renders is adjusted to the specific light conditions of my scene.

Tip: You should tick the "indirect skylighting" checkbox in the radiosity section.

And atmosphere settings as they were.

Now, these examples are not THE way to do things, they are just examples of how an actual render setting in a quite succesful render, judging from the "general opinion".
Many will disagree or go "besser-machen", that's OK with me. It's always easy to reach higher when you stand on somebody's shoulders :)

Ooops, hi Artur and welcome, got here  while I was typing :)

Thanks. Yes, we cross-posted. :-)

Hey guys and thanks so much for this fascinating advice and the screenshots.

I realise obviously that each scene will need it's own settings to achieve the look desired, I was curious to see how you all go about it and utilising some of these almost "hidden" settings.

I've been using vue for a while but am now only just starting to "try" use it "properly" and take a little more time. After always using the ultra settings and waiting sometimes days for a render to finish only to find I wasn't happy with the result and almost giving up! I really admire both of your works immensly and am truly made up and grateful to you both for offering advice, it's been truly invaluable.

I know there's always more to learn, but I've learned more from this thread than hours of video watching at geekatplay!

Thanks guys

Yes, never settle for "one for all" setting, unless you're on a time schedule. Part of the fun is to ask yourself: "Can I do this" and then try (and try and...). That's what I do, at least. In all of my posts here I've (tried to) solve one or more of these questions.
Have fun!

Just a couple more opinions from my side (and that's all this is, opinions :-)).

Several people, like Silverblade above, propose to use shadow intensity lower than 100%. I don't recommend this. IMO, that's a quick and dirty solution if you're in a hurry but if you have time for your art, then you should do things differently, IMO.

Changing the sun shadow intensity has no parallel in the real world. In the real world, shadows are less intense not because the sun projects something different but because you have diffuse light (from haze or fog or clouds) or because you have light bouncing from other objects (what is simulated by radiosity in Vue) or because you have other light sources. Unless I'm after something special, I always try to simulate the best I can what the real world has. Vue has several tools for that.

So, if I want less intense shadows, I either increase the sky dome gain (which in real world would be the effect of humidity in the air or haze), or I increase the glow intensity in the sky, fog, haze tab or I increase the radiosity gain or I create a secondary light source, or a mix of it all. I never, ever decrease the shadow intensity. There's an added reason for that. If you have your lighting quality boost slider at negative values (which is common to increase render speed) you can get noise in the shadow areas. You need higher quality boost slider and that increases render times.

There are many ways to light up a scene. For example, Silverblade also talks against the use of shadow maps but these can be great for iluminating a dark forest scene. Because the shadows are less precise, the light scatters around better and illuminates areas that would otherwise be very dark.

Speaking of forest scenes, there's another way to iluminate those: by using a medium gray haze/fog and using a high glow intensity in the sky, fog, haze tab, and setting the haze and fog at low altitudes. This will magically brighten up your forest scenes and give it a mystical look.

There are many ways of iluminating a scene. Many, many, many ways. That's what's fun about Vue. :-)

I agree with what most of Artur Rutra writes. Especially ,as I've already stated, the need for experimenting. It reall y pays off later on.
And you can tell that you are becoming really  "renderized" when you see something in the real world - be it a sky or a spot in a forest - and you go "...well...just a little more haze and radiosity gain, then it would be perfect..., and perhaps a little less cloud densitty, also..." or something.  (This has been up several times before in the forum, well here it is again G.).