And Now For Something Completely Different by Doublecrash

Softimage XSI • (none) • posted on Oct 18, 2006

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Description

Hi everyone... I just love Monty Python ;) - and the title is, of course, ironic, because the picture above is something everyone of us has already seen a zillion of times. Balls, glass, DOF, yeah, bleah ;-) But I wanted to experiment further with the caustics and the glass in XSI, I wanted to try out DOF and Lens FX and, most of all, I wanted to understand the Render Passes in order to save rendertime. So I set raytracing at full blast, an almost impossible amount of reflection and refraction rays (10/10/20), AA at maximum oversampling quality, very high photon accuracy... all cranked to the max. I hit the button, just to see what would happen: to cut a long story short, after 24 hours my system was still crawling at 20% of the final 1280x1024 complete render. So I divided the scene into 6 different render passes, each with settings otpimized for the purpose of the pass: 1) Ambient, Diffuse and Shadows, 2) Reflection on the vase and the DOF ball, 3) Reflection on the little balls inside, 4) Specular pass, 5) Refraction pass, 6) Caustics pass. Result: fantastic! A total of no more than 2 hours, with the possibility to go back and change a single pass if I wasn't satisfied with the specific settings. I then composited the passes and, whoa, I had a high-quality render in virtually no time at all. :) I hope this helps those interested in such matters. Thanks a lot for passing by and have a good week. Stefano PS: Table and walls textures are from "World Matters" DVD by SubDimension Studios.

Comments (24)

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Gog

12:03PM | Wed, 18 October 2006

Nice work Stefano

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eres

12:25PM | Wed, 18 October 2006

Stunning job pal!!!!!

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sadlers5

1:22PM | Wed, 18 October 2006

looks like little planets in the glass! very cool!

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tresamie

1:36PM | Wed, 18 October 2006

Wow! This experiment is an amazing success! The glass shape is fascinating and the table texture is exquisite.

emilioma

2:08PM | Wed, 18 October 2006

VERY NICE.

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cshark

2:50PM | Wed, 18 October 2006

OK, I am impressed, particularly by the composting job. Not in love with the little balls in the glass thingy, but the rest rocks.

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Incarnadine

6:20PM | Wed, 18 October 2006

Looking good!

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lemonjim

8:07PM | Wed, 18 October 2006

came out super! thanks for the description, it really helps me since I never used XSI (boohoo). Including some text is excellent!

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Anjour

10:14PM | Wed, 18 October 2006

Beautiful work and light,texturing...bravo!!!:o)

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Primal

6:07AM | Thu, 19 October 2006

This is Fantastic!

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LastAngel

7:38AM | Thu, 19 October 2006

Looks great! So real!!!

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madame

1:38PM | Fri, 20 October 2006

What an awesome scene you've created,Stefano ! This is a wonderful experiment... superb lighting and reflections ! Excellent work !!

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calum5

10:49AM | Tue, 24 October 2006

lol,monty!!My my my what long time since Ive been around to pull your hair!tug tug!Simply stunning work old friend,shame about me putting nails on the track eh..

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thundering1

8:16PM | Tue, 24 October 2006

That looks fantastic! Love Monty Python as well - great title! Cool image ;-)

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RodsArt

2:15PM | Thu, 26 October 2006

Impressive!!

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Silgrin

7:39AM | Mon, 30 October 2006

Wow!... I`m just playing around with caustics in Lightwave and I see how nice it looks here. Just waqiting for your next works:)

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gattone_blu

5:10AM | Wed, 15 November 2006

Ottima la resa del vetro

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pixeltek

2:31PM | Sun, 19 November 2006

Excellent render, and thanks for the education.

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catlin_mc

11:28AM | Wed, 29 November 2006

You're working well with XSI Stefano, the lighting on the glass and the resulting shadows are excellently portrayed in this image, well done. 8)

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Fidelity2

4:28PM | Sat, 09 December 2006

Excellent Image. Beautiful. Soft-Image Rocks.

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morin3000

4:21PM | Tue, 26 December 2006

. Happiness is like the sun: It happens that he is sometimes behind the clouds, but he is always present nevertheless. Happy New Year ((( Beautiful image 5+ ))

WindofChanges

11:44AM | Sun, 01 June 2008

Excellent work!!! wonderful lighting and materials... thanks for sharing your experience with softimage... i started loving it... :)

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