Outdoor Lighting Problem

[funk]

Ok so I am using Mental Ray Photometric daylight. All is well I have positioned the sun in a spot which I think will set me up for a good semi night lighting effect.

The only problem is my spot lights will not work while my daylight Mr Sun thingo is in place.

 

As you can see the spot light multiplier has been increase up above 50000 and I can see it in the viewport, so why wont it render?

 

thanks in advance,

 

Funk

[Cad64]

Mental Ray Photometric daylight? What's that?

Do you mean the Daylight System? You're not using a Photometric light as your sun are you?

[Cad64]

Can you post more information about the type of lights you're using, as well as your render and environment settings? I am unable to duplicate the problem you're experiencing.

[Cad64]

So did you figure out what the problem was?

[funk]

hey mate, thanks for the reply I was using daylight environment settings as in Mr Sun and Mr Physical Daylight (i think its called) and normal omni and spot lights which wern't showing in renders.

I read in a post that you had a while ago that you need to use 'Mr' lights? and jack up the multiplier to see them during Daylight environments. I wanted to have the sun at about 7pm (so like dusk lighting) with soft lighting effects within the shelter. I havnt been at work so been unable to reply.

But what I ended up doing was just placing a soft spot light (turning off daylight environement) to replicate the night lighting, using just a dark blue background colour, and using normal lights, which worked well, but was trying to use the Daylight environment settings with lights, is that possible?

Sorry i am unable to post more info until tomorrow when Im back at work.

I just love the way that the sun looks with the horizon in renders and the shadows it creates and would love to have some lighting at dusk to compliment it.

Regards to Mental Ray, that is just the renderer I am using because it seems to work best with the Mr Physical Environments.

 

Regards,

 

Funk.

[Cad64]

I played around with this a little bit today and the render below is what I got.

 

I used the daylight system for sunlight and I placed photometric lights at the base of the posts. I set the "Light Distribution" to "Spotlight", used the "Halogen (Cool)" color preset and set the Intensity to 50000 cd.

 

Give that a try and see what you get.

[funk]

There are so many questions I would love to ask about that render.. =) for instance your bump mapping, but as for the lighting your advice was great. I had never used photometric lighting. Worked very well. I had to use standard lights to sort of GI the shelter though as my boss thought that the up lights weren't enough.

 

I put rectangle photometric lights in the fittings to create they glow of the bulbs, and then the photometric spotlight which you suggested for the up light effect.

 

here is an image of my result at 6pm.

 

 

 

The only thing that bugged me was I tried to make the support uplights light up the bottom of the roof, so I upped the multiplier to reach it, but then the light looked to bright down the bottom, So I ended up just putting omni's under the roof.

 

I need to work on my material mapping I know but im getting better!

 

Once again thankyou for your help, I'm sure i'll need to post again soon for more advice.

 

Regards,

 

Funk

[Cad64]

The only thing that bugged me was I tried to make the support uplights light up the bottom of the roof, so I upped the multiplier to reach it, but then the light looked to bright down the bottom, So I ended up just putting omni's under the roof.

 

Did you try adjusting the spotlight distribution "Hotspot" and "Falloff"?

[funk]

ok so I upped the intensity to 150,000. I did not really adjust my distribution, check out my screen cap.. anything you would change? Upping the intensity actually worked not to badly, the base doesn't seem to bright.

 

 

result

 

 

not sure what the best file extension to use for clear image results are, .png seems to work ok but doesn't render environments... haha, sorry thats another topic i guess.

 

I think what im trying to do in this scene is somehow create a GI effect as the lighting is quite focused, and there will be no sun, I need to light up the scene better, I usually end up chucking a directional standard light ontop of the shelter with no shadows to give a all round brightness, not sure if I should be changing render settings instead to achieve that GI effect but?

[Cad64]

ok so I upped the intensity to 150,000. I did not really adjust my distribution, check out my screen cap.. anything you would change? Upping the intensity actually worked not to badly, the base doesn't seem to bright.

 

Looks pretty good.

 

not sure what the best file extension to use for clear image results are, .png seems to work ok but doesn't render environments... haha, sorry thats another topic i guess.

 

.png is great because you get the best of both worlds. You get the quality of a .tif with the filesize of a .jpg. I think it's the best format. And if you want your background included, just uncheck "Alpha Channel" in the "Setup" before you Save.

 

I think what im trying to do in this scene is somehow create a GI effect as the lighting is quite focused, and there will be no sun, I need to light up the scene better, I usually end up chucking a directional standard light ontop of the shelter with no shadows to give a all round brightness, not sure if I should be changing render settings instead to achieve that GI effect but?

 

Yeah, you should be playing with your render settings, Final Gather and Global Illumination. But I would need to see your render settings in order to offer advice. Just be aware that increasing these settings can cause very long render times, but will yield much higher quality and realistic results. You just have to find the right balance between speed and quality.

 

Or you can just fake GI by using omni lights, like you're doing. It's up to you really.

[funk]

cool, thanks heaps for the help I think GI and FG is something I will just have to play with, As im guessing there is no real answer as it always changes for every different scene. For this scene I Have FG set as Image shows.

 

GI is turned off > it seems to mess with my lighting settings so I don't bother as I have a deadline for work I have not got the perks of playing around.

 

 

Image precision is low, and view set to HDTV (video) 1920x1080. with Force 2-Sided on, the rest is normal in the common tab.

 

So I guess ill play around with render settings outside of work, for the moment though I'm sure this will do

 

My renders at these settings currently take 6.5 mins

[Cad64]

You will get much better results if you try using the "High" FG Precision Preset. Also, experiment with adding Diffuse Bounces. Start with 1 bounce and see how it goes. Diffuse Bounces can really help spread the light around and brighten up your scene, but more bounces means longer render times, so try to keep that number low.

 

On the "Renderer" tab, set your "Samples Per Pixel" to Minimum = 4 and Maximum = 16. And set the Filter type to "Mitchell".

 

And in your Environment settings, unless you really know what you're doing with the shutter speed, aperture, etc., you should switch to the "Exposure Value (EV)" option, with a setting of 14.5, and choose the "Physically Based Lighting, Outdoor Daylight, Clear Sky" preset.

 

Those are the settings I typically start with, and then depending on speed and quality, I will start tweaking from there.

 

Oh, and you might want to add a little touch of orange tint to the Global Lighting in your Environment settings. This will help you achieve more of a sunset type of appearance.

[funk]

bahaha, your render settings made my Max crash . I should of mentioned my computer spec--- Intel Core2 Quad, Q9505 @ 2.83GHz, 3.48gb ram, Quadro FX 1800 Graphics card, 768 Mem. You get the idea, it took almost an hour to finish final gathering and then it shut down Max. So given my predicament I went with Low Image Precision (Min:1/16 Max:1), filter set to Mitchell (I have no idea what that means still, haha) and Draft quality FG, diffuse bounces set to '1', Mr Photographic Exposure control, and the renders took about 1min30secs.

 

And yet the images still come out a tiny bit blurry, the view render is set to HDTV 1080, so I'm assuming its just my render settings being so low. Dang.

 

I'll keep messing around with things although I need to get these images out in 1 hour..

its go time.

 

Regards,

 

Funk

[Cad64]

Hmmmm, even though your computer is not the greatest, it should still be able to finish the render at the settings I suggested. It will just take a long time. I'm not sure why it's crashing? It must be running out of memory.

 

If you're going to be doing a lot of rendering, I would suggest talking to your boss about upgrading your system. The money you pay for a new computer will be offset by the time you will save by not having to wait for long render times. And you will be able to produce high quality renders for your clients.

[spittle]

Try rendering a final gather map of lower resolution but using your settings (maybe Medium FG preset will be sufficient), use plenty of bounces. Once you have your FG map, set it to read only and render final image at the higher resolution. You prob won't even notice the difference - apart from a faster render time.

 

You should buy this book:

 

Mastering Mental Ray - Jennifer OConner (if i remember rightly)

 

It's prob one of the best books I've come accross for mental ray. I've only scanned through it so far.

 

Regarding crashing, look here near bottom of page:

 

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/cg_education.htm

 

Also, if using large high res textures, research mipmaps.

 

Mental Ray arch & design materials are cool - and there's a decent manual on the mental images website.

[Cad64]

You should buy this book:

 

Mastering Mental Ray - Jennifer OConner (if i remember rightly)

 

It's prob one of the best books I've come accross for mental ray. I've only scanned through it so far.

 

Or this one: http://www.amazon.com/Rendering-mental-ray-3ds-Max/dp/0240808932/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282678299&sr=8-10. This book is where I learned everything I know about Mental Ray. Well, that book and a lot of trial and error.

 

By the way, that "Hard Surface Shading And Texturing" DVD on Neil Blevins site is great.

[funk]

Nice website, and I just bought that book =) looks great. I would love to convince my office that this is all worth it but its proving hard to get them take the plunge into the 3d world. So it looks like I have 20 days left of trial .

The render with your settings you suggested did finish as I left it over night, it took 2hours and 10mins, it looks good but for some reason when I print there is a slight film appearing over the image, its almost non existent but seems to be there, it might be a directional light i'm putting over the shelter to light it up. A bit unsure see if you can pick up what I'm talking about in this image otherwise its my printer.

Hopefully I get the chance to pursue this design work.

 

Regards.

[Cad64]

I can't really see a film in the image. Maybe it's just your printer?

 

I didn't know you were just using the trial version. That's a bummer. Hopefully your boss will see the advantages of being able to produce 3D renderings of your projects and you will get to do more of this type of work. It's really a lot of fun. But don't tell your boss that. He might not let you do it if he thinks you're having a good time.

[funk]

yeh I think it could be, when I show people the renders on the screen the colours have so much more punch, the printer just doesn't do it justice

 

So I bought the Jennifer O'Connor book not actually realizing that you posted a different book. I had a read of both summaries and found it hard to split a massive difference between them, they both offer the same things so I guess I'll have my fingers crossed it will do the trick. If you have read both or have any insight whether I should maybe exchange for yours? otherwise I'll stick with it.

 

I might have to buy a home workstation to fulfill my 3d modeling needs while my work thinks about it.

 

drooling just thinking about a new home workstation haha

[Cad64]

The printed output has a lot to do with the type of paper you use. You should get some good heavy paper. Satin or glossy finish works really well. Talk to whoever you get your paper from and ask them what they recommend and see if they will give you some free samples to run some tests.

 

I don't know anything about the other book. I haven't read it so I can't comment, but it looks pretty good.