MattTheMan vs. magicsy - Page 2 - Simply Maya User Community

# 16 30-12-2005 , 10:34 AM

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use ray traced shadows

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# 17 30-12-2005 , 02:36 PM

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ive been using ray traced shadows. shadow rays 200, trace depth 7, and light radius 0. is it the light radius? i know it upps the render time.

or- does it have anything to do with my multibounce FG settings? because i heared that those used incorrectly can cause problems.

right now its at 4 bounces

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# 18 30-12-2005 , 03:47 PM

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alright, seems as though the noise is a bit better now!

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# 19 30-12-2005 , 04:00 PM

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Looking good Matt. Glad to see you managed to get rid of the graininess. Btw, 200 shadow rays?? Isn't that a little too much? How long does it take to render?

Btw I thought that the number of shadow rays only affects softness. I could be wrong, but if you keep the radius to 0 does it truly help to have more than 1 shadow rays? However, in your scene the shadows seem smooth. I'm a bit confused. Can you make soft shadows with the radius set to 0?

Oh and Simon your scene looks really promising too. How come you haven't posted any more progress on it?

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# 20 30-12-2005 , 04:34 PM

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Hey!
Now, with 2000 shadow rays, trace depth 10, I got what I wanted. fg: 650. min-0 max - 0. gi accuracy is at 220.
the sampling for the area light is what determines the grainyness. its at min-5 max-17. however, it is now a bit washed out. I will reduce the intensity of the light next.

time for render: 45 minutes

3.2 gigahertz pentium 4 with ht processor
2 gb of ram (dds)
256 raedon xctacy graphics card

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# 21 30-12-2005 , 04:42 PM

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Good to know that about the area lights, I've never messed with them. Anyway it looks sharp now.
Well done. :attn: :attn:

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# 22 30-12-2005 , 04:56 PM

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Yeah, looks real good. So you're using area lights not spotlights. Never used area lights yet to see how you smooth shadows with them. Oh and I almost forgot: nice computer user added image

. I only have an amd 2700+ sempron, 1 GB Ram and a Geforce 6600GT. Kind of small compared to yours, but i like it user added image

Anyway looking forward to more progress. Btw shouldn't we be able to vote only after both projects are completed, or when the time expires?

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# 23 30-12-2005 , 04:59 PM

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One more thing. Did you try adding caustics to those glasses? I know it will kill the rendering time, but it might produce some nice colored patterns on the wall.

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# 24 30-12-2005 , 05:47 PM

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Hey! thanks for the nice comments people. The thing that escapes me is how to make the caustics work.... all lights have caustics turned on, but they dont look like they work... user added image

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# 25 30-12-2005 , 06:46 PM

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Now I think this one is the best so far.I canceled it though...it was taking ups of 2 hours.

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# 26 30-12-2005 , 07:25 PM

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Alright, so I changed the color of the wall to something much nicer, which you can see better too.

Full render took only 1 hour and 4 minutes

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# 27 30-12-2005 , 07:44 PM

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A few suggestions with the caustics, since i know i had my share of trouble with them. Make sure that you're glass material has a photon shader applied to it. Other than that i guess you know the rest. Caustics enabled in render globals and in the lights mr attributes.

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# 28 30-12-2005 , 08:07 PM

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Yes of course, the glass is a dialectic material. And if you look closely on the blu one, a bit of caustic does show up on the shadow's edge.and in the white renders, the green one showed up as well. in a large render im sure you will be able to see it. But now, since I am bored, I think im just going to render a 1440 x 1220 for my monitor (i think thats it...???) not sure.

BTW i modeled a plug for my sockets and a wire for my plug. I dont know why, its not like your going to see it.

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# 29 30-12-2005 , 08:25 PM

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I'm not sure you understood exactly what i meant. At first I thought that the fact that it's a dielectric material is enough to render with caustics, but it's not. What i meant is this: Select your dielectric material and then click on the go to output connection. There, under mental ray, click to map the photon shader attribute. Then, under photonic materials choose the dielectric_material_photon. When you try and use caustics next, with the default values, you should get a pretty obvious caustic pattern. Hope it helps user added image