« Posts tagged final gather

Apartment Final Render Thoughts

For now I’m finished with this apartment render. I’ve learned a lot, but it’s time to move on to another project. I will definitely revisit this in the future as I learn more about Mental Ray. I think the most challenging part for this project was fine tuning the global illumination and final gather settings. This is the first time I have worked with either. The fur system was really easy to use and while there are a lot of settings most of them just let you add randomization to the basic properties. The fur and fabric shader on the ottoman required a lot of anti aliasing to catch-all the crisp detail.

The final settings for anti aliasing in the “quality” tab were set to “adaptive” and 4. If I did it again I would have set the final quality control to 3 as I found 256 samples is a little over kill and takes almost twice as long as when set to 3. Keep in mind though that the setting is not “mandatory”. That means that not every pixel is getting 256 samples, just the ones that Maya determines need it. I’m not quite sure how the algorithm works that controls this, but it is something I plan to look into. In retrospect I don’t think I would ever paint a room that bright of a green, but you must have fun with these kinds of projects; right? :D

On a side note, I was at the gas station the other day and while I was waiting in line I found a great magazine called “Elle Decor” (http://www NULL.elledecor NULL.com/). I’m pretty sure it’s aimed at women, but it’s got a ton of really sweet interior designs inside that are giving me lots of inspiration. More posts soon. If you have questions ask away.
(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/apt1 NULL.jpg)

Mental Ray Linear Workflow Tests

So, I’ve decided to take a better look at using a proper linear workflow within Mental Ray and part of that seems to be learning Global Illumination and Final Gather. These lightning systems have always seemed scary and complicated to me, but after some great tutorials at Lester Banks.com (http://www NULL.lesterbanks NULL.com)and Stuart Christensen (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/user/deepfriedectoplasm)‘s YouTube channel I am starting to see the light :) I would also like to thank Brandon from Backwards8.com (http://www NULL.backwards8 NULL.com)for sitting down with me the other day to explain some of the different GI and FG settings.

Labatt Beer with ice (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/beer_ice NULL.jpg)I dug up a scene I had modeled a few months back of my old apartment. This is lighting s a test to see how I would like to take the render further. The render itself is black and white and the few textures and colours in it were added in Photoshop. I should mention that I’m not using the mia_roundCorner node. There are 5 area lights in the scene being controled by a mia_portal_light. Right now the large windows are emitting 1,000,000 photons per light and the smaller windows are emitting 500,000. The portal lights are all connected to the same mib_blackbody node which is outputting a colour temperature of 5500K. This is in an effort to simulate mid-day sun. The render camera is set up so that the film back is the same ratio as the resolution gate (960×540 px) and I added the lens shader mia_exposure_photographic to even out the gamma. I am still getting a bit of blotchyness around the corners, but part of that is due to the area light samples being set at 16. Overall I am really happy with this as a test and I will keep posting updates as my work progresses. I’ve also done a small linear light test with a beer can model and I will post that shot when I get off of work. If you have any questions about settings or the process as a whole post a comment below or shoot me an email (terry null@null terrymatthes NULL.com).
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Global illumination and final gather rough render. (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/apt_test NULL.jpg)
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