I’m just about 70% done my apartment render so I thought I would post an update. This is a to scale model of my old apartment. I had some previous renders, but the scale was off (really off) and it was causing all my lightning to be blown out. After Fixing the scale I noticed I was getting black renders even though Global Illumination and Final Gather were working properly. The issue was that my portal light’s intensity wasn’t near strong enough. I had to jack it up to about 2 billion! Crazy. I eventually toned it down to 1 billion, but anything under that and the light really dies off quickly.
As far as assets go I have modeled a sofa table and television which don’t appear in this render, but they will be in the next one. I think I’m also going to take out the couch for now because I just ordered one of the best leather sofas (http://fineleatherfurniture NULL.com/leather-furniture-blog/blog-list/513-the-best-leather-furniture-manufacturers-quality-not-quantity) to replace it, and I don’t have the space needed or time to give the old couch model the love it needs.
The shag carpet was really fun to work on. I’ve never used the Fur System in Maya before, but after the Introduction To Maya Fur (http://www NULL.digitaltutors NULL.com/11/training NULL.php?cid=42&pid=264) on Digital Tutors (http://www NULL.digitaltutors NULL.com) I really was excited to give it a try. I used carpet texture on a plane and told the fur system to grab its base and tip colours from that. going forward I think I might make the base and tip of the fur a little thicker. Other options were played with such as “scraggle”, “poll”, and “inclination”. It’s worth noting that under the Fur Feedback Description node there is a section called “Details”. Under this section you can add randomness to all the attributes. If you’re interested in all of the different fur properties there is a good textual resource over at http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/info/maya/manual/MayaFur/UserGuide/2CreatingFur.fm.html#176880 (http://caad NULL.arch NULL.ethz NULL.ch/info/maya/manual/MayaFur/UserGuide/2CreatingFur NULL.fm NULL.html#176880)
When it came to picking a backdrop I just grabbed something off of Google image search for the time being. I quickly used the layer properties of the render in Photoshop to drop out the windows as they were solid white. For the final shot I think I’ll climb my old fire escaped and snap a shot with my Wife’s camera. She has a nice Cannon 40D. I don’t plan on using HDRI for image based lightning just yet, but maybe I will set myself up so I can experiment with that another time :)
One thing I did notice in the render was the aliasing lines in the ottoman’s fabric. The lines stayed there when I raised the anti-aliasing to adaptive sampling set @ 64 samples. They went away when I tested that area with 256 adaptive samples.
At any rate here is the shot and if you have any question just ask in the comments or fire me an email. I’m around computers all the time so I respond fairly quickly to questions. I’m going to have this done in the next couple days so expect a finished post soon. I will also include depth of field in the final render. Above the full scene render is a detail render of the scene at full scale.
(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/detail NULL.jpg)
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(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/apartmenttest2 NULL.jpg)
, nixin (http://nixinstudio NULL.ca/blog) /
The lighting is looking pretty good so far.
, Doty /
Looks really good man. Perhaps a downloadable scene file so we can check your set-up??
, Terry (http://www NULL.delightning NULL.com) /
After it’s all done I’ll throw up a scene file your you guys. That’s a good idea.
, Doty /
Hey another question. Did you do an AOC pass?
, Terry (http://www NULL.delightning NULL.com) /
I did an ambient occlusion pass through the “Ambient Occlusion” roll out under the “Indirect Lighting” tab of the Render Settings. The rays are set to 256.
, Doty /
Sorry for all the questions but I have another. I tried rendering GIR a while back with adaptive sampling set to 4 and it took HOURS. When I read that you set your scene to 256 I almost puked in horror. That render must have taken days or are you talking about something different?
, Terry (http://www NULL.delightning NULL.com) /
I had to set it to adaptive sampling 256 otherwise the carpet and fabric on the ottoman weren’t clear. I think the 1080p render of that shot took 22 hours and the 720 p shot took 14 hours. I just do them over night so when I come back from work they are done. I’ve decided to go full in on this render and I’m going to cut one of the smaller project I was going to do out so I can model a few more pieces of furniture. It feels empty as is.
It would be really sweet if I could utilize my GPUs for rendering. I hear Maya 2012 can do that, but I haven’t looked into it yet.
, Doty /
@Terry
I didn’t even think Maya 2012 was released yet but it is. I’m going to wait a bit though so the hackers can sort out the cracking / activation. Early releases are usually sloppy.
, Michael /
So where is the file that you mentioned you would share?
, Terry (http://www NULL.delightning NULL.com) /
I decided not to upload it as a more detailed version is being used in my portfolio. If you have any questions I’d be glad to answer them.