Rich_Winsor

While on the second floor try the Reference Floor Display.

No problem, I enjoy seeing how Chief's capabilities stack up against other programs. Might I ask, what software was used to render your examples? P.S. I really didn't work all that hard, but my CPU asked for a day off after that session.

Sorry for the tardy response CB. The image on the left is a symbol of the false ceiling that I saved to the User Library. I made the shapes out of p-solids and solid subtraction (or maybe it was Hole in Polyline Solid). Once you have the shape you want take a 3D view with only the shape in it (nothing else). Then from the "Tools" drop down menu select "Symbol" and then "Convert to Symbol". Once you have the Symbol you can resize it to fit any shape room by dragging the edit handles. That is what is pictured in the thumbnail. There is no doubt that all that indirect lighting takes a heavy toll on Ray Trace time. As a workaround I put all the indirect light sources on their own layer (Lights, Indirect). That way I can turn them all off as I work with the rest of the image. I believe there are 226 indirect light sources in the scene along with the 8 additional lights in the room. I had a play with it over the weekend. Here is a recreation of one of your thumbnails done entirely in Chief with standard Library content. Well, actually I made the armchair in the foreground and the end table lamps. It was a case of it was easier to make 'em than it was to fake 'em. I basically concentrated on the ceiling effects and didn't do any adjusting to the lights in the room. It could use some more passes (I think this was 40 passes) to smooth out some of the graininess but it should give you an idea of Chief's capabilities.

Anyone have an explanation for this? I meticulously duplicated the camera positions of Cameras 1 & 2 so they are identical. So why do they display differently in Plan View? We really need copy and paste functions for cameras and Undo and Redo functions as well. Is there some technical reason why these functions won't work for cameras?

I believe the answer to your question is no. At least I am not aware of such a breakdown. Of course if you have nothing better to do you could compile your own chart by opening each template and noting the pertinent defaults. Sounds like a lot of work. You'd probably be better off by creating a few of your own templates with defaults that you use the most.

The transoms aren't doing it for me. I'd go with the 8' Doors.

Looking good Harry. Now if Chief would just let us have some smoke wafting out of the chimney.

Check this out. Here is a "High Definition" close up taken from my caustics test image. If my math is correct this image has 16 pixels for every pixel in the original image. Original Image: 1600 x 1279 pixels = 2,046,400 total pixels Close up Image: 6400 x 5116 pixels = 32,742,400 total pixels 32,742,400/2,046,400 = 16 So what I did was to re-ray trace the original image at the higher pixel count which produces an image that is approximately 36" x 28". Then I took the image into PSP and cropped it down to the close up Image which is a more manageable 12" x 8". Running these ray traces is not for the faint of heart. Last night I started the ray trace with no limit on the number of passes and went to bed. When I got up 8 hours later and checked the progress it was on pass 50 something so we had a little breakfast and let it cook until it reached 60 passes. Total time approximately 8 1/2 hours. This was so much fun I'm thinking about starting an enormous ray trace and going on vacation. When I get back I will either have and amazing image or I will find my computer in a puddle on the floor. I can envision using this technique in conjunction with other views. For example you could have an "artsy" front elevation image done in say watercolor and line and then have a hi-def insert showing the entry way.

Well here is my ray trace. Since I was one of those kids that never read the instructions before assembling a model, I didn't bother to read the post. I saw the title and just downloaded the plan and looked for a saved camera view. When I didn't find any I just created my own shot. Here’s a quick no frills take on a gloomy winter’s day to match the tone of your backdrop. Your log textures were among several that didn’t come along with the plan so I rustled up some from Chief. Other than that it’s all your plan. Oh yeah, I added the ubiquitous mini blinds too. What do y'all think of my dirty snow texture? Seems fairly believable to me.

Since the light is coming from the right of the shot, and since the screen in that side doesn't show in the scene, you might want to just delete the screen on that side and see what you get.

Under Lighting in Ray Trace Options what do you have the Direct Sunlight Intensity set at? The first thing I would try is boosting the intensity and see what you get. Don't be afraid to try numbers like 6, 7 or 8. The scale goes all the way to 50 but I must admit I haven't gone anywhere near that number.

Is this the type of thing you are looking for? You might want to check out these videos for some construction and lighting tips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnL84X-y0UQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7pnbjo3-C8

Looking good Graham. You've got the mantel lights dialed in quite nicely. As I recall I just backed the intensity of all the lights back down to the minimum in the drop down menu. Definitely need to be throttled back some more but I'm not going to melt down my CPU pulling endless passes especially when the OP seems to have abandoned the thread. Speaking of melting down my CPU, might I ask what is the largest image size (in pixels) that you have worked with? I have been playing with the idea of creating a really large image and then cropping a "close up" section from that image. There seems to be no limit to the fields for pixel width and height. Apparently you can keep adding zeros in the entry fields until the cows come home. Wonder how long a pass would take for an image a couple of billion pixels wide?

Thanks, G-Man. I think we are in general agreement as to how to go about getting the best results. My basic approach is to determine what is the focal point of the image, i.e.what catches your eye and then use all the bells and whistles at my command to model and display those elements as realistically as possible. As you get farther away from the focal point you can, depending on your time and/or inclination, be less precise in how the elements display. By the time you are at the edges of the image you can often get away with just a representation of the feature. Your brain will fill in the missing details and process the image as believable. Conversely, if the first thing in the image that your eye is drawn to is poorly executed it doesn't matter how well the rest of the image is rendered your brain will dismiss the image as phony.

Well since my friend Yusuf has put the pressure on, I feel obligated to take a stab at my take on your 20 hour ray trace. This is 20 passes and here is the general approach I used. Two things stood out immediately, the fireplace, mantel and raised paneling are the main focus of the shot and there is a LOT of white in the shot. With the flanking wall mount lights and nothing on the wall or mantle it looks like the scene of a recent art theft. To spruce up the main area of focus I hung a stock Chief beveled mirror on the wall and put a stock mantle clock on the mantel. To deal with the issue of the fireplace being a dark and lifeless hole in the wall I put a flame orange spot light in the fireplace. I hunted down your Mohawk carpet because the big brown slab that replaced it was killing the shot. Oh yeah, also hung a stock Chief matted frame with the generic world map on the other wall to break things up. As for settings any time there is this much white in a scene it usually helps to boost the ambient occlusion up pretty high so in the Lighting section of Ray Trace Options I set A/O to 7 and set Direct Sunlight Intensity to 5. I left all the other lighting options off. I used photon mapping and compute caustics. One more thing, I'm no interior decorator but whatever Plan B is for those window treatments... I would go with it.

Good call Graham. I doubled the pixel size and sure enough it picked up some details that weren't present at the lower count.

Here is a little vignette I created to explore the effects of using the Compute Caustics option of Photon Mapping. For far more info than you probably care to see on how I set up this scene check out this thread in the "Tips and Techniques" forum https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/10323-exploring-ray-tracing-–-global-illumination-compute-caustics/

So there it is, that enigmatic little check box under Photon Mapping called “Compute Caustics”. What is up with that? Should I check the box? How does it affect my ray trace? If we consult Chief’s help file we get the following information: Global Illumination – > Check Use Photon Mapping to accurately calculate bounced lighting in a scene. When unchecked, ray traces have low quality lighting effects but generate more quickly. Use Photon Mapping should be checked for all interior scenes and unchecked for most exterior scenes. > Check Compute Caustics, to use caustic photons, which are photons used in areas of focused light. Caustic photons are helpful when modeling certain effects as light shining through glass. Digging a little deeper we find this in the dictionary definition of “caustic”. Aside from the more familiar meanings of the word there is also this reference in relation to optics: of, relating to, or denoting light that is reflected or refracted by a curved surface Wikipedia expounds upon this further: In optics, a caustic or caustic network is the envelope of light rays reflected or refracted by a curved surface or object, or the projection of that envelope of rays on another surface. The caustic is a curve or surface to which each of the light rays is tangent, defining a boundary of an envelope of rays as a curve of concentrated light. Taking all of this into consideration I created a simple scene where the warm glow of the late afternoon sunlight streaming thru a window highlights a pair of vases and casts their shadows onto the wall. (How do I know it’s the late afternoon sun? Because I never see the early morning sun (unless I’m recovering from an extremely long night)) This should meet the criteria of having a source of focused light (the sun) shining thru (being reflected and refracted by) a curved glass surface (the vases) and projecting onto another surface (the wall). FYI, the scene I created to demonstrate the effects of computing caustics consists of 6 elements (a window, mirror, side table, place mat and 2 vases). Everything in the scene is stock Chief content from the Core Catalogs. I did replace the side table top with one I created with a more realistic edge molding (Chief’s top had a lame 45º bevel for an edge molding). The place mat is an oval rug set to 1/16” thick and given the material of linen fabric. The vases are 2 different versions of the same vase. I just changed the sizes and colors and changed the Material Class to Transparent. To tie things together I used the Rainbow Tool (Adjust Material Definition) to get the color of the place mat and then used that color for the walls. And then there was a lot of tweaking of the Sun Angle to get the light in all the right places. So what can we learn from all of this? Keeping in mind that we are talking about very subtle effects here, let’s pull a couple of ray traces and see what we get. Both ray traces are identical in every respect save for the fact that the first one is using Photon Mapping without computing Caustics and the second one is using Photon Mapping with Compute Caustics turned on. I believe you will see that the answer is written on the walls. Without Caustics (below) With Caustics (below)

Thanks Kevin. It's a stock Chief backdrop. The trick is to get the backdrop and the edge of Chief's terrain to merge seamlessly. Although the backdrop is titled "grassy", all the grass in the shots is Chief's stock OOB terrain. I'm a compulsive tweaker. I played with the position and rotation of all the tree symbols to get the best combination of cast shadows and view of the background through the trees. Actually the angle of the sun in the backdrop doesn't match the angle of Chief's sun in the view but I won't tell anybody if you won't.

Thanks Curt. For about 140 LARGE you can make it happen. Or for about the price of an additional Chief license per month you could lease one. I didn't even know it was a hybrid. http://www.caranddriver.com/bmw/i8

Thanks Yusuf. I'm with you, in believing that Chief has way more capabilities than the average user is aware of. With Ray Tracing the problem is the time it takes to explore these capabilities. I can appreciate that the average Professional User who is trying to get a design and Con Docs out the door doesn't have the time to explore all of these possibilities. But the good news is that I do have the time and will continue to explore what can be achieved with Chief's tools so that other users can at least be aware of what results are attainable.

OK, so I can't leave this BMW symbol alone. Here I replaced the cardboard cutout 2D trees with a couple of Frog 3D trees (Sweet Birch I believe they are) and threw in a stock Chief 3D Backdrop. Starting to get some really nice interplay between the reflections and shadows. Check out the Carbon Fiber texture (Patent Pending). I think I tried about as many settings as Edison tried filaments for his lite bulb before I stumbled onto this look. I like the way the "grain" of the weave runs in all the right directions and follows the contours of the curves. This is the look that the kids today called "murdered-out" Personally I prefer something more understated... like this. Ninety nine and a half won't do.... Got to have 100% Chief

Thank you for the kind words Yusuf. They mean a lot coming from such a creative and talented Chief user. As everybody knows Ray Tracing is an acquired skill and there are many factors that go into getting good results. However I would say the one "secret" that will help to get good results is to keep the elements in your ray trace view as simple as possible. There are so many possible combinations of Materials, Material Properties and lighting effects that one can easily become swamped by the possibilities and find it hard to distinguish which changes are causing which results. For this reason I find it is most productive to start out by limiting the elements to only the most essential in the view and then experiment with changing their properties one at a time to see if the changes are taking your image in the direction you want. For this type of experimentation it also helps to limit the Image Size of the RT to something that is usually considerably smaller than the Active Window Size. This will considerably speed up the test RT's and then when you get some promising results you can increase the image size to what you want your final image to be. By way of an example the ray trace of the Palladium consists of only 2 elements (3 if you count the camera). The theater is an image that was converted to a Chief Backdrop and the symbol of the BMW. I used tiled Plan and Perspective Full Overview windows to position the symbol in the right orientation to look correct in the RT view. I did make extensive changes to the Materials and Material Properties of the BMW i8 Symbol including the paint, glass, accent colors, head and taillights and mirrors.

Now Dennis, are you trying to get me in trouble? In today's overly PC culture, using attractive young women in your images can be a slippery slope. I'd hate to offend anyone with the crass use of eye candy to enhance my images. Not to mention that hot and sexy are highly subjective terms. That being said, is this what you had in mind? Took the Bimmer to LaLa land. "And those Hollywood nights In those Hollywood hills It was looking so right It was giving him chills" All Chief all of the time.

Took the Bimmer i8 (from the BMW Manufacturer Catalog) out for a spin last night. I'd have to say these are some very nice symbols with a dozen materials that can be changed entirely or have their properties altered. As always 100% Chief output.