TheKitchenAbode

Thanks Mike, that is an X12 PBR. It did take a while to get things adjusted as everything needed to be changed, all lights and materials. What also took time was to correct some other problems with that plan, always takes longer when working with a plan created by someone else as you have to check everything. My own plans take less work as I'm using my saved library items as the model is being built.

The comparisons are interesting however, I'm not certain that they are actually providing any guidance on which rendering program/method is best. The reason I state this is that each rendering program will interpret the materials and lights differently, as such a render may look better in one program but that may just be due to the materials and lighting being a bit more aligned with that particular program. From the last set of comparisons, I don't find any of them to be acceptable, appears to prove that no matter how capable in theory a particular rendering engine is, they are all capable of producing poor results.

I tried Blender about 2 years ago and found it to be very awkward to use and it seems to be lacking in any detailed documentation. I loaded up that Bachelor plan from Chief and adjusted the sun, lights and materials to be more conducive to CA's PBR rendering mode. This renders in about 15 seconds on my system.

You mat be right about it being related to reflectivity. Here, the table is 100% reflective as is the floor. Just one light over the fruit plate. Notice that the fruits show up on the vertical legs of the table and they are also showing up on the floor. Will play a bit more to see why this is happening.

Just a guess without the plan to look at but is it possible that those apple materials have an emissive setting. If so try changing it to zero.

If a particular material from the library has a map it will show in the DBX you have displayed. If one is not there then you will have to create it, save it to your library and then browse to select. If you do not want to create your own, you can try using the Texture Source file displayed in the DBX, might be good enough as a bump or ambient occlusion map.

To narrow it down, place the standard door in that closet and then change the door to that concrete material and see if it then behaves like your custom door. If so then it's most likely related to the material. If the standard door with the concrete displays correctly then it's most likely a problem with that symbol.

Concerning the added light, it needs to be placed inside the closet, not outside in the foyer if the problem is that CA is lighting the material according to the wrong room. Could it be that the original material was concrete, maybe. There are times when painting materials don't always take properly but what is interesting is the fact that when you had the door open the material was properly lit/displayed but displayed improperly when closed.

Agree, there are a number of factors that will effect a materials emissive appearance/behavior. Color, transparency, texture and if the material itself is being additionally lit by another light source.

No, just that a materials emissive property is independent of the light, it does not turn on or off when you turn he light on or off. There are times when it may appear as such but that is because the light fixtures actual light source is reacting with the materials emissive setting.

Emissive is independent of the light, it's a material setting that makes it seem as a light source. The only way to turn it off is to open up the light bulbs material DBX and reduce it or set it to zero.

That can be a problem with PBR. The other room does not have a light in it and PBR at times sees the door as being lit according to that room versus the main room. Try placing a light in that room to see of it corrects the problem.

Not familiar with those messages but I believe after you have the successful installation notification you should do a full reboot of your system before opening up X12. They do post installation instructions in the download window in your digital locker, might be worth a read to make sure you are not missing an important installation step.

Good point. I had this situation several years ago and they did some form of prorating of my SSA so I could upgrade at a lesser cost.

No you do not need SSA but the cost to upgrade will be higher. With SSA you would have already paid for the upgrade cost.

Chad - you mentioned that you could not get my suggested exterior light to work. This should not have been an issue as it's just one area light with shadows turned off. Was thinking about this and by any chance in the lighting DBX do you have lights set to automatic, if so then that may be the issue. Set this to Default Set as from my experience exterior placed lights are not recognized when using the auto setting.

Not certain that a Ram drive will do much in respect to undo/redo. I looked into this about a year or so ago and could not quantify any noticeable benefit. Rene uses a Ram drive but this from my understanding is primarily for library items, models and textures. Here, one may see a benefit if you frequently access the library and have very complex models and high resolution textures. The last time I looked into the undo/redo I was not really able to identify anything significant in respect to the file system or access time. What I did notice was that, depending on the undo/redo operation, it could necessitate a full model rebuild and this was where the bulk of the time was consumed, not the actual file reading time. When I looked into the number of undo's (1-50) I could not find anything that could explain why setting a lower number of undo's would have any significant affect as once an undo file is created it just sits there like a dormant file and is only accessed if you undo far enough where it needs to be accessed. As these files are stored in an dedicated directory the fact that 50 files may need to queried to find the right one should not be very time consuming, it's not as if 1000's of files need to be searched. Also, this directory is emptied/flushed out frequently and when the plan is closed so it never contains more than the undo limit. When I looked at the actual file sizes in the undo folder they did vary drastically, however even the largest file should only take a fraction of a second to load when I accounted for disk read/write times. Not saying that there may not be something going on, just that I could not find it and could not see any appreciable performance difference that I could directly associate with undo/redo file accessing at the disk level. I can only suggest that if one feels the undo/redo is impacting on performance then try reducing the number of undo's to say 10 and see if there is a noticeable difference, you could reduce it again to say 5 and check it again. When doing this just make sure to execute the exact same CA function and then undo for each situation as undo times will vary significantly depending upon what needs to be undone.

The improvement you are seeing will be due to your CPU's higher core count. With CA's Raytrace if you double the cores the time to trace will be cut in half. To take advantage of the RTX cards built-in raytrace requires the rendering program to be specifically programmed. There's likely lots of future potential here but even the gamming industry which this was designed for is slow in changing over to this.

It's my understanding that CA's Raytrace can't utilize this new RTX raytracing feature.

If you could post a pic or two of your current renderings it would help to see what might be going on, or better still, the plan. Reflections in PBR can be challenging and the results disappointing without some additional material property manipulation and possibly the inclusion of some strategically placed lights.

Just a side note before changing the lights position. When I opened up my camera in the provided plan and opened the adjust lights DBX the setting in there was 8 lights, this will restrict the number of lights used to 8 regardless of how many lights are turned on in the actual light fixtures DBX.

Ok, just took a look at it. The fixture needs to be moved a bit higher, the lights are actually inside the crown molding and with shadows turned on the light is being blocked. I think that should resolve the problem, did on my system.

Not on my main system but might be worth checking either the Camera DBX or Adjust Lights DBX to make sure enough lights are assigned. If on Auto up the number of lights to say 100 or 200. You can also set the lights to use the default set and it will use all of the lights in the set that are turned on.