TheKitchenAbode

Here is an example of the jaggy/tearing. Note the left side of each window casing and the direct light outline of the sun cast on the wall. Camera Tilt = 0 Degrees. Camera Tilt = -2 Degrees.

What model is the graphics card and which driver version are you using? When did this start to happen? The surface book has both an integrated intel graphics chip and a discrete graphics card, are you certain it is using the dedicated one? In the Nvidia settings panel do you have CA assigned in the program field? Are all the power settings set to maximum/high performance in both the Nvidia settings and Windows power settings?

The comparison I posted is not to a Mac Mini. It is to a MacBook Pro with the exact same processor. The point was not to undermine Macs, just to provide some clarification as to the general misconception that Macs perform better than PC's. Mac's and Windows offer to users two differing experiences and feature sets . It's up to each individual to decide which works best for them.

Here's an example in respect to my comments above. A recent review of a new Alienware Laptop. "...CPU performance is excellent despite our reserves about the performance of an unlocked Core i9 processor in a thin chassis. In fact, of the twelve Core i9-9980HK laptops we've tested thus far, our Alienware comes out to be 7 to 14 percent faster than the average according to CineBench Multi-Thread tests. The 2019 Apple MacBook Pro 15 is almost 25 percent slower in multi-threaded loads even though it uses the exact same octa-core Core i9-9980HK CPU..." Full review here. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Alienware-m17-R2-Laptop-Review-Making-Core-i9-Worthwhile.454427.0.html

I think this is a bit of an over statement. Macs use exactly the same hardware components as PC's. Any testing reviews I have read show that similar configurations perform about the same as similarly configured PC's. Macs may provide a bit more consistency as Apple controls/limits the hardware choices so those combinations might well be a bit more balanced. They do however make you pay the price for this. With PC's you need to be more careful due to the wide range of configurations and differing brands. Some brand manufacturers are not as selective when configuring their hardware and as such their performance may not be as good. The Alienware brand is right up there in respect to quality and performance for any given configuration price point. I've used both and I think most users of Mac's tend to associate what is actually operating system related differences as hardware differences. There's no doubt that OS is more fluid than Windows in respect to operating systems. It's a bit like having a car with a more refined suspension system, your ride is just a bit more controlled.

Just my method, but I do the same thing for interiors, start with the PBR camera Exposure set at max and the Brightness set at max. Typically with these settings the sun intensity will only need to be between 5 - 100 lux. I only adjust the Camera Exposure and Brightness once I have all my lights reasonably balance. Consider those controls to be more of a post rendering adjustment, similar to when you take a pic with a real camera and then use a photo app to make a few corrections. Concerning those jaggy/torn lines, they are a bit of a problem and occur along vertical and horizontal items when the camera is on an angle. Sometimes just a slight change in camera angle can reduce or eliminate them. They can also be eliminated by saving your pic using a much higher resolution than the screens window, you can define this when exporting the image. Just a note, I have found that when saving a render at higher than the window resolution that it does not always look the same, often reflections and some other minor lighting effects come out different, you may or may not like the look.

Chad, in the rendering it does look as if the shadows have been reduced. What is the lux intensity of the sun? and what is the lumen intensity of the lights? As a guide 1 Lux = 100 lumen, so if your sun is set really high you will need to set those lights high. Usually when I do this I also adjust the sun, reduce it down as the added lights will be contributing to the overall brightness of the scene. Also, what are the PBR exposure and brightness settings? if exposure is set low, say for example @ o.18 CA from what I can tell does more than reduce the exposure as you would expect in a real camera, it seems to do some type of adjustment based on a maximum scene exposure level. If you add a light then it acts as if it reduces the other lights instead of just adding that lights light contribution. Can make it a bit difficult in my opinion. This is why I normal recommend that the PBR exposure be set at max, it seems to disengage this auto exposure adjustment, now when a light is added or adjusted you see it's effect as one would normally expect. Just keep in mind that if you set the PBR exposure to max then you will using in most cases very low Lux and Lumen intensities or your scene will be way too bright.

You can soften the shadows by using one or more lights placed outside with their shadows turned off. Their light will dilute the hash shadows produced by the sun, you use them as a means to control the overall ambient light. Properly placed and adjusted they can be used to not only dilute the overall shadows harshness but also to soften the shadow edges, providing a more gradual transition from shadow to non shadowed regions.

Rene, while on the gallery subject. Your images are always excellent and great to see but as you use more than one rendering engine it would be great to know what images are rendered with CA PBR and which ones are Thea.

Also, when I use Photoshop for the conversion I set JPG image quality to 12 max and the format option to Progressive, Scans 5. This does a very good of preserving the PNG quality.

Had the same issue. The Gallery does not like PNG pics. I convert to JPG's using Photoshop and then upload.

I've not had any crashes with X12 Beta, but for reasons I can't fully explain it does at times give me the sense that somethings not quite right. For example, when PBR'ing there are numerous times when the PBR does not correctly regenerate after a change, it's as if the lights, sun or emissive materials are not being properly recognized. To resolve this I have to press F12 Rebuild several times or close out the camera and then reopen it. Also, as mentioned in a previous post some DBX entry boxes do not accept direct entries unless something else in the DBX is clicked or the Tab key is pressed before pressing OK. As I use these items all the time I'm certain something has changed versus I just didn't notice it before in X11.

Might be more concerned that those asphalt shingles might start to soften as you get closer to the sun.

From my experience I approach this in stages, first to tackle the sun, then the most dominant light fixture(s), followed by the next lights. Once everything looks half decent then I work on tweaking the materials. I will just address the sun in this posting. Starting with the sun. Have at least one light fixture in the scene(room), turn it off. You need this to override CA placing a generic light source in the scene. Open up your PBR Camera, ignore the fact that it will probably look terrible. Open up the PBR DBX and set Camera Exposure to 1(max) and Brightness to 100%. Again ignore how bad it may look. Now open up the Sun DBX, if the scene is way too bright then reduce the sun intensity. If you have a background then the sun intensity is going to be determined by how you wish the background to appear through the windows, ignore the interior. Once the background is to your liking then adjust the suns angle to get your desired direct light effect through the window(s). It's most likely at this point that your background will look decent and also the direct light patch, but the room is likely to be very dark. The first urge is going to be to turn on interior light fixtures to brighten up the interior, don't do that. If you think a bit about how the current PBR scene looks and how it should look in real life given the outdoor brightness and level of glazing you have to conclude that somethings not correct. In real life the interior should be much brighter and this should be as a result of only the sun. There are two components to the sun, direct light and indirect light, the bright(er) spot on your floor from the window is the direct light component, what's not showing properly is the indirect light. Unfortunately in CA there is no direct way to adjust the ratio of the suns direct and indirect component, it's fixed. Yes, you could just crank up the sun but this will then overexpose the background, make the direct light from the window overblown and introduce a strong color cast from the background into the interior, the results can be outright ugly. There must be another solution and fortunately there is and it's actually very simple, "Materials Emissive". This materials property imparts to a material the ability to act like a light source, I think of it more as the ability to control a materials luminosity. Just some caution here, use extreme caution when setting emissive levels, and only do this on materials where needed. When using this to deal with the overall interior ambient there are really only 3 surfaces involved, ceiling, walls and floor. Another cautionary note, the larger the surface the greater the effect is for any given emissive level setting. To begin with, I usually adjust the largest surface which is the walls, open up the wall Define Material DBX, make sure the Material Class is set to General, emissive is not available for any other class of material. Use a very low emissive setting, I usually start with 0.01, make sure to Tab before pressing OK otherwise the setting may not stick. If too bright or the wall surface looks too fake or cartoonish then reduce the emissive level, if everything is still too dark then increase it, just use small value increments. In many situations the walls are the only item that needs this adjustment, If you need a bit more but the walls are at their limit then switch to the ceiling and make some adjustment to it. Keep in mind that this has it's limitations, unlikely to have the perfect sunlit interior but it should be good enough to start working on your other lights. There are of course other techniques using area lights but the above approach is straight forward and fast. Hope this proves to be of help. Interior with Sun only adjusted so background looks correct through windows. Sun Intensity 10.0 Lux. Same Interior as above but wall material has emissive set at 0.05 How it would look if I just kept cranking up the sun to brighten the interior. Background overexposed, significant color cast.

Unfortunately not, the brick and mortar are not independent of each other, a texture is just a pic and within CA the only option is to use the blend color with texture but this will affect everything, the brick will also change. The only way would be to load the texture into Photoshop and manipulate it there and then save it back to your textures for use in CA.

The problem with using a 3D molding is not only the struggle to get the basic shape in all the right planes but you can't rotate the molding as you match the ceiling slope. You would need to do this on the horizontal moldings. CA has added some ability to do this but from what I see it only allows the molding profile to be rotated in 90 degree increments.

I would use a molding polyline, shape it as a Trapezoid, then convert to a symbol and then rotate to match ceiling slope.

Depends on what you consider a short cut. Based on your first sample pic you could likely do that with a single cabinet. 3" depth, shaker front panel door and a base molding all done within the cabinets DBX. 3 actions is not bad

There are likely 4 or more methods you can use to create this. Which one you choose depends on whether or not you just need a nice visual or it needs to be accurate to how it will be supplied and installed. I always use the latter criteria so I get the order correct and can properly analyze how it will be put together on the site. The one below uses a combination of solids, door/drawer panels, a decorative valance, base moldings and cabinets. The base corner posts were made using a main solid, the recess was done via a solid subtraction and then the inside recess detail was done with a 3D molding. The item was than blocked as it would be supplied as a factory completed component. All other items are just stand alone individual items as this is how they would be supplied and fitted.

As mentioned, in PBR only the 3D plants will cast shadows and also as mentioned those shadows can be down right ugly. They are more like silhouettes than shadows, looks like they were cut out of a black piece of construction paper and pasted on the scene. You can dilute their strength by using an area light with shadows turned off, might need to reduce the suns intensity to get compensate for the extra area lights contribution. Another thing worth trying is to open up the cameras DBX and uncheck "Raytraced Shadows", in most cases the shadows will soften with less defined edges. Not 100% as depending on the sun angle and camera angle the shadow edges can look like a saw tooth. If you are going to change the existing 2D plants to 3D plants I would suggest doing one at a time to see if you like the effect, maybe not all need to be changed.

Yes, the backdrops are very limited and there is no direct ability to adjust them. They are also detached from the model so only the model moves with the camera and the background remains in it's static position. One method I have used is to place a very high & wide P-solid somewhere behind the model and then apply a backdrop to it as a texture. Takes a bit of playing around to get things looking proper, correct perspective, but once done it can be a big improvement. Used a google street view to capture the actual homes across the street from the one we were working on.

Thanks Dermot. I believe that confirms that what I have experienced in the materials DBX is therefore an incorrect behavior that should be reported to Tech.

I understand but my purpose in discussing this is to confirm that what I'm experiencing is actual a problem worthy of reporting versus just something that I'm not doing correctly or just misunderstanding. Aware that Tabbing is a standard means/method to cycle through the different entries in the Dialog as an alternative to moving the mouse and left clicking. What's being discussed is the need to Tab if one is just changing the data in one field before pressing OK or if Tab needs to be pressed after the last data entry when multiple entries are made before pressing OK.

Just checked out the Roof Plane DBX and there is no requirement to press "Tab", just enter a new setting for pitch, baseline, etc and press OK, changes are applied without having to update the dialog box first.