TheKitchenAbode

Unfortunately there is no independent Shadow Depth control. Currently shadow depth can only be controlled by mixing/blending light sources, some with shadows turned on and some with shadows turned off. It's easy to do but does require additional steps and lighting adjustments.

You may find the information here to be of use and well worth the read. Within this I posted some stress testing plans of which some users reported back with their results, suggest running these stress test plans on your current system to see how you compare.

14 minutes ago, Evolution said:

Thanks Graham! That did it.  

You are welcome. If it happens again it would be worth checking out the suggestion provided by Mick(Kbird1), I had no idea that X11 had this file association reset option in the Preferences DBX, would accomplish the same thing but with fewer clicks,

Not having any issues here, no crashes and it seems to run speed wise the same as before the update.

You most likely need to tell windows to use X11 and not X10 when opening this file type.

Go to Windows settings, select "Apps", select "Default Apps", near the bottom select " Choose Default Apps by File Type". On the right side move down until you see the ".calib  & .calibz" file extension. Change the associated app to X11. 

Even a very basic photo editor such as the Windows Photo App can have a significant impact. Here, using the Windows Photo App, I adjusted the shadows, highlights and slightly lowered the warmth to reduce yellow color cast.

Original X11 PBR

After adjusting in Windows Photo App

Most of this could have been done within X11's PBR but it's just faster and easier to do in a photo editor. The key is to recognize the potential in the PBR even though it may not be at the time exactly what you are shooting for.

Keep in mind that most professional photographers place more emphasis on capturing data verse obtaining the best out of camera pic. They will purposely shoot overexposed and underexposed in order to capture more data on highlights and shadows, they know that this data when blended together will result in a pic that will be superior to any pic they would have been able to obtain in just one shot.

Don't ignore the impact that a minor amount of post processing can have. Many photo editors have a number of easy to apply built-in filters that can be used to enhance your rendering. In the sample below I used the Soft Glow filter in Photoshop, takes only a few seconds; select the filter, adjust intensity and your done.

Original X11 PBR Output

After applying Soft Glow filter

If your current photo editor does not have this type of filter you can download GIMP for free and there is also a free version of Photoshop CS2. Here is a link to SnapFiles, a great source for freeware and shareware.

https://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/gmm/fwgraphicedit.html

1 hour ago, AndyGump said:

You should not, you simply did not know. There are an infinite number of things I don't know and I don't believe I am stupid.

 

I let other people believe I am stupid.

 

Hmmm...now that I think of it, there seems to be a lot of 'um too.

 

Andy.

Spelling "California" with a "K" is not helping you much.

1 minute ago, rispgiu said:

It definitely looks good. Might be the angle then? I have found that for me PBR behaves very strange. With the camera positioned one way the materials reflection look great, facing a whole different direction the bump maps finally come out etc. 

I use PBR on a daily basis with clients for a quick look and clients always seem impressed especially if I invest some time to adjust lights etc. 

I have been using VRAY lately and I am truly enjoying it but it is a much longer process. 

You are 100% correct concerning the camera angle and how reflections and bumps look. Reflections and bumps are their greatest when the camera is aimed towards the sun. When the camera is aimed in the same direction as the sun then reflections and bumps are minimal. The regular spot and point lights do not have a large effect on reflectivity or bumps, seems that the sun is the primary light source that effects this.

1 minute ago, rispgiu said:

Absolutely I agree, I asked about photoshop because I thought your furniture and grass looked very good

All the models in this shot are standard CA ones, even the grass. The adjustments I made to the light and colors where global, did not mask out anything.

12 minutes ago, rispgiu said:

I am assuming the PBR is photoshopped ?

 

It is interesting that with renderings we are trying to get them as real as possible while with photography we are trying to get as detailed as possible translating into making it look like a rendering lol

 

Just minor adjustment to highlights, shadows and saturation, nothing major, took maybe 1 - minute. Same changes could have been done in the windows photo app. Be assurred that the actual camera one was also adjusted.

Personally, the rendering engines are attempting to match the quality of a camera, hence the term "Photo Realistic". 

X11 PBR Exterior Comparison

Here's an interesting comparison of an X11 PBR to an actual Photo shot with a $15,000 100Mp medium format camera.

X11 PBR

$15,000 100Mp Medium Format Camera

2 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

Thank you, appreciated...whats crazy is I spent nearly no time on this one..I might save it for later and really keep working it as an exercise. The new Thea is pretty exciting

Definitely a keeper. I'm certain the new Thea is great, but as you know it takes a special skill to bring it all together. There's good renderings and then there are renders that exude a certain deeper sense, an underlying emotion. It's like Chief, it can build walls and roofs but it is the user that determines the architectural merit of the structure. 

7 minutes ago, Renerabbitt said:

CA model only, no imports, spent 30 minutes establishing materials, camera settings and environment, 9 minute render.

That's what I consider photo realistic. Really great job Rene. Looks like a professional photography shot on real film and photographic paper.

1 minute ago, Grumpka said:

Looks like Lumion runs as stand-alone as well.  That program is a 2-3k investment though.  Thea use to be a stand-alone called Thea Studio.  For a while, I believe it was setup so if you purchased a thea studio, you would pick a plug-in to Sketch up or such, but you still had the stand-alone studio.  That doesn't seem to be the case now.  Maybe, Rene knows as he is a Thea user. 

Yes, if you wish to use a 3rd party renderer without the need for another interfacing program you will need to find one that offers a standalone version and then work via the CA exported 3DS model, essentially the way Twinmotion works. How well this works really depends on your workflow and your design process, if you start rendering before your model is fully completed then you will be bouncing back and forth between the two programs. At lest with something like Twinmotion the 3DS model link is live so you can jump back into Chief, adjust your cabinet, export back to the same model and Twinmotion will automatically recognize the changes.

55 minutes ago, Grumpka said:

It only runs as a plug in to sketchup, cinema 4D or Rhino?  That's a bummer if that is the case.

You will find that most of these 3rd party rendering programs work this way, they are usually designed as plug-ins. Linking to an exported 3DS file like Twinmotion does is likely the best you can do.

22 hours ago, Grumpka said:

 

That's one shiny kitchen finish.  Nice CA render though. 

I can agree up to a point about CA's PBR, but honestly, the vast, and I mean, VAST, majority of what I've seen from CA has never come close to what 3rd party render software can do with little effort.   That makes the case for the investment of an independent render engine.  I find way too much of my time being wasted forcing the 'manual' camera of CA to get mediocre results. I think it is time for CA to ditch the Ray trace feature and replace it with perhaps a more capable PBR engine.  Even if we could make the case for CA's Ray Trace engine offering better quality renders, why would one want to wait 30 minutes to 30 hours for the result when you can invest in a 3rd party engine that can do it in almost zero minutes?

Time is money.  Can't say it enough.  Beautiful results, consistent results, in the least amount of time.  Right now, I'm starting to see the light (pun intended) in 3rd party render engines. Bang out the design in Chief with the ability to design in a real time PBR environment.  Export to 3rd party, replace some materials, adjust here and there, move sun around, minutes later you have a very beautiful, inviting scene.   Did I mention 'FUN'.  CA's PBR or RT just isn't fun when it comes to messing around.  It can be too frustrating vs the end result. 
 

Yes, I did overdo it on the cabinet finish.

I'm just not sure about "what 3rd party software can do with little effort...minutes later a very beautiful, inviting scene" So far anything that I have seen posted by the average user form Twinmotion is just ok. I'm not saying Twinmotion can't produce superior quality renderings but in order to achieve that it requires more than a few simple clicks

I played with Twinmotion a bit and initially it seemed exciting, making it rain, leaves blowing in the wind, etc. However, this soon wore off when I wanted to roll up my sleeves and attempt to generate a more photo realistic scene. I watched one of their videos, it was about 30 minutes and speed up, the user must have made 1,000 adjustments and tweaks to lighting and materials to achieve the final end result. You have to keep in mind that this user would have been highly skilled and knowledgeable, definitely not your average user.

The other thing when looking at 3rd party gallery renderings is to be aware that many of those renderings have also been post processed in the likes of Photoshop. Rene posted this one a few threads ago.

It's a beautiful rendering, if you load it into a pic editor and zoom in it appears that this is a composition of a rendered element, likely the pavilion, set within a real photo of the main street scape. If you look were the sky/clouds meets the street scape it also appears that the sky/clouds were also added in as a separate element. This type of result can't be achieved via a few clicks, no matter the rendering engine.

I fully understand that you are not looking to generate this level of rendering and as such Twinmotion may very well be the software package that meets your needs. I just thinks it's a bit unfair to overly criticize CA's PBR due in part to the fact that the user may be having difficulties in developing a clear understanding as to how to correctly adjust the lights and materials.

Getting decent results in CA's PBR is really no different than what it takes to get an accurate kitchen cabinetry layout. It does not take long to realize that just picking and dropping preconfigured library cabinets on the floor is not going to do it. To really pull it off you need to dig deep into the program and explore and develop numerous other techniques, this takes considerable front end time and effort. The payoff is that once you put this front end time and effort in then both time and effort significantly reduce.

Please do not construe this as if I'm advocating using CA's PBR for more photo realistic renderings .If I was a professional graphics artist such as Rene I would be using the likes of Thea or Lumion, no if ands or buts.

When evaluating CA's PBR I look at it from two perspectives, one being the fundamental capability of the rendering engine and the other being the effort it takes to exploit this capability. To put this in some form of context CA's PBR is like using a 100% manual camera, the photographer has to manually set and control every aspect of the scene, sun, lights, materials, models, colors, virtually every aspect. This is complicated by the fact that the default settings for all of these elements do not seem to be conducive for the best results. More sophisticated cameras have many additional features and algorithms that reduce or eliminate such a high degree of manual input, thus freeing up the photographer so they can spend a higher degree of their time on the creative side of the process.

Here is an example of what I consider to be the best CA PBR I've been able to create to date. Not perfect by any means, but it does provide in my opinion a reasonably good example of what the engine can do when given some decent settings. 

7 minutes ago, Grumpka said:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!  Perhaps, if we want to be picky, 'realism' isn't the best word.  Artistic Rendering is better, as that is what all this is.  I like the WARMTH and feel of what I was able to get in Twinmotion.   Your Cheif PBR is nice and sharp and you have some skills I need to work towards for sure.  However, when I think of what I feel good presenting a customer,  I think the twinmotion presentation gives me a bit more of the feel I was after.  Doesn't mean I won't strive to keep at it with CA. In fact, been spending the day reading the forum, the manual, and playing around.   I've had nothing but positive feedback on my work. so that is what counts.  

Absolutely, I was not attempting to state whether one was superior to the other, they are different and it is up to each person to decide their preference, not I.

I think overall there are three formats, Artistic Renderings, Realistic and Photo Realistic, the latter which is most likely the pinnacle of rendering. In respect to CA's PBR I think it can do better, but this is likely to elude us as the current structure/flow does not naturally provide the user with a good sense of direction, it's difficult to predict the effect when changing something and how that change may impact on something else. This results in significant user frustration and it certainly doesn't do much to encourage it's continued use.

Anyways, keep up the good work and keep posting your results and experiences.

I intensified my original.

I find it interesting as the interpretation of realism is often dictated within the context of the relative degree of realism of one version when directly compared to another.

Abode Chief PBR

Grumpka Twinmotion

This so called realism is also influenced by ones personal interpretation of what constitutes realism. From my perspective I Iean more to how I envision things to look as my eye would see it in real life, which can be distinctly different than an artistic interpretation of this.

1 hour ago, Grumpka said:

This is great!  Free is always good.  I can't imagine paying 2k for it though! 

I'm sure there is a learning curve to getting more realistic renders, but the soft sun shadows alone might make it worth the effort.  

(no soft shadow control in PBR is a major oversight by CA IMHO)
 

If you try Twinmotion, keep in mind that none of the lights in CA are recognized, you will need to redo them using their lights. Exteriors are easier as they mostly only use the sun.

You can create softer shadows in CA PBR. One thing worth trying is to open up the camera DBX and under the Show Shadow box, uncheck Ray Casted Sun Shadows and see if you prefer the look.

The other method to control shadows is by creating a spotlight array as a substitute for the sun. This scene has an array of about 12 spot lights of varying intensities and slightly different positions, note the larger shadow right bottom on the grass and patio, the edges are softer. Also the soffit shadow across the back garage door. The array also contains one spot with shadows turned off to control the overall shadow depth.

Would surprise me if a Quadro card would make any significant difference. When I looked at this issue it seems that the problem is related to the time it takes to recalculate all of the vector graphics, this is a CPU function and from what I can tell it is predominantly single threaded, high core count CPU's won't have a significant impact.

Also, don't assume that just because you drew up the drawings that this automatically implies that you have some form of ownership rights to the drawings. Ownership rights are highly dependent upon who is actually in control of the design/creative process. If the client is directing you in all aspects of the design process then you may have little or no claim of ownership.

10 hours ago, ChiefUserBigRob said:

i agree, maybe i should redo my sig. structural designer is my title during the day at the shipyard. residential design at nights and weekends at home.

Would be highly advised to look at how you describe yourself to avoid any misinterpretations by potential clients. Be careful as certain terms(descriptors) are only to be used by those who have specific professional designations, it is illegal to use these designations if you don't really meet the requirements regardless of whether or not you have the knowledge to do the work.

As recommended by other respondents, you need to prepare a proper contract that properly describes the services being performed, the method of compensation and the terms and conditions. Personally, payment for drafting/design work should be retainer based, keep in mind that once you send them the drawings you have instantly lost most if not all of your leverage should you need to collect on outstanding balances.

That's for sure. That's happening to me right now, my daughter is visiting from the UK, all my clients are aware of this but some of them still keep e-mailing and texting for changes, updates and meetings. Here's the irony in this, one of them keeps apologizing but the reason they need these things done is because they are going on vacation.