TheKitchenAbode
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Everything posted by TheKitchenAbode
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I have encountered times when the same color seems to render differently, usually as if it's a shade darker. I have found that clicking on it with the Rainbow tool and then closing the DBX resolves the issue. Might work in your situation.,
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As most of my clients choke on my fabricators cost I just inform them of the pro's and con's, provide the specs and let them source and deal with the fabricator of their choice. Yes, the whole introduction of the PBR feature was poorly handled. It's not just the fact that this feature was not ready for prime time but also that it's premature implementation had a negative impact on the existing Ray Trace function, and as such those of us who upgraded were left scrambling around trying to find a way to get things fixed. Very time consuming and frustrating to say the least. It's also disappointing that throughout all of this there has been little if any input from CA in respect to this, it should not really be our responsibility to stumble around in the dark trying to figure out how a feature they devised is supposed to work. Sorry for the rant, but if something like this had happened in past corporations I've worked with I can assure you there would have been pink slips handed out the following day. I'll check into the warranty, thanks for the heads up.
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From past experimentation a total face count of around 800,000 will start to induce slowness in most reasonably configured systems. Architectural blocks will also contribute to this. One way to help minimize this is to turn off display layers that are not required. It seems that the active display layers have an impact on what CA needs to process for display purposes.
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There's no doubt in my mind that this is the way to go. Just a bit unfortunate that the implementation of this feature was not handled better. There should have been some documentation on this and more effort to adjust the material properties so they rendered properly. If I was to advise CA I would suggest they really knuckle down and focus on all of these annoyances, not just those related to PBR'ing but all of the other ones that are prevalent throughout this software. Personally it's a bit of a shame as these constant annoyances undermine the true greatness and potential of this software package.
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From my testing it's more reliant on the GPU, just went through this and had to upgrade my video card. I'd say right now that a 1060 will handle the PBR needs, mine now renders in 2 - 3 seconds and I typically have a lot of lights. Memory is also important as a PBR image needs between 1 - 2 GB for each active PBR camera. I would recommend that the graphics card have 6 GB and your system memory should be 16 GB. That way if you blow the video card memory it can share system memory before resorting to the page file swap. As far as CPU's go it looks like most current hyper threaded 4 or 6 core ones will be more than adequate, just get the fastest single thread one out of the bunch.
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The Bordeaux was what they bought for themselves, when it comes to pricing on the project they often have a Mateus budget. The 1 1/4" definitely solves marble vein problems. What I dislike with that thickness of material is the depth of the exposed edge on the sink cut-out, prefer 3/4". I have more and more clients shifting to a more modern/contemporary look and they want even thicker looking counter tops. The last two bathroom vanities were 4" and have another on the drawing board now. The only option is a built-up miter edge profile, no option but to pay the upcharge.
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The wine is a French Bordeaux, would you prefer something a bit lighter? This is one of the major issues when trying to get as realistic as possible. It's an endless game of cat and mouse. As one item gets better the other items that were ok before now need to be tweaked once again. I just grabbed a common Ogee profile, something a bit more up to date like a simple eased edge would have been a better choice. The client did not want to pay the extra for a miter built-up edge profile. I know they will be disappointed when they see the marble grain disjointed along that edge face seam.
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I believe so. Here is another one. http://planetpixelemporium.com/tutorialpages/light.html
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Thanks Johnny. At this stage I will not be doing any more Ray Tracing. This PBR'ing is a lot more fun and addictive. I'm far more satisfied with the results than I ever was with Ray Trace. Will be very interesting to see how far this PBR thing can be pushed. They definitely need to fine tune the material properties and of coarse a lot is going to depend on the quality of the models. Here's the latest PBR example. A few more decorative elements and a bit of lighting adjustment.
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Ok, I added an edge profile to the counter top and decided the wine glass needed to be filled. Not 100% photo realistic, but I'm being tempted to reach in there and have a sip of wine This playing around has been an interesting exercise and has definitely proven to me the advantage of PBR'ing over Ray Tracing. The virtual live rendering made it possible to create a more complex scene and fine tune material properties and position objects. This would not have been particle with Ray Tracing having to wait several minutes or more to see the impact every time I made a change.
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When ever I've investigated this it has seemed that it is more CPU related than GPU. Indications are that there are computations performed by the CPU before it can be sent to the GPU and it seems to be the former where high surface counts can slow things down. I'm not sure there is anything we can do on our side to significantly improve this.
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Thanks Rene, really appreciate your judgement. Your white subway tile played a big role in this, thanks for sharing. Right now I'm just trying to see what PBR can do on it's own. The only Photoshopping if any is a bit of sharpening and maybe some colour/saturation tweaks. CA should really consider adding just a few addition pic adjustment tools such as shadows/highlights, sharpen and color balance.
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Thanks matty12. Yes glass is a real problem, hopefully CA will work on this. Will fix the counter top edge, not only does it need an edge profile but it needs to be extended a bit to overhang the cabinet faces. Reflections are still an issue, the counter tops are set to maximum reflection and yet they appear matt.
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The one I quoted is from the Core Library, not my user library. Had update all the libraries about 2 weeks ago, will run another update to see if it is now different. Good catch on the point lights, in PBR'ing it does not seem to matter as to which light type you use in respect to rendering time. When Ray Tracing point lights really slowed things down which is why I devised some replacement spot light arrays. Yes, they should adjust these light specifications to be more relevant to real life. The way they are now, one has to do this every time and then save the light to our user library. Clutters up the user library and I believe it causes problems as many users assume the lights have been preconfigured for the best result, which never actually seems to be the case.
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Thanks Cheryl but I'm not sure about the wisdom. I'm just relaying what I'm finding that seems to be working for me, I'm certain there are many other approaches yet to be discovered. On those spot lights the cut-off angle and the drop rate have a huge impact, definitely worth experimenting with. I've also wondered about whether or not CA should use the Kelvin standard. If you need it just google RGB versus Kelvin and you will find conversion charts that will give you the common RGB values for many types of light sources/conditions.
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Forgot to mention one thing should you place those 3D lights into your scene. Turn shadows off, this way they will not create all kinds of weird shadows in your scene. The other advantage is that they will soften the shadows of those light fixtures that have shadows turned on. If your recessed lights have to strong of a light effect on the wall you can increase the drop rate to soften them. The ones in my kitchen samples have a drop rate of 20 and a cut-off angle of 140 degrees.
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Yes the active lights are specific to each camera so it's import to remember this or set it in the default settings so it's applied automatically every time you place a camera. It's using both the CPU and the GPU. I just went through this and had to upgrade my video card as my old one was maxing out. The more active lights the more work the GPU has to do. The variance in the floor is due to the lights or lack of lights, that looks like a fairly large area and it probably needs more lights. If you don't want actual light fixtures then place some 3D point lights around the room. Set their height to be about half way between the floor and ceiling. It's best to use a number of them at very low lumens, say around 5 lumens, if they are too bright they will show up as odd bright spots on polished or reflective materials.
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Glad you are finding some value in all of this. Those kitchen ones I posted earlier today have the sun set at 1,000 Lux. The ceiling cans are at 550 lumens, the pendant point lights are 100 lumens and the under cabinet spots are 30 lumens. BPR DBX Camera Exposure - 0.18 Hue - 0 Saturation - 60% Brightness - 95% I don't know how those looked on your screen, but on mine they looked very good. Here's another one, just playing around a bit. On this one I did not use the Improve Lighting Quality in the PBR DBX. You can toggle it on or off to see if you it helps the scene or not. Tends to work best if your ceilings are coming out too dark.
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Absolutely, I was just questioning CA's default Lumen settings and what if anything was the basis for those particular levels. Just think those defaults are way to high for most residential applications, I use 550 Lumens as my standard for a 4-6 watt LED spot. Most LED under cabinet strips or pucks are significantly lower.
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This might help on the lighting. What I'm doing is to toggle off the sun and setting my lights under this condition. I use 550 lumens for my main recessed spots. My other lights are set to balance with these, they are usually lower, especially point lights. In the PBR DBX I set the Brightness to max and reduce the camera exposure as much as possible. If things are still off I back off on the brightness and increase the camera exposure. Don't worry if it is not perfect, you are just looking to attain a reasonable balance. Once done you can the apply the sun, I start at about 1000 lux and then shift it up or down to get the proper effect. Too strong and it will wipe out your interior lighting effect.
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You know you're not supposed to use gasoline to start your fire!!! Better hunt the library for a smoke/fire detector and install it right away.
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I hope you are right, it would be awful boring if there was nothing to complain about.
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Agree, they definitely should have been better prepared with the library updates. I also wish that there was some better explanation concerning settings and their effect. For example, I use the library recessed mini can most of the time. The default intensity setting is 1,637.807129 lumens, how on earth did they decide on 6 decimal places. Also, where can one purchase a standard residential spot type light bulb that puts out this lumen level. A standard 4-6 watt LED spot bulb outputs no more than about 550 lumen, a good old MR16 could do maybe 900 lumens. The 6" down light has a default of 1,200 lumens, not sure how a 6" puts out less light than a 4". The 6" has a cut off angle of 175 degrees, not sure I have ever encountered a residential spot light bulb with that great of a spread, especially if it is up inside the can. The default sun intensity is 100,000 lux, but if you watch that video a setting around 26,000 is suggested. Personally, at 100,000 it's like the flash of light from a nuclear blast illuminating your home. I understand that some users may want to crank it way up, but why is this the default? Light intensity was changed from watts to lumens, I heard that it was done as Lumens are more relevant. Agree that with LED's watts are obsolete. But these lumen defaults don't seem to be relevant to anything I can associate with.
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Agree, it's a good demonstration that this PBR thing has some real potential if given the right materials. The Pendant is from CA, Harper Pendant, Lighting No.06 Bonus Catalog.
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Thanks Mick. They look really nice. Thanks Rene for sharing. This is also just another example of how quick PBR'ing is. Just a few minutes from importing the calibz file to final output.
