TheKitchenAbode

My two cents worth is to get the lighting right and only then adjust the materials. How a material looks or reacts is entirely dependent upon the light that is striking it. First things First.

Really great stuff Rene. There is no doubt that there is a significant number of computations and a lot of complexity involved in the rendering process, way beyond my current focus on just the path of a single light ray. However, it all starts and everything else is derived based upon the path of that single ray of light, without that you have nothing to calculate upon. This I believe is the crux of the problem concerning the Black Holes. The light path the rendering engine needs to work it's magic does not in Ray Trace exist, that all important ray is trapped as it can't escape within the path limitation imposed within the Ray Trace engine. I don't consider what's going on in this situation as noise.

Hi Rene, some very interesting thoughts, much appreciated. Not sure whether you are agreeing or disagreeing with my observations and conclusions but either way I welcome the input. I will attempt to expand a bit on my thinking as it relates to the issues and concepts you have presented. Increasing my resolution to reduce so called fireflies. Although what I am doing here could be considered oversampling I'm not 100% convinced that this is actually what is behind the improvement. Oversampling as I'm sure we all agree is a method used to improve accuracy in data sets. Sampling many individual data sets, of which each has some degree of inaccuracy, and then averaging them results in data sets with less deviational error than original data set group. However, I'm not certain that these glass related fireflies are directly due to inaccuracy. As I attempted to relay, I believe these are the result of a lack of information due to a ray(s) of light being trapped between two reflective surfaces in which within the path/bounce limitation in Ray Trace they are not getting back to the camera and as such they are depicted as black, hence my "Black Hole" name. Another way to gain a perspective on this is to consider a scene where on a wall there hangs a painting, the wall is 100% white and the painting is 100% black. All of the light rays striking the wall will be sent back to the camera while the light rays striking the black painting will be completely absorbed and nothing is sent back to the camera. The Ray Trace result is a white wall with a black painting, which in this case is exactly what it should be. Based upon the above, I concluded that at the end of the day the Ray Trace engine has only the number of pixels as defined by the render window size to represent the received rays of light. In other words, no matter how many Light Rays it is computing behind the scene it still comes down to one available window pixel per ray of light. Therefore, if say my defined window size is say 100px X 100px all light rays must be interpreted within 1,000 pixels, you could say that this means there are only 1,000 rays of light depicting the scene. Now, if within those 1,000 rays of light there are say 10 rays that did not get back to the camera then those pixels will be black, given that there are only 1,000 available pixels then the 10 black ones will be very noticeable. If I double the available window pixels and assume that the total missing rays is still 10 then as a percentage of pixels the missing light ray pixels will be less and therefore less noticeable, they are however still there just harder find. Though effective, the drawback is that each time you double the window pixel size height and width the time to trace quadruples, even when I ran a scene at 9,600 X 4,600 the black holes, though significantly reduced, could still be seen but the scene took over three hours for just 15 passes. This is where I deduced that by taking the higher pixel count scene and downsizing it I could more efficiently obscure the black pixels as in the downsizing process multiple pixels are analyzed and new ones are extrapolated, this would effectively blend out those black pixels. Not much different than going into Photoshop and blurring one pixel with an adjacent pixel(s). Now this could be considered a form of oversampling, but if one believes in my theory then it's not really that. There is no inaccuracy per say in the data, what I'm actually doing is attempting to reduce the effect of a lack of data; the black holes are where there is no data and they need to be filled in with something or lessened in some manner so they represent such a small percentage of the visible scene that the go unnoticed. Will comment on those other thoughts later as I have a site meeting to attend to.

You are more than welcome. From what I saw in your posted plans the problem with the roof was the conflict between the amount of overhang and the angle/direction of the generic sun. As suggested before, shooting an exterior camera view will allow you to see where the sun and shadows are being cast onto you structure, so if the window is completely shaded then little or no light is going to be cast into the interior. Trying to overcome this by just cranking up the sun intensity in the Ray Trace DBX will at some point introduce light bleed back into your scene.

Had a chance to make some adjustments. Here is your original as per your plan settings. 30 passes, 42 minutes. After my changes. 30 passes, 11 minutes. After some minor highlight/shadow adjustments and a bit of sharpening. Minor change to the recessed lights, just reduced the cut-off angle. Changed the two point light fixtures to spot light versions, this is what brought the Ray Trace time down from 42 minutes to 11 minutes for the same number of passes. Added the direct sun, made floor polished, adjusted the ambient occlusion and adjusted the image properties. Put a roof and foundation on. Here's the altered plan. Just use this to see the alterations I made as I can't guarantee that something else may have inadvertently changed. NASO_kitchen_Abode Modified.plan Let me know if you have any questions concerning these changes.

Still not satisfied? Get rid of the generic light, use the ambient occlusion min & max and adjust the image properties a bit.

Now you are likely to state that this does not work because you have lost the effect on the floor of the sun entering the window. As I explained in the last paragraph post #7. The sun is still there but it is now not seen as the roof overhang is shading the window. Reduce the roof overhang and there's the sun. Better still is to change the sun angle and direction. There you have it, no light bleed and the sun.

Ok here it is. I downloaded your original Ko.plan. Placed a camera, no other alterations. Here is the render and it shows light bleed. I put an auto build roof on it and rendered it again. No light bleed. Here is the plan with the auto built roof and saved camera view. You give it a try. Abode_ko plan with roof.plan

It's no effort. There is no point working with a plan that does not have the issue, I have hundreds of these. We need to work with your posted "Ko with roof.plan" to identify what's going on with it. I'll reload it and take another look. Will be in about an hour as I have some other renderings currently running.

Mine too!!! Here is an example. Note that the materials and models here are all CA, any adjustments to their properties are few and when done they are normally just a minor adjustment to their reflectivity. All lighting is done with only spot lights. Renders in about 30 minutes. Just need to change the wood grain direction on the table.

I have been trying to do that through a series of specific articles concerning a number of issues that impact on the quality of a Ray Trace. Unfortunately there is no single set of settings per say, in other words many of the available settings have a level of interdependency. This interdependency gives a high level of credence to the importance of obtaining the right balance in order to obtain the look you desire. Having said that there is hope, given what I have posted, in conjunction with a significant amount of non-posted techniques I been able to eliminate a significant amount of playing around that now allows me to just drop in my preconfigured lights, set my Ray Trace settings essentially the same and generate a decent Trace on a consistent basis. Should a situation arise where the results are not as expected I'm usually able to quickly identify the culprit and adjust it accordingly, this is why it is important to understand why things do what they do. Over the next while I will post more about each light type and how to configuring them to obtain a particular look. Hopefully when all is said and done everyone will be able to take from this what is important to them to generate the look they desire.

Are you by any chance talking about that bright white spot on the ceiling. If so that is not light bleed, it's from the generic light that CA puts into the scene if there are no other lights. To prevent this from happening just put a light fixture somewhere and turn it to off.

I did not save the plan but I just did the auto build roof and everything was ok, the bleed was gone 100%. Are you saying this does not work in the plan you posted if the only thing you do is build a roof, or is it that after you build the roof you are making other changes to the suns intensity and therefore reintroducing light bleed back into the scene. The postings I referenced in Let's Ray Trace discusses this. In your scene when I put the roof on the bleed disappeared and also the bright spot on the floor where the sun was coming through the window. The reason the bright spot on the floor disappeared is because your default roof overhang is very large which is putting the window in a shadow. Either reduce the overage depth or change the sun angle to get it back. Take an exterior camera view so you can see the lit and shaded regions of the house to help you see what's going on.

The luminosity refers to the brightness. You can control this a number of ways. 1. Just reduce the Suns intensity with the slider in the Ray Trace DBX. 2. If the sun is just using the color white you can open up the color DBX and there is a % Luminosity box where you can set it. 3. For the Environment light there is the Intensity slider in the Ray Trace DBX. You can select Use Sky or Use Backdrop Image. IF using a color then open up the color DBX and change the Luminosity %.

Pleased it worked out.

Eric has got it. The only thing I have found is that a slab only does not always do the trick. I usually have some actual foundation with a floor, even a crawl type space should be adequate.

That's what we call light bleed. It's coming from the direct sun and/or environment light. Check out the postings under the title Let's Ray Trace, light bleed is discussed in detail on page 4 starting at posting #88. First step is to put a roof on your structure and a foundation with a floor. Other actions are described in the postings I have referenced.

As the appliance opening is the full available width of the cabinet then the width is determined by the overall width of the cabinet less the left/right style widths. If you wish the opening to be wider then you need to make the cabinet wider. Also, you should download the installation sheets for those appliances, they will give you the actual opening requirements based upon how they are going to be mounted.

Jael_CA, I just checked out your plan. Just put a roof on it and the light bleed will be gone.

What setting do you have in the Ray trace DBX for the direct sun intensity? In the adjust sun DBX you posted have you tried reducing it's intensity?

The attached plans are not there, make sure you close them in CA before attaching. Try some of the techniques described in the posting subject. https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/14512-lets-ray-trace/?page=4 Starts at posting #88. The relocation of the window and the bleed reduction is interesting. Would need to take a look at that but my sense is that it may have something to do with the angle of the camera in relation to the window/light source. If you were to rotate the camera in the first one to be facing the window as it is in the second one does the light bleed show up. Also, are you using the generic sun or the manually place sun and do you have the sun follows the camera option check on or off?

The only settings that that I'm a ware of that may be different from windows 7 is the Group Policy editor if your version of Windows 10 is the Home edition. It's there in the installation files but is not installed. Not really sure why there would be any real need to access this but it can be done through a third party app that will force those files to be installed or just upgrade to Windows 10 Pro.

Not 100% sure what "control" refers to. I'm not aware of any settings that can't be accessed in Windows 10 that can be accessed in Windows 7. In fact Windows 10 has many new features that in my opinion provide greater customization options if one feels the need to do so. What has changed is that in Windows 10 accessing these settings has been shifted down one level, they have a new settings section that addresses the most commonly needed ones. If one feels the need to access these deeper settings on a regular basis then they can be placed on the desktop, taskbar and other quick access menus.

Who knows with these things, sometimes there are little glitches that just seem to be short lived. I would recommend giving Windows 10 a bit of time, it's actually very good. I've been using it since it's inception and would not go back to Windows 7 now that I'm comfortable with it.

I'm in the same camp on this. AMD tends to be a one trick pony, Intel on the other hand has a very strong R&D program. You can see the result of this now. AMD launches the Threadripper line and in less than 6 months Intel launches the I9 series of which most of them beat the Threadrippers in every category. To do this means Intel already had these processors developed and ready to go. The only thing AMD was to force Intel to bring them into the marketplace a bit sooner than they had planned. The real test for AMD is whether or not they can counterpunch Intels response in a similar time frame, that would really tell everyone that AMD has made a turnaround from it's past. I also have the system upgrade itch, love all of those threadripper cores and the price point but there is a trade-off for that price. I know I'm going to get wacked price wise with Intel but at least I will not have to sacrifice performance, at the end of the day the only reason to upgrade is to get better performance, not to save money. A $1,000 system differential over a 4 year life span equates to $20 per month. I spend more on coffee a month than this.