TheKitchenAbode

I fully agree, there are many possible setting combinations and it takes considerable effort to work through them. There is the added complexity concerning the dependency of how a material appears according to the level and type of light it is exposed to. Then there's the more global like settings such as photon mapping, ambient occlusion, environment light and the image adjustment properties. Just to make it even more challenging there are those irritants such as light bleed and speckles(fireflies) that can rear their ugly side under certain circumstances. Despite all of this I agree that the Ray Trace engine can produce some good results as your latest scene demonstrates, especially after only 30 passes in 90 or less minutes.

Nicely done!!! There's a quality to this that I have yet to see out of the CA Ray Trace engine. Just two questions, how many passes and how much time did this take to render?

Great job Rene as always. My favorite is the bedroom scene, nicely balanced and natural looking.

I'm not suggesting that these settings be used. They are part of a series of test runs that where done using a wide range of settings. Using the max setting allows one to evaluate what effects what. If something reduces the light bleed under the most sever conditions it will have a similar relative effect under less sever conditions. A 100% solution to any problem is one that works under all conditions.

Just ran a comparison with the interior lights off versus on. The Use Camera View Settings is off, Direct sun at max, Environment lighting at max, color 255,255,255, no roof or foundation. Interior Lights Off Interior Lights On I did not find any discernable difference in the degree of light bleed as a result of having the interior lights on or off. If anything, the light bleed is less evident when the lights are turned on, this would be expected as the turned on lights have reduced the interior contrast level. I have run a number of other Ray Traces at many differing settings and to date I can only find one sure relationship concerning the degree of light bleed, the greater the exterior luminosity the greater the chances are that light bleed will occur.

Just for the record, it was not I. I have never issued a negative to anyone. Would never have crossed my mind and certainly not to Joe who is such a great contributor to all.

The reason I asked was not to say that unchecking the Use Camera View Settings would not have a beneficial effect. Based upon my testing I would expect it to be beneficial as it would potentially reduce the luminosity(brightness) of the exterior lighting. If I look at the settings you posted I would not really expect any light bleed issues regardless of whether or not one has any interior lights on as they are not really dissimilar to what I normally use, expect that I tend to use the colour versus the sky under environment light. When I posted those extreme examples in the other thread I did run a number of other configurations which included using the sky versus the backdrop under environment light and found that these also had a positive effect in reducing light bleed as did reducing the luminosity if one used the color setting. The point I have been attempting to make is that the light bleed is the result of having too high of a luminosity(brightness) exterior light level. Depending upon ones other settings this can be reduced through a variety of methods, reducing the direct sun level, reducing the environment level or using the sky or backdrop, reducing the luminosity level of the sun and also by unchecking the use camera view setting. Also, depending upon these settings placing a roof on the structure has a positive effect and if the environment light is being used then having a foundation with a floor also impacts on this, in fact I also found that having a terrain made a difference concerning the environment light effect. Will take a look at interior lights on versus off to see what role they played in all of this.

Concerning the sink. Just change the counter top to custom, create the hole for the sink and then float in the sink you want. When you create a hole in a countertop you can configure it to be exactly how you want it regardless of the sinks shape.

Are you certain about that? All of the samples I posted have the use camera view setting unchecked. I never use the camera view settings in my Ray Traces.

I think this is a very important aspect about Ray Trace. For better or worse it seems to work best if one does not try to push it into doing something it was not really designed to do. The direct sun and environment light are good examples, if you keep cranking them up to brighten your interior then light bleed can become a problem and if you make an exterior Ray Trace you will find that the exterior will be "way" over lit. I personally find it best to set the direct sun and environment light based on obtaining a properly lit exterior Ray Trace. Then for interiors it's best to use a 3D parallel light(s) to adjust the intensity of the direct sun entering through the window and then either 3D points or spots to adjust the interior ambient light level instead of cranking up the environment light. This example follows this philosophy, and with additional interior light fixtures a decent Ray Trace can be obtained without a lot of fussing around.

My test was extreme with the sun and environment light set to the max. Suspect this may have reduced the effectiveness of the Ambient Occlusion. The light bleed is problematic but can be controlled. The determining factors appear to be the intensity of the direct sun and the intensity of the environment light in combination with the luminosity of the two light sources and then of course as to whether one has a roof and/or foundation in place. Given the number of variables it can be challenging to find the right combination. I think another issue relates to the control range of the direct sun and environment light, the direct sun has a range of 0 - 50 and the environment light 0 - 100. It is easy to assume that one should be able to utilize these control ranges to their max under all circumstances, I'm not certain that is the case. From my limited experimentation it appears that the luminosity of the light source will dictate whether one can use the full control range without introducing light bleed. Environment Light Color 255,255,255 Luminosity 100%, direct sun = 50, environment light = 100 Environment Light Color 255,255,255 Luminosity 25%, direct sun = 50, environment light = 100 As I continue to explore Ray Trace, for better or worse, I find myself constantly coming back to the same conclusion; it can do a reasonably good job, "but" it only can do what it can do with what you give it. It can look like this or look like this

Light Bleed - Ambient Occlusion Here is an example of Light Bleed and the impact ambient occlusion has on the light bleed effect. Please note that this was run with the direct sun at max 50, environmental light at max 100 and color white (255,255,255) which likely represents a worst case situation. Samples were run for 5 passes, no roof or foundation. Ambient Occlusion - Min = 0, Max = 10 Ambient Occlusion - Min = 0, Max = 1 Ambient Occlusion - Min = 4, Max = 5 Ambient Occlusion - Min = 5, Max = 10 Ambient Occlusion - Min = 7, Max = 10 Ambient Occlusion - Min = 9, Max = 10 Within this test grouping no significant reduction in the degree of light bleed was realized regardless of the ambient occlusion min/max settings.

Light Bleed - Impact of Roof and Foundation Here is an example of Light Bleed and how adding a roof and foundation with a floor impacts on the light bleed effect. Please note that this were run with the direct sun at max 50, environmental light at max 100 and color white (255,255,255) which likely represents a worst case situation. No roof, no foundation, 5 passes. With roof, no foundation, 5 passes. Note reduction in bleed along ceiling/wall intersect. With roof, with foundation, 5 passes. Note reduction in bleed along floor/wall intersect.

B4UBLD - since you are using the environment light, make sure you have a foundation and the foundation has a floor. That will block the light bleed the can occur around baseboards and floor placed items. The best way I have found to envision what's happening with this light bleed from the sun and environment light is that the sun light is directional, it's more like a powerful spot light with shadows turned on placed in the sky above your model while on the other hand the environmental light seems to be non directional, it shots light at your model from all directions, even from below. For light bleed from the sun placing a roof on your structure blocks the directional sun light from penetrating the structure, it's casting a shadow on anything under the roof. As the environment light seems to shoots light at all angles you need a foundation with a floor to block the light that comes from below your model from penetrating the floor structure.

You may also try changing the ceiling paint material properties to "General" and adding a bit of "Emissivity" to it. Obtaining accurate color reproduction can be tricky, keep in mind that how a color appears is dictated by the light, direct and indirect, that it receives. You may need to add some 3D lights to make sure the ceiling is being sufficiently lit to render correctly.

Light bleed, such as what you are experiencing, is the result of several factors. The bleeding light comes from two sources, the sun light and the environmental light and will be exaggerated if your model does not have a roof or a foundation with a floor. Even with a roof and foundation with a floor you can still introduce light bleed if the sunlight and environmental light are set at too high of an intensity. Looking at your Ray Trace it appears that you have the sunlight set fairly high as the exterior as it appears through the windows seems unnaturally bright. I would most likely reduce the sunlight intensity a bit and if you are using the environmental light I would also reduce it. This is just my opinion but for interiors I really do not see much benefit in using the environmental light, it's primary purpose from what I can deduce is to allow one to control the darkness of exterior shadows created by the direct sunlight. If you have a brightly lit interior then the effect of this is on the interior is barely noticeable. I personally feel that Ray Trace can produce fairly good renderings given it's inherent limitations but in order to do so one needs to work within these limitations and not expect or attempt to push this engine beyond it's designed parameters. For example, attempting to create those overexposed exterior window views so often seen is not really in the realm of Ray Trace. Ray Trace is not really designed for special effects, if this is what you want then you will need to take your Ray Trace and post process it in say Photoshop or use another rendering engine that has these capabilities baked in.

Change the material properties to "Reflective" and then you can control the level of transparency and reflectivity separately. Just make sure this is a copy so these settings will not be applied to your other glass materials.

This sounds very similar to a past situation where a significant lag was reported when working on very complex models. If I recall correctly it was related to rebuilding the 3D model after a change/alteration was made and when opening a camera view which also requires a 3D model rebuild. From my playing around with this the best way to deal with this was by turning off all unnecessary display layers. It appears that the display layers determines what Chief has to process when rebuilding the 3D model. From what I was able to deduce was that the 3D model rebuild is highly processor based and more importantly it appeared to be a single thread type operation. This was what initiated my "Chandelier Test" I mentioned in the other Threadripper discussion. As you likely need those Sketchup models I would suggest you try placing them on separate layer(s) and keep them turned off unless you absolutely need them displayed to do your work.

The I7-7700 is a good processor but if you are not in a big rush I would wait a few months as Intel is releasing a number of new processors this fall that will offer significantly better performance and more core options. More cores would be "highly" beneficial if you Ray Trace. Dell adopts these new chips quickly so you would not have to wait long before they are offered in their Alienware line up. Concerning the boot PCLe SSD Chief in it's normal operation does not use much space other than saving undo/redo data, speed is the most important factor here and the PCLe drive is as good as it gets. However, the cost differential between a 256 and 512 is not significant so I would likely go with the 512 for future proofing.

They definitely underestimated your rendering focus and should have recommended a CPU with more cores/threads. They possibly did not understand that Ray Trace is 100% CPU dependent. I can understand their preference for Intel I7's given the level of performance they offer and proven stability. As with any system, it's overall performance is a culmination of having everything right and balanced, not just a powerful CPU. The challenge for most is obtaining this without breaking the bank. You may wish to search the forum for the "Chandelier Test", it's a brutal test but it would be interesting to see how your new system does.

Here is an interesting article that should provide some insight into single versus multi-threaded performance. It also demonstrates that some operations that have been optimized for multi-core processors do not necessarily result in improved performance and in some cases performance is actually degraded. https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Solidworks-2016-Multi-Core-Performance-741/ The overall take on this is that it is a complex issue and in this case for Solidworks single thread performance is the most important performance factor other than when rendering. You can also draw some further conclusions about this and Chief through the many comments concerning performance. The trend is that those with the best single thread performance CPU's seem to be the most satisfied with their system performance for most general Chief functions. For rendering the most satisfied users are those with the highest core count. To be as satisfied as possible you want the fastest single threaded performance CPU with the most cores you can afford. If to have one is at the expense of the other then you need to think carefully about what you will be sacrificing and whether or not the gain on one side is worth the lose on the other side.

I believe I also saw something about this and that CA was attempting to optimize Chief to take better advantage of multi-threaded operations. However, I think you will find that this is not applicable to all operations Also, watching core activity can be a bit misleading as even single threaded operations are spread out over the available cores. For example, I'm watching my cores right now and there are 168 processes and 1965 active threads, there is activity on all cores as these are being distributed out over my 4 available cores. This does not necessarily mean that these processes are optimized for multi-core processors in the same manner as say Ray Trace is. I don't proclaim to know exactly what processes in Chief are true single threaded or multi-threaded but I believe you will find it to be a mix and that single threaded throughput is highly relavent.

Finding the best CPU for Chief is somewhat challenging as there are two aspects that must be considered. When just using Chief for developing a plan and standard camera views then the CPU's single threaded performance is likely the most critical factor and when Ray Tracing it's multi-threaded capability is what you are looking for. For the cost the AMD Threadrippers offer a lot of cores/threads which will definitely prove beneficial when Ray Tracing but from the test reports I have read these CPU's do not deliver similar single threaded performance improvements when compared to Intel's latest offerings.

Eric, I was referring to the recessed lights in the kitchen along that wall. Some users have had some success by adjusting the ambient occlusion, try upping the max to see if that helps out. This will of coarse will change the overall scene so you might have to adjust the image properties a bit.

This is a common issue and I'm not sure there is a 100% solution. More passes will reduce this and will eventually eliminate them, but it may take 100 or more to do the trick. I have found that this occurs with all transparent materials including glass, though the degree may vary according to the material/glass property settings. It seems to be related to situations where light has to pass through two or more layers of glass and more specifically light being reflected from surfaces behind the glass. If you turn off photon mapping I think you will find that the speckles will disappear, but you will loose the effect of photon mapping and this may not be desirable. It's hard to say but I believe the main source of the reflected light is from the recessed light fixtures near the wall with the opening to the living/family room. Try turning those off and run a trace to see if that has an effect.