Perfect Render Technqiues

[anthem 0]

I am after some help with the perfect settings for exterior renders - I don't know what a lot of the settings means and don't particulary have time to experiment with them more than I have. Can anyone suggest settings that have worked for them when creating raytraces of the exterior. - lighting, ambience, shadows, etc....

[HumbleChief 381]

Yes please sign me up too as I don't have time to learn either. 

[TheKitchenAbode 447]

Try this set-up.

 

- Set the North pointer and Sun to your liking. Leave the suns light strength and colour as per the default. You can also use the generic sun if you wish.

 

All other settings are done in the Raytrace DBX only. If I do not mention an item then it is to be turned "off" (unchecked) or set to "0".

- General Tab - Set size to your liking, set number of passes to 50 max.

- Lighting Tab - Ambient Occlusion Min .5, Max 7. Direct Sunlight 2

- Advance Tab - Photon Mapping "On"

- Image Properties Tab - Brightness 46, Contrast 59, Saturation 38

 

Run your Raytrace

 

Here are three exterior views based on these settings. All models and materials are default Chief. They run 50 passes in about 7 minutes on my system, they are actually pretty well done after 10 passes.

 

 

Here is a late night scene.

 

These are the only changes I made to the above.

- Changed backdrop to a much darker version. Took Chief forested road backdrop and knocked down the highlights in Photoshop.

- Changed Direct Sunlight to .05. Wanted to simulate some moonlight contribution.

- Changed Ambient Occlusion to Min 0, Max 2

 

 

Does any of this help? Please note that there are likely many more ways to achieve this. My method does not necessarily produce Architectural Digest quality images, it does however produce high contrast, punchy pics very quickly right out of the box.

 

Graham

 

[Alaskan_Son 1853]

I'm sorry, but I think this thread is an exercise in futility.  There is no one size fits all settings that are going to work for every situation or for every user and especially not for both.  This has been discussed so many times over the years its ridiculous.  The end result is pretty much always a thread with 500 posts and in the end, the only people who really learn anything from it are the people willing and able to put in both the time and effort to really understand what all the various settings control and to both learn and test various ray trace settings, lighting settings, lighting placement configurations, material settings, material usage, north pointer settings, sun angle settings, etc. etc... and various combinations thereof. 

[HumbleChief 381]

[sarcasm]Thanks Graham but those settings aren't perfect - could you try again? And as I said I am much too busy to learn myself - thank you.[/sarcasm]

[TheKitchenAbode 447]

18 minutes ago, HumbleChief said:

Thanks Graham but those settings aren't perfect - could you try again? And as I said I am much too busy to learn myself - thank you.

 

I did not say they were perfect, there is no such setting. Post a pic of what you got, maybe you have something turned on or turned off that should not be that way.

 

Graham

[HumbleChief 381]

17 hours ago, HumbleChief said:

[sarcasm]Thanks Graham but those settings aren't perfect - could you try again? And as I said I am much too busy to learn myself - thank you.[/sarcasm]

Forgot to note my comment - my bad.

[TheKitchenAbode 447]

Hi Larry - Had a very strong sense that you were pulling my leg, especially when you reiterated that you were "too busy to learn yourself". Now that you have fessed up my plan for today's responses has been disrupted. I'm sure other members will be disappointed now, their envisioning of me working feverishly to find the elusive "Perfect Settings" has come to an end.

 

Graham

 

PS - Will be posting some more results shortly but need to work on finding the "Holy Grail", the "Treasure on oak island" and a few million "Fraudulent Voters" first.

 

 

[Joe_Carrick 1937]

49 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

a few million "Fraudulent Voters" first.

Look in California

We have at least that many.  There are also some in Chicago.

[HumbleChief 381]

5 hours ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

PS - Will be posting some more results shortly but need to work on finding the "Holy Grail", the "Treasure on oak island" and a few million "Fraudulent Voters" first.

 

Pretty funny dude. 

[joey_martin 202]

This is a collection of notes that were posted on here with settings. I have used these for the very limited times I Raytrace anything and they did very well for me. 

Raytrace Settings-Forum Notes.pdf

[parkwest 100]

Shouldn't there be a "perfect setting" button on the ray trace dbx?

[Rich_Winsor 124]

On ‎1‎/‎28‎/‎2017 at 6:47 AM, parkwest said:

Shouldn't there be a "perfect setting" button on the ray trace dbx?

 

 Mine is located on the Chief startup menu right

below the "Auto-Build Entire Model" button.

 

Seriously Anthem, what you are asking for doesn't

really exist. I think Michael summed it up pretty well.

 

Just for an example here is the same camera shot

Ray Traced with 3 different simple 3D backgrounds

and different material properties. It all depends on the

effects you are trying to achieve.

 

Top to Bottom:

Daytime

Nighttime

Back to the Future Time

 

[TheKitchenAbode 447]

Here are examples as to how lighting determines just about everything. The Raytrace settings are the default "Indoor High Quality", 1200 X 736 px.

 

1st pic - Sun "Off", Lights "Off"_ 50 passes, 1min

2nd pic - Sun "On", Lights "Off"_50 passes, 12min

3rd pic - Sun "On", Lights "On"_50 passes, 27min

 

No matter what settings or materials you play with, there is no way that I know of to make the 1st or 2nd pics look any good. Only once the lighting is properly set and balanced (3rd pic) should one even consider playing with a materials properties.

 

 

Graham

[anthem 0]

Perhaps I should have should have said "perfect" I am very clearly aware there is no such thing. I was simply after some settings that worked really well for someone else. And while I said 'I did not have time' I simply meant 'that day' as I had to produce some images as soon as possible and the settings I was playing with were not producing what I wanted. I just wanted a little guidance for an afternoons work, not my whole career. If those of you who had nothing nice to say why didn't you just say nothing? Rather than taking the mickey out of my question, you could have looked past it and moved on to the next person. The forum is there to help others, not make them uncomfortable. For those who provided some setting guidance thank you so much. I will play with these a little today to determine what does and doesn't work. Please don't reply to this message now as I don't want to continue this conversation. 

[TheKitchenAbode 447]

Just another example based on the 3rd pic in my last posting.

 

The 1st pic has a yellowish color cast to it and lacks in clarity, here it is in 1200 x 582 size. For the 2nd pic I just adjusted the 1st pic by only using the "Image Properties" controls after Raytracing. Everything has been done within Chief and the Raytrace DBX.

 

Graham

[simigupta 0]

This is a collection of notes that were posted on here with settings.

[ZAR411 0]

50 passes look amazing (what you all have posted above). But what pc are you running ? 10 passes takes me 8 hours on high quality 2048 Pano.

I have i7-6700k 16GB ram, AMD rx 580 8GB

CPU maxed, ram 50%

GPU spikes here and there.

[Kbird1 633]

4 hours ago, ZAR411 said:

50 passes look amazing (what you all have posted above). But what pc are you running ? 10 passes takes me 8 hours on high quality 2048 Pano.

I have i7-6700k 16GB ram, AMD rx 580 8GB

CPU maxed, ram 50%

GPU spikes here and there.

 

 

there are two threads running currently dealing with Ray traces..... but most are not  running Pano  or at 2048 .... ie try  1280x720 with no point lights  15 passes in 6-8 mins ....for interiors anyway is working well with settings from Graham Korbey in the 1st link