Ray tracing questions and suggestions

[rispgiu]

I've been doing a lot of reading on Ray Trace and looking at many videos and photos.

I've tried to apply some of the things that I've learned (at least I think I learned) through my research. 

However I am finding that for this project my floors look dark, grainy, and with no definitions really and underneath the peninsula the cabinets show a glow around the doors.

I am uploading a rendered pic and the project file. 

To render this photo it took about 2 hours and 26 passes. 

 

Any suggestions, comments, will be appreciated. 

Kitchen Rotem.plan.zip

[Kbird1]

The weird lighting on the peninsula ( light bleed) is likely a combo of the Peninsula lights being on and the fact you haven't built a Foundation.......you should always have a roof and a foundation built in the drawing , just use a monolithic foundation if it's a project you don't need a real basement drawn in.

 

That is a pretty dark floor , but if you want it Glossy ? Change the Floor's material properties with the Material Rainbow Tool and make it reflective and raise the emissive value to say 20% and see how it looks....

 

Try the raytrace at 1280x720 for 10 passes as a test , it shouldn't take 2.5 hours....  but if you RT at the screen size it will take a while especially since I think the Retina is 4 or 5k right?

 

I'll have a look at the plan too , make sure I have given you the right advice....

 

looks like you done a pretty good job of lighting though...

 

M.

 

 

 

[Kbird1]

I was Right about your RT screen size it is a whopper 3000 x 2422 , (or close to that)  try 1280 or 1980 res that will reduce your times

 

You don't have a foundation as I thought , the light bleed disappeared once I built one....

 

I change the Flooring material as I said but to show you the effect I made reflection 74% for a High Gloss look.....

 

I also used Graham Korbey's Settings from the Lets RayTrace Thread ( post 20) for the other RT settings and changed the Ambient occlusion settings too, to what he recommends in that thread , Posted the plan below so you can have a look at the settings.....

 

These are some I did at 1280 x 720 and 1280 x 1024 for 10 passes in  2 1/2  to 4 mins each with Graham's settings , the Size is a major factor as is the the number of Point Lights ( less is better)

 

 

 

 

Kitchen Rotem_MHD.plan

 

 

 

 

here is the RT  thread...  :

 

[rispgiu]

8 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

I was Right about your RT screen size it is a whopper 3000 x 2422 , (or close to that)  try 1280 or 1980 res that will reduce your times

 

You don't have a foundation as I thought , the light bleed disappeared once I built one....

 

I change the Flooring material as I said but to show you the effect I made reflection 74% for a High Gloss look.....

 

I also used Graham Korbey's Settings from the Lets RayTrace Thread ( post 20) for the other RT settings and changed the Ambient occlusion settings too, to what he recommends in that thread , Posted the plan below so you can have a look at the settings.....

 

These are some I did at 1280 x 720 and 1280 x 1024 for 10 passes in  2 1/2  to 4 mins each with Graham's settings , the Size is a major factor as is the the number of Point Lights ( less is better)

 

 

 

 

Kitchen Rotem_MHD.plan

 

 

 

 

here is the RT  thread...  :

 

Thank you Mick, I hadn't seen your reply until this morning and I was working on several options yesterday.In the attached photo I've changed the floor material, used the bump option for it, added a few camera lights and rendered, however it took 26 passes and it took about 10 hrs.  (Obviously is ridiculous)

Yours look amazing considering how long it took you to render them. Thank you very much for your suggestions, as always they are very much appreciated. 

 

I will try as you suggested and I'll post the results. 

 

 

Before I forget, was your photon mapping on? Caustics?

[TheKitchenAbode]

You should reduce your pic size, especially given your laptop specs. If you ran that at say 1200 X 1000 your Ray Trace time would likely be about 1 hour. For any given pic size, if you double it then your Ray Trace time will quadruple.

[rispgiu]

2 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

You should reduce your pic size, especially given your laptop specs. If you ran that at say 1200 X 1000 your Ray Trace time would likely be about 1 hour. For any given pic size, if you double it then your Ray Trace time will quadruple.

Thank you, will try it out. I was reading the thread Mick suggested and I am very impressed by your results. 

[Kbird1]

Hi Joe ,  Photon mapping on,  Caustics Off  ( helps on the Time factor )

 

You are a patient Man   10 hrs for a RT .....wow.....  nice Pic though..... do you have a light in the glass front cabinet or is that reflected light on the ceiling?  changing the glass material  or it's properties may help with that , assuming it is an undesirable effect.

 

Graham's thread is where I got most of my Tips on RTing in X9 from , the new Physical Render Option in X10 may hope eliminate alot of the Guessing going from Camera view to RayTrace.

 

M.

 

 

[rispgiu]

35 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

Hi Joe ,  Photon mapping on,  Caustics Off  ( helps on the Time factor )

 

You are a patient Man   10 hrs for a RT .....wow.....  nice Pic though..... do you have a light in the glass front cabinet or is that reflected light on the ceiling?  changing the glass material  or it's properties may help with that , assuming it is an undesirable effect.

 

Graham's thread is where I got most of my Tips on RTing in X9 from , the new Physical Render Option in X10 may hope eliminate alot of the Guessing going from Camera view to RayTrace.

 

M.

 

 

I agree, 10 hours is way too long, It happened overnight so I didn't really suffer through it

About the cabinets, I actually placed lights inside the glass front and under the cabinets by the range. 

I was reading Graham's thread and looking around I also found this attached file, it seems it was a thread by Jintu. 

 

I hope you are right about x10, sometimes it is good to have many options and customizations but it takes a long time to learn and it seems to me that there is a lot of trial and error in getting a good quality photo. 

Raytrace Settings-Forum Notes.pdf

[Kbird1]

That PDF is mine actually , I posted it a couple of years ago and it has been re-posted a few times now, it is tips from here on the Forum I had accumulated , I thought others could use..... . I have one of Graham's Thread too I have been working on for easier Reading.

 

 Jintu (Username Chiefer) is another good Raytracing Expert here on the Forums , he actually does 3D Renderings as a living using Lumion and other High End Renders , so knows his stuff too.

 

I am a Newbie when it comes to RT , so I follow both of their Posts to get Tips and Learn....

 

You are right there is a ton of Trial and Error for RT's , which is why I run 10 passes 1st , you can usually tell in 3-4 if it's going to look right , if not just stop it, I then make a few changes and try again and then run one at 20-25 but find it doesn't always make too much difference , especially if viewed on a normal computer monitor , with the Retina , you may want to try the DPI a bit higher like 110 ( 72 is default ) and see if you can tell the difference....

 

 

 

 

[rispgiu]

6 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

That PDF is mine actually , I posted it a couple of years ago and it has been re-posted a few times now, it is tips from here on the Forum I had accumulated , I thought others could use..... . I have one of Graham's Thread too I have been working on for easier Reading.

 

 Jintu (Username Chiefer) is another good Raytracing Expert here on the Forums , he actually does 3D Renderings as a living using Lumion and other High End Renders , so knows his stuff too.

 

I am a Newbie when it comes to RT , so I follow both of their Posts to get Tips and Learn....

 

You are right there is a ton of Trial and Error for RT's , which is why I run 10 passes 1st , you can usually tell in 3-4 if it's going to look right , if not just stop it, I then make a few changes and try again and then run one at 20-25 but find it doesn't always make too much difference , especially if viewed on a normal computer monitor , with the Retina , you may want to try the DPI a bit higher like 110 ( 72 is default ) and see if you can tell the difference....

 

 

 

 

I will give it a try changing the DPI. 

Here is another few RT's of the same project, it rendered in about an 30 minutes each. 

[Kbird1]

They look pretty good considering you just started with CA didn't you?

 

You need to check the Light DATA for each light and turn on the indicator in camera views so you can tell which way the light shines , as it appears the pendants aren't set to shine down ( ring on ceiling) or perhaps there are too bright (wattage) and possibly your pucks in the glass door cabinets are slightly too high? or they are the wrong puck and shining up? it appears light is escaping the top of the Cabinet....

 

Currently only 8 lights are actually used, in RT, so you may need to turn some off , so others will come on.... the Indicator helps with that or even turn the Potlights (cans) off and add your Own 3D Light Sources instead.

 

If you turn ALL the light OFF CA will add one to each room without a light ...which is the usual reason for the bright arbitrary light spot on ceilings sometimes , as long as there is a light somewhere , CA won't add it's own , so you can add a light and put it at the other end of the room and not use it for your Scene at all if that weird light appears.

 

Are you floors handscraped ?  the texture bumpmap maybe a bit too high if not....looking in front of the fridge.

 

M.

[rispgiu]

14 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

They look pretty good considering you just started with CA didn't you?

 

You need to check the Light DATA for each light and turn on the indicator in camera views so you can tell which way the light shines , as it appears the pendants aren't set to shine down ( ring on ceiling) or perhaps there are too bright (wattage) and possibly your pucks in the glass door cabinets are slightly too high? or they are the wrong puck and shining up? it appears light is escaping the top of the Cabinet....

 

Currently only 8 lights are actually used, in RT, so you may need to turn some off , so others will come on.... the Indicator helps with that or even turn the Potlights (cans) off and add your Own 3D Light Sources instead.

 

If you turn ALL the light OFF CA will add one to each room without a light ...which is the usual reason for the bright arbitrary light spot on ceilings sometimes , as long as there is a light somewhere , CA won't add it's own , so you can add a light and put it at the other end of the room and not use it for your Scene at all if that weird light appears.

 

Are you floors handscraped ?  the texture bumpmap maybe a bit too high if not....looking in front of the fridge.

 

M.

Hello Mick,

Thank you very much for your compliment, I've been using CA for about 45 days  and I love it. 

 

You were right about the lights, I checked with the cabinets and they were placed way to close to the ceiling. 

About the pendants, should I set them as spot lights? Or can a point light be set to shine down?

I didn't know about the number of lights being used in RT, thank you for the heads up. Is that a setting that can be changed? Or is it a limitation in RT?

 

The floors are hand scraped, thus the bump, but thank you for checking. 

[Kbird1]

Hi , 8 lights is the current CA limitation ( part of OpenGL ) but changes in X10 to unlimited at the expense of performance

 

Spot lights are best , Point lights really effect RT times , if you open the Light's DBX and turn on the Indicator on the Light Data tab you will get the blue Arrows in the Pic below which is helpful I find when doing a RT. The red cross shows it's on the blue arrow the direction . You can group select the lights using the Light Adjust Tool (light bulb icon) and switch them on and off as a group , or use the adjust button and group select to make changes like the Light Indicator on or off.

 

Mick.

 

[rispgiu]

9 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

Hi , 8 lights is the current CA limitation ( part of OpenGL ) but changes in X10 to unlimited at the expense of performance

 

Spot lights are best , Point lights really effect RT times , if you open the Light's DBX and turn on the Indicator on the Light Data tab you will get the blue Arrows in the Pic below which is helpful I find when doing a RT. The red cross shows it's on the blue arrow the direction . You can group select the lights using the Light Adjust Tool (light bulb icon) and switch them on and off as a group , or use the adjust button and group select to make changes like the Light Indicator on or off.

 

Mick.

 

thank you mick.