TheKitchenAbode Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 Thought it might be useful to open up a topic specific to the X10's Physically Based Rendering(PBR) feature. Please share your experiences, tips and techniques. Here's one I just ran based upon the Fire-Ice-Kitchen from CA's sample gallery. Please note that the lights in this scene have been altered as have a number of the materials. Pleased with the result except for the fact that it does not render glass objects very well, there are two wine glasses in front of the wine bottle that did not show up, the island light has a glass component that did not show up and the glasses in the cupboard above the fridge did not render very well. Will play with the glass material settings to see if this can be corrected for. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted February 12, 2018 Author Share Posted February 12, 2018 Here is a comparison of the above PBR to a Ray Traced version. PBR Ray Trace_50 passes_33 minutes The lighting and materials are the same for each. The PBR version exhibits stronger shadow depth. If you flip between them you can see the glass issue I mentioned in the previous post. Also note that as this was done in X10 Beta, the Ray Traced version does not properly depict reflective materials, a fix for this is supposedly in the works. Otherwise, the PBR came out as good and possibly better than the Ray Traced version. From a time perspective, if I account for the time to save the PBR, about 5 minutes, I saved about 28 minutes in time once I was ready to run the final render. There was definitely a time savings when setting lights and materials using the PBR as the effects were realized in about 10 seconds. If there was no PBR feature I would have had to run Ray Traces to see the effect of changes which usually takes about 2-3 minutes each time. The lighting setup in this example is considerable and I suspect that whether one PBR's or Ray Traces this will be important in respect to the outputs result. I believe the same will apply to material property settings. From an overall perspective based on this experience I would have to give PBR the advantage, just need to get the glass corrected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rispgiu Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 I’ve done some similiar experiment. Here are two images, the PBR version took about 5 minutes and I ran it through photoshop as well to help with colors, contrasts curves etc. The RT version took about 3o minutes to render, I was going for a HI-DEF file as this was being printed. There are some details that I love about the PBR, however I couldn’t get the glass around the pendant lights to look clear nor the home sign on top of the cabinets to display black as in the RT version. You will notice that in the RT version the metals do not look the best but hopefully that is being addressed with the final release of X10. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheryl_C_Crane Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 Graham, I played with the glass by changing the property to General Material > Transparency 50% to be able to 'see' it on a glass coffee table with PBR. HTH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted February 13, 2018 Author Share Posted February 13, 2018 22 hours ago, Cheryl_C_Crane said: Graham, I played with the glass by changing the property to General Material > Transparency 50% to be able to 'see' it on a glass coffee table with PBR. HTH Thanks Cheryl - Here is the Fire-Ice-Kitchen using the General Materials Properties for the glass. Definitely helped, what's interesting is that it seems to do a better job on objects with horizontal surfaces such as the glass sheet in the island pendant. Vertical surfaces such as the wine glasses on the island or in the cabinet above the fridge don't come out as well, but certainly better than using the Glass Material Properties. I also changed the material properties for the stainless steel, used Shiny Metal and added a texture with slight horizontal lines in it. This was used on the fridge, stove, stove vent and island pendant light. My other postings of this scene used a texture file and the General Materials Properties, looked a bit lifeless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 Graham, this is a great thread you started. I would like to learn some stuff here. I have played with PBR very very little..... I take a shot and do nothing more.... results not worth using. The questions is..... does it take a lot of fiddling around with settings to get a reasonable view? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rispgiu Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 5 minutes ago, dshall said: Graham, this is a great thread you started. I would like to learn some stuff here. I have played with PBR very very little..... I take a shot and do nothing more.... results not worth using. The questions is..... does it take a lot of fiddling around with settings to get a reasonable view? Considering my video card is not one of the best, I find it a lot easier and faster than RT. You can on average get an image to look pretty good within 5-10 minutes. The biggest advantage in my opinion is that you can see those changes almost immediately where with RT you would need to run the image through the rendering process to see the applied changes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rispgiu Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 Do you guys think the lines along the walls and ceilings are due to my graphic card? I have saved the PBR as an image at about 1200x... no lines I then saved it as a much larger version just to test it out and I got the lines. I am currently running it through RT and I am not getting any lines. Thoughts? gardenia02:13:18.plan.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 8 minutes ago, dshall said: Graham, this is a great thread you started. I would like to learn some stuff here. I have played with PBR very very little..... I take a shot and do nothing more.... results not worth using. The questions is..... does it take a lot of fiddling around with settings to get a reasonable view? Got a couple good results - better than RT. Not sure this is the best example but the process is the same. Must have your materials and lights figured out as in a RT so it's more work than a 'standard' render but the results are pretty good. Here's a short vid that may help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 8 minutes ago, rispgiu said: Do you guys think the lines along the walls and ceilings are due to my graphic card? I have saved the PBR as an image at about 1200x... no lines I then saved it as a much larger version just to test it out and I got the lines. I am currently running it through RT and I am not getting any lines. Thoughts? gardenia02:13:18.plan.zip Never seen those lines unless my walls/floors are not lined up perfectly and/or there are breaks in the walls Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 Another super basic video... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay_on_Cape Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 Are the exterior textures like grass any better than say the ones in X8? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 Just now, Jay_on_Cape said: Are the exterior textures like grass any better than say the ones in X8? Probably not and I think bump maps are the key to great grass but I'm not very learned in such things. Jintu has a couple great grass videos/textures somewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 MIGHT have improved this scene a bit with more and modified lights but still a noob at best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted February 13, 2018 Author Share Posted February 13, 2018 56 minutes ago, dshall said: Graham, this is a great thread you started. I would like to learn some stuff here. I have played with PBR very very little..... I take a shot and do nothing more.... results not worth using. The questions is..... does it take a lot of fiddling around with settings to get a reasonable view? Appreciate it Scott - I'm finding that as with Ray Trace light settings and Material properties really impact on the quality of the output. The advantage is that the changes can be seen within about 10 seconds. As I have gotten into this a bit further I'm really liking it more and more. Here's a sample, this is of an existing home that I'm modeling up for the client so they can start the interior design process. I just made a few simple adjustment in a photo editor to sharpen it a smidge and fine tune the color saturation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkMc Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 37 minutes ago, rispgiu said: Do you guys think the lines along the walls and ceilings are due to my graphic card? Change the half wall to "stop at ceiling above". I first changed the invisible walls to room dividers since those have caused issues for me in the past with PBR,not sure it that matters. First one is with room dividers- still shows line, second is after changing the half wall. Think the first one was exported at 3000 wide 300 dpi. second was 3000, 600 dpi. There was no saved camera in there just the walk through BTW. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 8 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said: Appreciate it Scott - I'm finding that as with Ray Trace light settings and Material properties really impact on the quality of the output. The advantage is that the changes can be seen within about 10 seconds. As I have gotten into this a bit further I'm really liking it more and more. Here's a sample, this is of an existing home that I'm modeling up for the client so they can start the interior design process. I just made a few simple adjustment in a photo editor to sharpen it a smidge and fine tune the color saturation. Graham, Are there 'general lights' that can be placed within a floor space that don't specify a fixture? I thought we previously had that ability and I would like to place random lights within a floor space, say 48" down from the ceiling, to brighten a space without it having to be 'recessed' or other specific light fixture. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkMc Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 7 minutes ago, HumbleChief said: Are there 'general lights' that can be placed within a floor space that don't specify a fixture? yes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 4 minutes ago, MarkMc said: yes DOH! Haven't used those tools for a very long time - thanks for the help and reminder!!! Curious Mark, do you depend on those lights as much or more than your fixtures for lighting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitchenAbode Posted February 13, 2018 Author Share Posted February 13, 2018 Just now, HumbleChief said: Graham, Are there 'general lights' that can be placed within a floor space that don't specify a fixture? I thought we previously had that ability and I would like to place random lights within a floor space, say 48" down from the ceiling, to brighten a space without it having to be 'recessed' or other specific light fixture. Thanks Hi Larry, I'm still playing around but what I did here was similar to your comment. There are a number of 3D point lights placed through the floor area, their height is 48" and their intensity is 50 Lumens. I use these to control the overall ambient. 1/3rd of them have shadows turned on, the ones with shadows turned off soften the shadows created by the ones with shadows turned on. I find that the default sun Lumens are way too high, in this scene I turned down the sunlight to 600 Lux. In the PBR settings I have the Exposure set at 0.25 and the Brightness at 20. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 1 minute ago, TheKitchenAbode said: Hi Larry, I'm still playing around but what I did here was similar to your comment. There are a number of 3D point lights placed through the floor area, their height is 48" and their intensity is 50 Lumens. I use these to control the overall ambient. 1/3rd of them have shadows turned on, the ones with shadows turned off soften the shadows created by the ones with shadows turned on. I find that the default sun Lumens are way too high, in this scene I turned down the sunlight to 600 Lux. In the PBR settings I have the Exposure set at 0.25 and the Brightness at 20. Thanks for the help!! I haven't played around with lighting for literally years but just had it come up with a client and trying my best to get a good result but having only spotty luck. Your settings and help are useful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumbleChief Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 Curious side note - after spending a lot of time to get a decent render for my client he preferred the watercolor render over any of the more realistic renders. Who knew... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VisualDandD Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 I do WC w/ line for all the client drawings. I am pretty well versed in ray trace as well as using outside rendering products which I have used and produced some very good quality work....but, I cant see going photorealistic as being worth it. It takes 10 times longer (or more) to really get a good photorealistic render and I feel the the watercolor does just as good a job. Sometimes I think it is better as you dont get distracted by minor things that are not really important to the design. Just my observation. 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrisb222 Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 51 minutes ago, Jay_on_Cape said: Are the exterior textures like grass any better than say the ones in X8? You want seamless textures. Do a Google search for "seamless grass textures" there are tons of free ones. Anything that looks bad with a repeating texture -- shingles, brick, stone, grass -- looks 10x more realistic with seamless textures. NOT stock Chief textures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rispgiu Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 52 minutes ago, MarkMc said: Change the half wall to "stop at ceiling above". I first changed the invisible walls to room dividers since those have caused issues for me in the past with PBR,not sure it that matters. First one is with room dividers- still shows line, second is after changing the half wall. Think the first one was exported at 3000 wide 300 dpi. second was 3000, 600 dpi. There was no saved camera in there just the walk through BTW. Thank you Mark, any solution for the wall on the right? You are right about the saved camera, I deleted it thinking it was me not setting the camera right and deleted it wanting to start fresh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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