Let's PBR

[KirkClemons]

On 2/13/2018 at 11:06 AM, Jay_on_Cape said:

Are the exterior textures like grass any better than say the ones in X8?

There some new HD textures in the Core Catalogs, and Bonus Catalogs that you can use. You can also try to enhance the grass with Normal or Bump maps.

 

Otherwise, using actual 3D grass is the only other alternative. I created a basic catalog of 3D grass and imported into Chief, Attached. I generally use this with the Distributed objects polyline to duplicate it at random angles over an area.

3d-grass.calibz

[rispgiu]

On 2/20/2018 at 9:57 AM, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

So far PBR results have been all over the map, including my own. I'm finding it to be a mixed bag, there are things in the PBR that I like and then some that I don't. I'm in the camp with rispgiu, was hoping that PBR would provide a faster way to make material adjustments and then if needed we could Ray Trace the scene for even better results. Looks like this is not going to be the case and I suspect in the long run Ray Trace will be dropped and PBR will be CA's sole rendering system.

I am really having a love hate relationship with PBR. I think its a great product, it definitely provides a great alternative to RT, however I feel it was introduced at the expense of RT instead of updating RT. 

[KirkClemons]

1 minute ago, rispgiu said:

I am really having a love hate relationship with PBR. I think its a great product, it definitely provides a great alternative to RT, however I feel it was introduced at the expense of RT instead of updating RT. 

 

Well, actually there were several updates to ray tracing to make the material and lighting support more consistent between the two.

Ray tracing now supports the PBR textures same as the PBR rendering technique. At this point, the number of materials that contain these textures is fairly limited though.

[rispgiu]

8 minutes ago, KirkClemons said:

 

Well, actually there were several updates to ray tracing to make the material and lighting support more consistent between the two.

Ray tracing now supports the PBR textures same as the PBR rendering technique. At this point, the number of materials that contain these textures is fairly limited though.

I appreciate your comments, and I have definitely seen a difference between the beta version and the final release version. 

However I am finding inconsistencies in both, mostly on metals and other polished materials. I could share samples if you'd like

[KirkClemons]

Samples are certainly welcome, I believe that was the original intent of this thread. But, it is worth noting that the Physically Based rendering technique was not intended to replace ray tracing. The two are mutually exclusive in terms of capabilities.

[rispgiu]

Please keep in mind these are large images, I am planning to print them

The exterior images, same camera, same settings, the only difference one is PBR the other is RT, the RT version took 2 hours VS 5 minutes for the PBR (settings etc) 

RT looks great, PBR, not so much. 

Interior, First image it looks very cartoonish, it is mostly the brass metal on the wall, I am running an RT right now and it looks much better. 

PBR-Living-Kitchen, that looks great! PBR all the way!

Hallway, looks flat, lines on the ceilings and walls, I am planning on trying with RT. 

 

[Gawdzira]

This is a PBR image. Is there a way to get the shadows lighter? Also, I am having the white out issue if I switch to or open the the camera with the Global Illumination checked. Is PBR best for interiors and questionable for exteriors?

[TheKitchenAbode]

14 hours ago, KirkClemons said:

 

Well, actually there were several updates to ray tracing to make the material and lighting support more consistent between the two.

Ray tracing now supports the PBR textures same as the PBR rendering technique. At this point, the number of materials that contain these textures is fairly limited though.

 

Not sure that there is more "consistency" between PBR and Ray Tracing in respect to material properties unless this is in the context that they work in both. What I have found is that the degree to which they render varies greatly between the two rendering methods; polished, glass, reflectivity(specular) and bump maps are prime examples. If their properties are adjusted to look reasonable in PBR then they do not look good in Ray Trace and vice versa.

 

Lighting is also another area where there seems to be a disconnect between the two rendering methods. Again, settings for one do not often result in similar results in the other. 

[TheKitchenAbode]

6 minutes ago, Gawdzira said:

This is a PBR image. Is there a way to get the shadows lighter? Also, I am having the white out issue if I switch to or open the the camera with the Global Illumination checked. Is PBR best for interiors and questionable for exteriors?

 

The only method I have found to soften those PBR shadows on exterior shots is to place a spot light or point light outside and positioned to throw light at those shadows. I usually have their shadows turned off so they do not create conflicting shadows.

[TheKitchenAbode]

Here is an example of an exterior PBR with two additional point lights added to overcome those strong shadows.

 

PBR with sun only.

 

PBR with sun and two exterior point lights, one in front and one on the right side.

 

The two exterior point lights have their shadows turned off, are placed about 25' high and about 25' away from the structure. The shadow depth can be altered by adjusting the intensity of the two point lights.

[HumbleChief]

Very hellpful thread - Thanks

[Kbird1]

5 hours ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

Not sure that there is more "consistency" between PBR and Ray Tracing in respect to material properties unless this is in the context that they work in both. What I have found is that the degree to which they render varies greatly between the two rendering methods; polished, glass, reflectivity(specular) and bump maps are prime examples. If their properties are adjusted to look reasonable in PBR then they do not look good in Ray Trace and vice versa.

 

Lighting is also another area where there seems to be a disconnect between the two rendering methods. Again, settings for one do not often result in similar results in the other. 

 

I think what Kirk was saying is they have Updated the two different Rendering Engines, but as yet there are very few Materials which leverage the new Rendering Engines and we will just have to wait, till they are updated too ....hopefully not to X11....

 

 

[Kbird1]

Looks like there was an Earthquake in my Area last night anyone else seeing this kind of thing in PBR

 

[rispgiu]

3 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

Looks like there was an Earthquake in my Area last night anyone else seeing this kind of thing in PBR

 

I havens seen that but I randomly get lines along the walls and ceilings. 

The only thing remotely close to yours is when I work a PBR image in photoshop, certain adjustments will create something similar to what you are getting. I am not really sure this helps you at all lol

[TheKitchenAbode]

30 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

Looks like there was an Earthquake in my Area last night anyone else seeing this kind of thing in PBR

 

 

Here's another example of some strange thing. Check just where the two recessed lights cast onto the wall, jagged shadow/shading. This comes and goes as the camera is moved around.

 

 

[Kbird1]

37 minutes ago, TheKitchenAbode said:

 

Here's another example of some strange thing. Check just where the two recessed lights cast onto the wall, jagged shadow/shading. This comes and goes as the camera is moved around.

 

 

 

Great , earthquake here damaging my walls and your Potlights are growing Teeth  

 

It is a positional thing , might be the Potlights causing it in Mine too?.  I think mine are from the new Chief Library though , as I had issues with some out of my User Library during the Bathroom Reno ,especially on the Sloped Ceilings , while the X10 Library one worked as expected.

 

M.

[TheKitchenAbode]

18 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

 

Great , earthquake here damaging my walls and your Potlights are growing Teeth  

 

It is a positional thing , might be the Potlights causing it in Mine too?.  I think mine are from the new Chief Library though , as I had issues with some out of my User Library during the Bathroom Reno ,especially on the Sloped Ceilings , while the X10 Library one worked as expected.

 

M.

 

It certainly seems that in PBR there is a high degree of sensitivity concerning the cameras position. In a PBR you can see some drastic changes in light intensity, and material properties as the camera is being moved around. I believe this is due to PBR's heavy reliance on sun light entering the room as both directional and indirect light. As such, it can be a bit challenging if you are shooting the same room from several differing camera angles. Also, when making material changes the effect you see will depend on the particular camera you are using at the time, switch to another camera and the material can look completely different, especial with those polished and reflective ones.

[TheKitchenAbode]

Here is my experience with PBR on my first real project.

 

This is an existing home that required modeling and the generation of a conceptual main floor. Everything is CA including all objects and materials. All scenes are generated using the new PBR camera feature.

 

Here are the resulting scenes.

 

Work Flow

Working with multiple PBR camera view windows was extremely frustrating and very time consuming. The main issue here is that every time a window is activated the PBR regeneration occurs and this results in a 15-20 second delay each and every time. Also, when making any changes in an active PBR window it automatically forces a regeneration, another 15-20 second delay. The big problem is that this PBR regeneration is initiated for each and every change, there is no way that I know of to perform multiple changes and then manually initiate the PBR regeneration. I would estimate that between the 7 scenes I easily made more than 100 changes to objects, materials and lighting, which at say 15 seconds per change results in at least 25 minutes of regeneration time, this does not take into account the number of times I flipped back and forth between windows. What makes this even more frustrating is the fact that while the PBR regeneration is taking place CA is in full lock-down mode, no other work can be done during this process.

 

Lighting

Lighting was very challenging and required considerable tweaking to get things under control. As with Ray Tracing, lighting is extremely crucial to how materials will appear and shadow strength. The sun intensity was a major issue as I was generating both interior and exterior scenes. An intensity that looked good on the interior resulted in an exterior that was way over lit and as the sun intensity settings are global there is no way to have specific sun settings assigned to a particular camera.

 

Material Properties

Extremely challenging. Unfortunately, I found the little tea pot a very poor indicator of how a material will look when making changes in the material properties DBX. As such, the scene needed to be regenerated for each change for me to really see the change(s) affect. Also, as the materials properties appear to be highly sensitive to camera/light angles there were many times when I needed to flip between window views or zoom/pan to check out the effect, anther 15-20 second delay each and every time.

 

Computer Resource Usage

Very demanding on everything CPU, GPU and RAM. I actively monitored this throughout the process, as the number of PBR windows increased and the lighting complexity grew so did the computer resource usage and the time to regenerate a PBR. RAM usage was a really big surprise, never a problem before but when PBR'ing my meager 8GB was easily overwhelmed and the swapfile kicked in all the time causing further slowdowns. Every PBR regeneration maxed out my GPU which again results in slowness. The other issue with this high resource usage is that it also affected other programs such as my browser which became sluggish during PBR regeneration, likely due to my GPU being maxed out.

 

Conclusion

Despite all of these frustrations, I was reasonably pleased with the end result and would say they are as good as what I would have expect from a Ray Trace. Did I save any time over Ray Tracing, not sure and it is likely to early to say, would need more time to learn the lighting and material properties as they relate to PBR'ing.

 

Recommendations

1.) Make PBR regeneration manually activated so multiple changes can be made before regeneration.

2.) Allow windows/tabs to be changed/flipped without forcing a PBR regeneration.

3.) Improve the tea pot display reference to provide a better indication of a material property change.

4.) Restrict or allow us to allocate PBR resource usage, similar to core assignment in Ray Trace.

5.) Allow each camera to have individual settings for all camera related elements including the sun.

 

 

 

 

[parkwest]

My PBR's appear instantaneously.  Not sure what the time delay is being caused by on your system.  Is it the video card???

[TheKitchenAbode]

Just now, parkwest said:

My PBR's appear instantaneously.  Not sure what the time delay is being caused by on your system.  Is it the video card???

 

I suspect it is the video card, it maxes out at 100% while the CPU is only about 25%. Also, it will depend on how many active lights you are using, the more lights the longer it will take.

[parkwest]

Yeah, looking at your hardware, the video card stood out to me as maybe being the weak link.

 

I'm doing the 100 lights routine, if that helps you at all.

[TheKitchenAbode]

Just now, parkwest said:

Yeah, looking at your hardware, the video card stood out to me as maybe being the weak link.

 

I'm doing the 100 lights routine, if that helps you at all.

I'm looking to upgrade the video card but the prices right now are killing me.

 

Are you actually using 100 lights or is that the setting you have in the DBX. If it is just in the DBX then it has no impact, all it's doing is telling the PBR to include all lights up to 100 lights if you have that many in your plan that are turned on and assigned to that camera.

[parkwest]

I've posted rooms with a bunch of lights on and one kitchen with only the pendant light over the island and sun light... either way, no delay in render speed.

[TheKitchenAbode]

7 minutes ago, parkwest said:

I've posted rooms with a bunch of lights on and one kitchen with only the pendant light over the island and sun light... either way, no delay in render speed.

 

That's interesting. I'm running one now that has 60 active lights and the PBR takes about 18 seconds to complete. I don't mind the time per say, it's just that I can't do anything else in CA until this process is over.

[rispgiu]

I've been rendering 17x11 300 DPI (for print) with a maximum of 20 lights on. It takes between 3-5 minutes to render, (export the image) it is probably due to my graphic card as well. 

One thing I am truly enjoying is the walkthrough videos in PBR

 

I've attached some of the renders.