Been updating my interior and exterior surfaces, with some new techniques. Don't think I've saved any time, probably slowed it down haha
Anyway after some (valid) criticism that the brushed metal texture was too large, I got it more appropriately scaled, and added some floor texture too. Quite a few false starts and crashes with this, for some reason, so it's been several hot days, in a heatwave, in my room
The heatwave might have crashed your PC, the fans can only cope with so much, so hot house and video card on maximum might be straining it to the limit.
The heatwave might have crashed your PC, the fans can only cope with so much, so hot house and video card on maximum might be straining it to the limit.
Te best one was 2 days ago, I set the render off overnight, which superheated my room, and meant I didn't sleep well.. So I got up the next day. shook the mouse to wake up the monitor.... wouldn't - I couldn't get the computer to come back awake.. I hadn't set the render to auto-save... so I lost everything. Had to do the render again.. took 7.45 hours... didn't really like it LOL, shaved an hour off the next render though LOL.. and then I realised my normal maps were inverted, so I had to region-render the floor.. What an adventure!
I have my computer set to automatically go to sleep after an hour or so. For some reason it doesn't seem to care if I'm rendering or not because I've gone to bed and woken up in the morning to find the computer had gone to sleep in the middle of a render. Pretty disappointing.
I have mine set to never go to sleep, because if it's on.. it's doing something. First time this has happened, and the last time I did a render, it didn't do it either (since) so goodness knows what happened. I double checked my power save settings, and nothing's different. very odd!
I just looked at an older picture of the one you just posted. The new surfaces are muuuuch better. Everything overall looks improved. I really wish I knew how to grade and post process my pics like yours.
Yeah it's weird. I used to looooove that old render, and then I did this one, and it's so much better. Weird!
Just messing on really. The main thing is to keep everything in float for as long as possible, so you don't get too much banding issues. The main grading is just a touch of colour tint, and a S shaped gradient to crunch down the blacks and bring contrast. Obviously the materials being better here helped, much more metallic.
I always thought that those metal materials are a bit ... too much. I didn't dare to say anything before 'cause you are one of the gods in here and I know almost nothing about CG Work but now you decided on your own to change it I have to say the new material looks so much better ... actually it's pretty mind-blowing ... can't take my eyes of it ... (ahm shut up wibble) ...
Haha, nah, I'm just a traveller on the road. If anyone has any thoughts on how I can improve stuff, feel free to jump in! I'm not a god, and I don't like people who act like one either
Thanks though, yeah I am pleased with the new surfacing.. Might be time to use it elsewhere
At least I can resume rendering from sleep mode... on the odd occasion when I do a render {was going to say overnight, but the first part is rare enough already}, since I hate the sound of the thing I have a tendency to put the thing in sleep mode overnight and then start it off in the morning to leave it running whilst I'm at work. Fine for stills, but then I've never yet done an animation so...
It normally has come back before, first time it didn't do it Hmm, annoying!
Not had much time to do rendering owing to having visitors, and someone appears to have moved the earth into the coronasphere of the sun Far too hot for rendering!
Sounds like it is time for some closed loop cooling solutions? Granted I have AC running but on days when the house was 83 with the ac on I am able to render any time keeping my oldish 930 below 70c the whole time. I know your in the UK so you probably do not have AC even window units but I doubt you get 115f temps outside. Then again. . . . . O_o;' I do have to say I am so happy that my pc is NOT in my bedroom. Because I do have a closed loop the rad really is like a heater vent. Great in the winters, but not so great when it blows on you in the summer.
Cannot say much on sleep states since I turn it all over before doing long renders. I have had issue with the screensaver not shutting down and releasing to the desktop. Or having it crash and blank screen everything.
As always loving all the reflected and bounced light. Are all the exterior glow bits materials are any gizmos involved? In max I really have to watch what I do with lum shaders since they can go all whacky when attempting heavy lighting exp in some of those cracks and notches you have on the exterior. Still would love to have a easily set up rig to do all the flaring. IRML has tried in the past but some of it just flys over my head.
Yeah AC is pretty rare in the UK, and expensive, I doubt I could afford it. Right now I would kill for it as we're on a bit of a heatwave!
With regards to your glow shaders, yes I have noticed how you've been improving your glows of late, but I am guessing it's the native methods, some sort of glint/glare shader. TBH, I suspect that our method works similarly, it's just getting the balance and settings right, and getting the global intensity right. IRML and I use similar methods to do our lens effects, though he's gone further with it, doing more lens elements. It's all post effects, done in AE. The high-dynamic-range of the renders, and the tonemapping is another important element too, to get that filmic-look. The trouble is, it is just really complicated to explain!
AC if you do it get a window jobbie. I think it probably costs me about mmm 10usd a mo. The house AC with old condensers and compressors are what kill something near $1usd per hour. What a AC really helps with are those days when MR humidity visits. Probably in the UK something that would strip the humidity might help loads.
There is a lens effect in max called glare that I sometimes use but it is a bit wonk and fails if I remember in animations. I have fooled about in AE but the only results I have manged are a horrible mess of layers of stuff stacked up with various filters and crap. So pretty much I just run off a self light pass clean that up and use it to do any lens effects to the high points. I am just too damned lazy to go into ae for a 4k+ image and force it to spit that out. Likely it is much easier to rig up and shove images through than what I am doing atm.
I am sure the fact I use max does not help since terminology seems to shift about. Max HDR refers to the use of a environmental map to add reflective content to the render. I am sure you are meaning a special output of the image. To which I have never found in the users guide/manual.
Hmm yes, the way I do my flares is pretty stable for animation. I did one, looked ok I should do more, but it's so slow! but yeah AE's major kryptonite is high resolutions. I hit a resolution where it just fails, and it's very frustrating, and I wish I could afford a better solution, but that would likely be expensive!
HDR, or High dynamic range, just refers to file formats that aren't clamped from 0-1, and usually saved in floating point (32 bits per pixel, or half float) formats, such as HDR, EXR, Photoshop (post CS3) and some versions of Tiff. 1,1,1, or 'white' is entirely arbitrary. Nature doesn't look / work like that, and it's hard to get into that mindset. Choosing a white point is something you should do in post, and then tonemap the image, to stop 'clamping' errors. The trouble is most apps don't handle them correctly. Photoshop handling of 32 bit float is horrible: Half the filters and adjustments don't work! I recall having this discussion with another Max user about how tricky it was to get HDR images out of max, and for them not to be clamped. Most renderers work entirely in float, but then 'bake' a response curve into the image (just like digital cameras do), and clamp the output from 0-1. (file format can be a red herring, as saving as an EXR could still be saving it as a linear float image, but clamped at 1). LW will do this if you use certain settings, but, normally it will output a 'raw' HDR image, if you save with a float-compatible image saver. The downside to this is AA round very bright pixels is problematic, if you don't clamp the output, and I've had a lot of issues with this.
mmm odd I always had issue in MR of getting a white point, it is always a light gray when exposure is set to avoid clipping and I have to adjust things a bit in post. Yes, ps is terrible with anything 32bit. Max 2010 has hdr and exr with various settings tiff only have bit depth and looses alpha in 32bit SGI LogLUV mode. I dork about with these and see what I can get. I'll google about so see what there is for optional viewers and manipulators outside of CS5. I have a sneaky hunch I should not be using any exposure control. Since I think it does as you say bakes a curve into the output.
I probably should open a thread for this vs highjacking your wip thread.
How much cpu memory does doing one of these renders eat up? If it is less than 6gb then is the possibility of using Octane on a 6gb NVidia card like a titan become viable? Next year Nvidia will be releasing the Maxwell based gpu and that prossibly has 8gb of ram, which if it does might be a game changer for rendering.
Some new renders, it's been a while, but I finally got some done, as I am getting happy with the geometry round there. Still needs a little work, as it looks like a scale model a little, not quite sure how to fix that?!
As to why it might look like a scale model, have you tried futzing with depth of field? I've no idea if that'll make things better or worse, to be honest. Alternately, your surface quality is quite uniform across the whole thing. Might serve to add a very, very light grunge map across those smooth white surfaces, in particular.
Posts
it's not quite at 'real' yet, but I do try, need more complex shaders, and some more texturing
Anyway after some (valid) criticism that the brushed metal texture was too large, I got it more appropriately scaled, and added some floor texture too. Quite a few false starts and crashes with this, for some reason, so it's been several hot days, in a heatwave, in my room
The heatwave might have crashed your PC, the fans can only cope with so much, so hot house and video card on maximum might be straining it to the limit.
:l
The new surfaces look great tobian!
I just looked at an older picture of the one you just posted. The new surfaces are muuuuch better. Everything overall looks improved. I really wish I knew how to grade and post process my pics like yours.
Just messing on really. The main thing is to keep everything in float for as long as possible, so you don't get too much banding issues. The main grading is just a touch of colour tint, and a S shaped gradient to crunch down the blacks and bring contrast. Obviously the materials being better here helped, much more metallic.
Thanks though, yeah I am pleased with the new surfacing.. Might be time to use it elsewhere
please do!
Looks great indeed
Not had much time to do rendering owing to having visitors, and someone appears to have moved the earth into the coronasphere of the sun
Cannot say much on sleep states since I turn it all over before doing long renders. I have had issue with the screensaver not shutting down and releasing to the desktop. Or having it crash and blank screen everything.
As always loving all the reflected and bounced light. Are all the exterior glow bits materials are any gizmos involved? In max I really have to watch what I do with lum shaders since they can go all whacky when attempting heavy lighting exp in some of those cracks and notches you have on the exterior. Still would love to have a easily set up rig to do all the flaring. IRML has tried in the past but some of it just flys over my head.
With regards to your glow shaders, yes I have noticed how you've been improving your glows of late, but I am guessing it's the native methods, some sort of glint/glare shader. TBH, I suspect that our method works similarly, it's just getting the balance and settings right, and getting the global intensity right. IRML and I use similar methods to do our lens effects, though he's gone further with it, doing more lens elements. It's all post effects, done in AE. The high-dynamic-range of the renders, and the tonemapping is another important element too, to get that filmic-look. The trouble is, it is just really complicated to explain!
There is a lens effect in max called glare that I sometimes use but it is a bit wonk and fails if I remember in animations. I have fooled about in AE but the only results I have manged are a horrible mess of layers of stuff stacked up with various filters and crap. So pretty much I just run off a self light pass clean that up and use it to do any lens effects to the high points. I am just too damned lazy to go into ae for a 4k+ image and force it to spit that out. Likely it is much easier to rig up and shove images through than what I am doing atm.
I am sure the fact I use max does not help since terminology seems to shift about. Max HDR refers to the use of a environmental map to add reflective content to the render. I am sure you are meaning a special output of the image. To which I have never found in the users guide/manual.
HDR, or High dynamic range, just refers to file formats that aren't clamped from 0-1, and usually saved in floating point (32 bits per pixel, or half float) formats, such as HDR, EXR, Photoshop (post CS3) and some versions of Tiff. 1,1,1, or 'white' is entirely arbitrary. Nature doesn't look / work like that, and it's hard to get into that mindset. Choosing a white point is something you should do in post, and then tonemap the image, to stop 'clamping' errors. The trouble is most apps don't handle them correctly. Photoshop handling of 32 bit float is horrible: Half the filters and adjustments don't work! I recall having this discussion with another Max user about how tricky it was to get HDR images out of max, and for them not to be clamped. Most renderers work entirely in float, but then 'bake' a response curve into the image (just like digital cameras do), and clamp the output from 0-1. (file format can be a red herring, as saving as an EXR could still be saving it as a linear float image, but clamped at 1). LW will do this if you use certain settings, but, normally it will output a 'raw' HDR image, if you save with a float-compatible image saver. The downside to this is AA round very bright pixels is problematic, if you don't clamp the output, and I've had a lot of issues with this.
I probably should open a thread for this vs highjacking your wip thread.
Ok a new render, with the new materials, and a little more post grading.
Who's doing your control and console screens?
As to why it might look like a scale model, have you tried futzing with depth of field? I've no idea if that'll make things better or worse, to be honest. Alternately, your surface quality is quite uniform across the whole thing. Might serve to add a very, very light grunge map across those smooth white surfaces, in particular.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog