Please help me improve this image, I have a few more days before it goes to print.
A few suggestions I can give for your settings:
- Increase Ray Bounces to a higher value like 16, more bounces help with Interior mode even if you don't have lots of layers of transparency
- Shadow Quality - Increase to 2 or 3, this gives you more accurate shadows.
- Caustics - Is this necessary for the scene? If not I would turn it off.
From your other post I saw that your material settings may be unnecessarily high. I usually render with a maximum of 32 for material samples, and usually something like 16 or 24. This includes your area light settings (why 32?) and may explain why your screen samples are so low after almost 15 hours. Just because you can increase the material samples doesn't mean you're going to get much return, it's just going to make your rendering take longer.
Usually with lower material samples you can set high values for your Max Samples, it's not uncommon for an interior scene to be 500 or 100 samples or more.
Thanks Richard, I will adjust my settings. This scene is rendering much faster since I switched to Interior Mode.
If I have a material set to 16 Samples and my Render Quality is set to 32 Samples, does that 32 apply globally and override the lower material setting?
Next question: what does the Samples setting on Area Lights affect? Does it affect how the light is cast on other materials or just how the camera sees the light geometry itself?
Thanks for the help,
Jamie
Material Samples are different than your Screen samples and control different parameters. Generally speaking, the material samples will control the quality of a specific material, and that value is independent of of your screen samples. A higher screen sample value does not override your material, too-low material settings will give you lower quality results regardless of screen samples ( A reason that renderings can take longer but not actually be better!).
I honestly don't touch the Area Light samples, and if I do it's to something like 12 or 16. To my knowledge it's the same slider: it controls your material quality but the details I don't know. A good question for our dev team :) Instead I make sure that I have Interior Mode, plenty of Ray Bounces, higher shadow quality, and set the screen samples to a higher value.
I know the pressure! Couple of suggestions...
I'm missing an "orange glow" in the interior from the beautiful sunset. Maybe try tweaking the light colors a bit toward the yellow-orange? Or perhaps a warm photo filter in post? I presume you pull a clown at the same time, which makes it easy to isolate the filter to only the seats and stuff.
When I render interior mode (which is often) I usually use maximum time. I feel I have better results. You can estimate the time by letting it burn in realtime and use that as a guide, adding a bit. I run 32 cores, and an image like this at 3000 wide would cook for about 12-15 minutes. Varies of course on the number of cores.
My eye is drawn to the perfect mirror image of the seat belts. Is there any way to move one of them around a bit to break this mirror?
Have you tried a shot with the HDR turned totally off, or zero brightness? It might surprise you!
Beautiful model, and great lighting! Be sure to post the finals!
Bill G
Woah! Hope you'll share the final piece:) Looks really nice.
@Richard: Thanks for the info! Always wondered about the difference between render and material samples. Lot of other great samples tips there as well. I gotta fly over the pond for one of your courses soon!
Hmmm,looks really cool! I agree with Magnus,really like to see the final result.
Thanks for the information too guys.
I'd also recommend slightly more contrast in the backplate (assuming it's not an HDRI). In a photo of a setting sun (not one that's been bracketed and edited), the dynamic range is quite high, making the darker (in your case purple) clouds/sky darker compared to the nearly white of the sun. Small detail here, but just thought I'd share that. If you do so, be careful to not let the sun area become too blown-out and all white.
Very nice rendering so far.
This is looking great! Use to be in the VIP interior industry, so great to see! Look forward to the final version!
So is this a dumb thing to do? I'm using a plane with my backplate image (set to Emissive) because it allowed me to adjust the size and position of the sunset. Will, your comment about backplate lighting has me wondering if I'm doing this the best way.
Jamie
I'm adding my Crew Area image for comment, thanks for all the great feedback so far -
Sweet!
But, do you have seats? I feel that you need them, especially as related to the sticks and pedals. If they are out of sight in the foreground, then the crew would have to have very long legs! Cockpits are usually quite cramped for space.
Also, having seen sunsets (sunrises) from this vantage point, I feel your backplate is way too blurred. At altitude the clouds and stuff are usually quite well defined. This is less noticeable in the long shots.
Not sure what to say about the backplate plane. I often use them for an image, just as you have, but was the last image rendered with this as an emissive? If so, it appears to work.
Keep 'em coming!
Bill G
Bill, thanks for the comments. I do have seats but this photos (for a print brochure) currently requires I leave them out, though I'm resisting that. As for the blurred background, you're right, it's weird. But if you're taking a photo with DOF, that's what you would see. If I leave the seats out, I can get rid of the blur. Here's a screenshot with seats in, DOF turned off, and the background moved farther away.
To me the perspective of the sky looks a bit flatter than what we see in real life.
Maybe a curved surface for the backplate image?
Looking way better! The seats are worth fighting for, and I don't understand why the client would not want them, as it's what it's about!
However, be very careful with the moiré effect on the left side of the seat cushions. This is a common problem with square-weave and hounds tooth fabrics. Unless this is a specified material, maybe a leather? It seems odd that a fabric would be used in the cockpit anyway.
QuoteMaybe a curved surface for the backplate image?
Great idea! As is, it appears to be at about 5,000 to 10,000 foot altitude, like just after takeoff. But this bad boy would be happy cruising at likely 50,000 feet, where there is a distinct curvature to the earth. Also, a bit of curvature would visually relate to the general curvature of the windscreen. But maybe this could be easily done just by "warping" the backplate in Photoshop? You can pull a target size render without the model, and a quickie with the model. Place the backplate only over the quickie add a bit of transparency- then warp it "to fit". I often do this to tweak a backplate in context.
You may want to tweak the color of the sticks just a tiny bit (or add some specularity) to separate them from the panel.
I'm still in favor of a very slight warming filter to the interior only.
Bill G
Here are the final versions I completed before deadline. Thanks for all the help and feedback, I think it's much improved with fixes I would not have noticed or otherwise endeavored to improve -
Jamie
Hey JAKiii,
The results look really nice!! Thanks for sharing, it's always great to see the final result. You nailed the lighting on these, well done :)
Also, the number of materials & complexity of the scenes themselves (especially the crew area) can be tough to manage and this is a great example of it being handled well. Awesome work!
I agree with Richard completely - The lighting looks beautiful. Well done sir!
QuoteWell done sir!
I totally agree! A beautiful job! And now that I see the finished brochure I understand why the client did not want the cockpit seats.
Super job!
Bill G