I just saw the KS 4.1 beta sample images from the Metal Master himself and I felt like sharing some of my own.
I've been experimenting primarily with the new focussed caustics that work with any material and light source (HDRI, point light, area light...).
Focussed caustics is seriously good stuff! This is a feature I've been longing for since I first started using KeyShot.
I'm pretty sure you will like this feature just as much as I do. ;)
I think it will prove invaluable to anyone rendering jewelry, glassware, liquids, lighting fixtures... you name it...
Like the images below show, they enable you to literally paint your scene with light. So cool.
Check this VR to see what I mean by 'painting with light':
KeyShot 4.1 - Caustics showcase in light box VR (http://driesv.dommel.be/KeyShotVR-contest/KS41-Caustics-light-box/KS41-Caustics-light-box.html)
Description of images:
All images are screenshots from the realtime render window.
All images feature a 'light box'. It's a shelled cube with one open side. There's a slot in the left-hand wall to let light through.
IMAGE 1
Very dim HDRI light (<0,05). There is one bright point light to the left of the box. This light is the primary light source and creates a striped light through the slot. There's another (dimmer) point light in front of the box's open side to act a fill light.
The striped light gets reflected on, refracted and dispersed through a Gem prism (Abbe number 10).
IMAGE 2
Same scene and set-up, but with a colored wall and DOF.
IMAGE 3
This is a seriously underlit scene!
There is but one point light shooting light through the slot and illuminating the box's inside. So there's no HDRI lighting, no fill light to the front.
The big centered sphere is 24k polished gold. The right-hand smaller spheres are polished Platinum. The left-hand spheres have the Gem material applied to them: IOR 1.5, Abbe number = 15.
Dries
Another little light painting. ;)
Dries
Heyyyyy caustics are working good !! i see....good work Driesv
I like I like ````` 8)
Here's another light box shot.
There's an additional 12000k color point light behind the golden sphere.
Dries
This is gonna be great...
looking forward to seeing some nice glassware shots soon. Wont be long before some clever-clogs has mimicked the dark side of the moon album cover
My favourites are the prismatic ones, very nice...
Now we need the ability to do volume caustics - they are gorgeous but very elusive ;)
J
Awesome stuff, Dries! 8)
Nice Dries! The VR is brilliant!
Quote from: edwardo on May 23, 2013, 05:07:20 AM
Wont be long before some clever-clogs has mimicked the dark side of the moon album cover
Hmm... what a great suggestion that was! ;D
Dries
Awesome! "Great Gig in the Sky" is wailing through my brain as I type this.
Somehow I knew you'd be that clever-clogs, Mr Dries ;) nice job
Clogs.... are you Dutch?
Quote from: edwardo on May 23, 2013, 07:45:01 AM
Somehow I knew you'd be that clever-clogs, Mr Dries ;) nice job
Clogs.... are you Dutch?
Nope, Belgian.
From the Flemish part.
Dries
Now that I take a closer look at that 'DSotM tribute' image...
That one really has it all: external reflections, internal reflections, refractions, dispersion...
And all with realistic light energy decay in the right places.
Dries
Another shot with a great model from grabcad.
Dries
Quote from: The Metal Master on May 23, 2013, 05:08:00 AM
...
Now we need the ability to do volume caustics - they are gorgeous but very elusive ;)
...
+1
I definitely categorize participating media as a 'nice to have' feature. ;)
However, volume caustics can be quite costly as they can take a very long time to become free of noise.
Dries
If there is a need for it then we might be able to do it using some of the newer simulation techniques:
http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/papers/volumetric_radiance_using_photon_points_and_beams.pdf
Forgot to add: amazing test scenes Dries. Thanks for your help in making us push this to the next level.
HELP!!
I'm developing a fetish for optical simulations in KeyShot 4.1... :P
Btw,
Henrik, I'm really loving the close interaction with the KeyShot development team! It's fulfilling to see that user feedback is actually being listened to and used to make the program better when possible. **hat off**
Dries
Wow. That is cool! Can't wait to try it out myself.
From white stripe, to wide dispersed pattern, back to a white point. ;)
I needed a really fat lens to refocus the extremely dispersed light...
Dries
Quote from: Esben Oxholm on May 24, 2013, 02:16:07 AM
Wow. That is cool! Can't wait to try it out myself.
Esben, your 3D glasses are going to look awesome with these caustics. ;)
Dries
I put another lens in my optical stack. :D
This one is aspheric (stretched along z axis).
Note that at the end the dispersion gets inverted.
In the low exposure shot you can clearly see that the 'focus point' is indeed very bright. ;)
Dries
I just realized I hadn't used any mirrors yet... :)
Dries
Here's a little more cooked version.
Also a low exposure shot to show the brightest areas clearly.
Dries
so excited for this, it just keeps getting better and better. wooooooo!
Getting funky with caustics... ;D
This time I used a parabolic reflector (y=0.5*x^2 (interval for x:-5 to 5); revolved surface) with a point light in the focus point. This creates a highly focussed light beam, which is very efficient to use for caustics (no light is spilled).
I'll be posting some variations of this scene tonight.
Dries
Same setup, but with an additional polished metal ring placed inside the caustic pattern.
Dries
Wow. The one in the middle is beautiful. I could hang it on my wall!
An elaboration of an earlier shot.
Dries
owhhhhhhhhhhhh keyshot is coming always more powerfullll......great jobsssss
Awesome ...
KeyShot 6.0 More realistic and higher resolution than reality ... SOON !
;D
Quote from: PhilippeV8 on May 28, 2013, 04:09:39 AM
Awesome ...
KeyShot 6.0 More realistic and higher resolution than reality ... SOON !
;D
Not to be a
complete obnoxious brat... but this really is amazing! ;D
I mean, just try to do this with any other (biased/unbiased) renderer...
Very powerful stuff.
Dries
Oh, forgot to mention that the last image was a screenshot from the realtime window after rendering for exactly 1hr on a single Xeon E5-1650 machine.
That's with strong DOF and 32 ray bounces. I didn't want to miss a beat caustic-pattern-wise. ;)
I think that's pretty speedy...
Dries
A quick test with a parabolic spot.
Dries
Looks great!
Just splitting up a beam of light... :)
Dries
I boosted the light brightness a bit...
Dries
There's pure genius lurking in the dark cubicles at Luxion! I feel sorry for the poor competitors who can't sleep at night...
Bill G
Quote from: Speedster on June 06, 2013, 08:07:37 AM
There's pure genius lurking in the dark cubicles at Luxion! I feel sorry for the poor competitors who can't sleep at night...
Bill G
Haha, it seems like the KeyShot Menace is culminating in the 4.1 release. ;D
So far...
Dries
Awesome. Can I have this scene for demo purposes? Please .....
Quote from: Thomas Teger on June 06, 2013, 09:42:26 AM
Awesome. Can I have this scene for demo purposes? Please .....
Thomas, I'll send it over to you tomorrow morning (GMT+2).
Dries
awesome - thank you!!!!
A slightly different prism set-up. Thought rotating the image 90 degrees -effectively creating a downlight- would be interesting.
Dries
Added a smaller prism.
Dries
A waterfall of light.
Dries
Less wasted light on this waterfall. :)
Dries
Very cool!
Same general set-up, but with dispersion on the primary large prism.
Dries
Sweeeet!
I just did these.
No dispersion this time. I used colored mirrors/prisms to create the colored light patterns. I put the 'catch' plane at a very low angle. That way, each light beam's intensity is distributed more evenly across the catch plane. This eliminated the very bright hot spots I was getting with the beams hitting the plane perpendicularly.
The second image has gotten a vintage treatment.
This is a single-shot KeyShot render. :)
No compositing, no postwork, except for some minor curve and color adjustments in Photoshop.
Dries
Wow Dries. Just simply amazing!
Quote from: KeyShot on June 07, 2013, 03:37:39 PM
Wow Dries. Just simply amazing!
Glad you like it, Henrik!
Thank you for the awesome caustics implementation.
Dries
These are so amazing! They beg the question- what would happen during a simple (or complex) animation? Like just a camera orbit. Could be mind-blowing, not to mention CPU busting!
Bill G
Hmm, you got me thinking, Bill.
A rotation animation on the primary large prism would indeed look really good. I'm curious myself to see how the light pattern on the 'catch' plane would evolve.
These scenes do render quite quickly for what they are (32 ray bounces, many caustics due to many reflections/refractions). The caustics' quality improves gradually (sharper, less noise) as you let it sit (which is a huge benefit!), but it still takes +1 hour render times on a 32 core machine to get really sharp caustics at 1000x1000 px. Of course less complex scenes render much faster.
So if anyone's out there with a 256 core network rendering set-up with some idle time, I'll happily share my scene for an animation render job. ;D
Dries
Maybe just a test with a tiny 250 x 250 x 30 degrees 10 second orbit? Just for kicks? oddly, you can almost guess what it would look like.
Bill G
Quote from: Speedster on June 08, 2013, 02:30:54 PM
Maybe just a test with a tiny 250 x 250 x 30 degrees 10 second orbit? Just for kicks? oddly, you can almost guess what it would look like.
Bill G
Bill, I just HAD to try making an animation. :) I am rendering on a 6-core machine as I type this.
It's going to be a 360 degree 'ease in/ease out' 10 seconds rotation animation on the primary prism.
Rendering in advanced mode is big speedup when you have lots of sharp caustics in your scene.
I'm rendering 250 frames with the following settings:
- 850 x 850 pixels
- 64 samples
- 32 ray bounces
- antialias quality 4
- global illumination quality 2
- caustics quality 100
1 frame takes 6 minutes to complete on a single Xeon E5-1650 machine.
So the job should be finished by tomorrow noon. ;)
Dries
This... Dries. my goodness man. very, very cool!!!
very cool stuff indeed!!!
Tutorial even!! :) very cool stuff
This is a new art form.... :)
Stunning!
Dries, this whole thread is amazing - like the last post said... its a new art form! When this thread started I predicted that someone (you) would reproduce the pink floyd cover, but didn't think it would evolve into this. At some point however, your going to have to lay off the LSD... maaaan. ;)
But seriously, good stuff
Ed
Thank you, guys! ;)
Sadly, there's more LSD infused stuff coming... ;D
Dries
perhaps its time for an intervention people
As promised: the prism rotation animation.
Rendering the 250 base frames took
exactly 25 hours on a Xeon E5-1650 machine.
Make sure to watch it in full-screen mode for maximum LSD infusion. ;D
Colored version:Vintage 'Metropolis-esque' style:Dries
Wow I'm AMAZED, this is exactly the kind of physical light simulation that I wanted to find in a biased/unbiased/whatever rendering package in 2013. Being an optical designer it's intriguing to see this results in a commercial rendering engine with the ease of use of Keyshot :) If only Zemax had something like that for realtime preview ;D
Amazing - set that on a loop and youve got some pretty cool screen savers
Absolutely amazing! I'm really glad you tested an animation. It boggles the mind when you think of where this could all lead! This is truly groundbreaking work, and I can see a 30 minute loop of this kind of art running in an exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art, or MOMA! Of course, you'd have to render it on a supercomputer!
Bill G
Fantastic work Dries... I swear, rendering that stuff on my measly machine would surely kill it.
J
Interesting stuff.
Imagine placing rotating optics outside the final crop frame with a concept car in the scene. Detroit auto show laser intro anyone?
Ed
Another quick animation.
Colored version:Vintage 'Metropolis-esque' style:Dries
Can I ask how you create such a straight direction light beam?
Quote from: rfollett on June 11, 2013, 02:03:01 AM
Can I ask how you create such a straight direction light beam?
So far, I have found two ways to create a directional light in KeyShot.
#1
Put a point light a good distance behind a plane/wall with a very narrow slot in it. This gets you a 'stripe' light.
If you let the slot intersect a ground plane, you will see caustic light patterns on the floor.
#2
Model a parabolic reflector and put a point light in the focus. This gets you a circular section light beam.
It has to be a matematically precise parabola!
If you let the 'parabolic spot' intersect a ground plane, you will see caustic light patterns on the floor.
I have found method #2 to be more efficient when dealing with caustics.
Dries
Many Thanks Dries..
So option 2.
Like this? Sorry for my basic questions. I applied point light diffuse to the round sphere.. what am I doing wrong?
(http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/262/lightzz.jpg)
I can't find the exact equation I used for the parabola at the moment.
Anyway, here's the KeyShot 4.1 scene I used for the animations.
You can experiment with this as you like. Please, do post your results in this thread. ;)
Dries
So when does your Caustics Expo start ?
Thank you for sharing file. Light bean does not work for me, is that because this is a 4.1 beta file? I am running 4.0...
Quote from: rfollett on June 11, 2013, 05:50:17 AM
Thank you for sharing file. Light bean does not work for me, is that because this is a 4.1 beta file? I am running 4.0...
Yes, you need BETA 4.1 to see the caustics.
Dries
I realise that. Thank you. I have worked it out. I cranked the point light up to 10,000 watts and now I can see it.
Many thanks
All together, now- chant along with me: 4.1 4.1 4.1 4.1 We want our 4.1 and we want it NOW!
Bill G
Playing with color filters.
Oh and Bill...
4.1 4.1 4.1 4.1 We want our 4.1 and we want it NOW!
Dries
Wow! So- next up is the Fraunhofer Lines! Can you imagine what he could have done with 4.1 back in 1823? Joseph Von Fraunhofer is one of my heroes, and in my humble opinion the greatest scientist/craftsmen in history. He's known as the "Father of Astrophysics" for good reason.
Question- does color temperature have bearing on the setup? If so, what temperature are you using?
Bill G
Going from wide to narrow RGB beam spacings. 8)
Bill,
Color temp. IS being fully considered for rendering. The light coming out of the three 'reflector lamps' is full spectrum 6500K.
The color filters are of the 'Solid Glass' material type with RGB values for pure blue (0-0-255), green (0-255-0) and red (255-0-0). The converging and diverging lenses are of the 'Gem' material type.
I tested the lenses with dispersion on/off. Interestingly, with pure colored light (single frequency waves) enabling dispersion has absolutely NO effect. This is in fact what happens in reality too. :)
I hope that answers your question...
Dries
@Bill:
fyi, see this render for influence color temp. on dispersion.
1 light is pure red
1 light is pure green
1 light is 6500K
Only the 6500K light is dispersed.
Dries
A little game...
Can you guess the RGB-values of the glass filters? ;)
Dries
how about 0,255,255 255,255,255 and 255,255,0
I think we have a winner already. ;)
Dries
Have you tried black light? I doubt 0,0,0 will produce anything, but I mean what is commonly called "black light". (I have no idea what the RGB for that is, or if that wavelength is even covered in the RGB spectrum)
Quote from: Ruckus on June 12, 2013, 09:15:50 AM
Have you tried black light? I doubt 0,0,0 will produce anything, but I mean what is commonly called "black light". (I have no idea what the RGB for that is, or if that wavelength is even covered in the RGB spectrum)
Black light is another name for UV light. It is not visible and dispersion, which does not change the wavelength, will not make it visible. It is used in conjunction with fluorescence and phosphorescence, where the energy from the photons is absorbed briefly and emitted at a lower frequency (longer wavelength).
-- Henrik
This is rapidly becoming the most insane thread yet! Sounds like cocktail party chatter at SIGGRAPH. Seriously, I wonder if the Luxion Team know what they are about to unleash on the unsuspecting CG community. "fluorescence and phosphorescence"? What are you waiting for, Henrik! Now that would really twist your competitor's you-know-what's"!
Bill G
Several other images with lenses and light beams.
Dries
Did another one with only non-colored filters and dispersion.
Dries
Exciting stuff! I would like to see caustics from car rims to ground plane:) thanks for sharing:D