My second render

[Blacktip]

So, I finally got the time to try to make a couple of renders of a mobile phone that I modelled some months back. The phone itself is the first mobile phone I bought, and since I still have it I thought it'd be a good.. eh... model to model. The modelling was a bit of a a pain itself (learning curve, you know), and I got stuck in the rendering process – mainly since I turned the cauctistic setting on (which resulted in weird white blobs all around). So, here's two renders of my old Sony phone. Constructive criticism are welcome. (a third shot is underway btw, as soon as my iMac decides to finish pushing them rays)

[Eric Summers]

Those buttons look nice! You can really see the depth to them.

What are your lighting settings? If you are rendering with caustics on in Product Mode, try switching to Interior Mode. I found that Interior Mode works well when I'm rendering products with clear plastics (which is pretty much all the time).

Hope this helps!

[mattjgerard]

dang those refractions in the button plastics are spot on! Nicely done? Any possibility of detailing your lighting setup? I have a good grasp of materials now, I'm trying to get better at the lighting, and this example is a great study!

[Will Gibbons]

Love it man! Great starting point!

[cjwidd]

the buttons and screen are nice, is it a texture behind?

[Blacktip]

Hi, and thanks all for the feedback. I haven't had much time rendering out new images, but I managed to test out a few renders with variations in Caustics on/off and Product Mode Vs. Interior mode. Here's the full settings:

Shadow Quality: 3
Self Shadows: ON
Ray Bounces: 15
Global Illumination: ON
Global Illumination Bounces: 5
Samples: 300

As you can see in the renders with Caustics turned ON, there's white spots all around – especially in the LCD-display (but much less noticeable in the Interior Mode-render). In the version with No Caustics, there's no spots at all, and I really can't see that the buttons look any better/more realistic due to the fact that caustics should bend light a more natural way. Perhaps a more dramatic lightning setup would reveal any nice bends and reflections.

I'm still not happy with some of the textures (for example, the LCD-display would probably look better if I made a new texture with tiny half-lit squares inside). And yes, to answer a few questions: the buttons are made out of two pieces (apart from the hole in the dark grey plastic); one fully transparent button, and below that a button/solid which I attached each decal/image on. Regarding the lighting setup: it's really just one HDR lightning the whole scene. In these renders I used the "Aversis Office Hallway".

[cjwidd]

Those white spots are often referred to as 'firefiles' and are a common rendering artifact. I'm not sure if Keyshot has implemented a firefly filter, but there are ways to eliminate some of these artifacts in Photoshop if necessary. The artifacts in the image you posted are pretty significant, however, and might not be a good candidate for that type of editing. There are more experienced users on the forum who may have alternative opinions.

[mattjgerard]

Usually a result of lighting and/or not letting the image cook long enough. One way to test is to use the region render box in the live view over one of the suspect areas
(the smaller the faster you willget results) and just let it go and see if they get better. From what I've seen with my product based stuff is that interior mode is unholy slow to resolve to a decent render, but I'm not lighting interior GI lighting.

[Blacktip]

@cjwidd: thanks for the info!
@mattjgerard: yes, I have seen that longer renders produce better results, but I was/am unsure wheter the fireflies will go completely away if I render with a bazillion samples. I guess upping the number of samples is the way to set the cooking-period, no?

[cjwidd]

I was/am unsure wheter the fireflies will go completely away if I render with a bazillion samples

I can confirm that, under certain circumstances, you can render into the thousands of samples (>8k) and still experience fireflies. I find - and this is largely confirmed - that physical lights tend to produce this artifact more often, especially in high-contrast rendering environments. Don't forget, you can set the per material sampling value from the roughness channel of the material, and this includes light materials - this can sometimes help. Also, using extreme roughness values (0 or 1) will almost invariably result in firefly artifacts. Suffice to say, this is a fairly common problem, especially with caustics enabled - I would avoid it if possible; with minerals its pretty unavoidable.