Custom render quality presets

[andy.engelkemier]

You pretty much Have to use Custom Control for final renders if you're looking for print quality.

But in some cases, I'll set something up, then I need just a really Fast rendering for a mask or something.
So I'd love to be able to set up a few custom presets for things like Preview, medium, and high quality. Maybe high quality high refraction, different quality for scatter medium (so you don't die before it's finished).

You get the idea. I want to be able to save my own settings there, for the program (not the file). That also means coworkers could share it.

[Will Gibbons]

You pretty much Have to use Custom Control for final renders if you're looking for print quality.

I'd be interested in hearing more about why you say this (not arguing, just curious). That said, saving presets for Custom Control is a valid request.

[mattjgerard]

I've done many catalog covers and images for sell sheets and print and I don't use Custom Controls. I am as well curious as to why I would need to? I'm open to improving my images and cutting render time if using CC would help, certainly.

[andy.engelkemier]

On a recent project, I had to send over 100 renders. We actually sent 121, but some of those were early tests. This is how many renders we had to submit to get everything we needed for 36 images. These were at 7000x7000px. The product has a fine bump, similar in size to a moleskin (it's hard to find something most everyone will have around somewhere). In order to wait for realtime to pic that up, AND eliminate fireflies, we were waiting over 4 hours on the network. The same render with custom control, 19-27 minutes. It varied a bit. But hey, I can get those done in about 18 hours. But at 4 hours each? - you're looking at 6 full days of rendering, and that's assuming only 36 images. We had to render regions to fix this or that, sent off ground reflections on a mirror to give the client perfect reflections (on their own layer), shadows alone so that was Also on it's own layer. That's a lot of renders.

CC just saved too much time. If I had to quote in 6 full days of render time, we wouldn't get the job because it would be too expensive. Or I could buy more machines, and add more cores? also adds a lot of expense.

Certain things just never seem to clean up in real-time. So they take forever. Perhaps that could be improved if we could somehow sample certain materials multiple times for every time the image is sampled. So a multiplier.

And I don't mean to say that real-time is not good. I use it, but every time we end up with full size images, I throw out a couple tests. CC ends up being less noisy, in half the time in nearly every test render.

[mattjgerard]

I was  thinking of this after I posted, and I deal with a ton of cloudy plastics that never completely smooth out, and its just part of my process to do noise reduction in post. I was wondering how much of what you are experiencing is due to material type and lighting technique.

I'm thinking the brains at KS will have to respond as to why CC is so much faster and under what circumstances, and if it is that way, I will certainly run some of my more grumpy images through a battery of tests to see if I can get better looking renders in the same time frame. Most of mine render out at 3200x2400 @300dpi, so not as big as yours but still a lot of pixels.

I also see a huge disparity of when the new product render mode is faster than the old one, and sometimes its not. Not sure why or when, but its a step I have to take to see which will a) look better and b) render faster. 

I do know that you can set the samples in each material, so simple diffuse materials you can crank the setting down in the material, and more complicated materials can be cranked up in samples. I have not experimented with that as of yet, but its on the things to try when I get some of that elusive down time.

[andy.engelkemier]

Yeah, we'll definitely try that out. BUT it accidentally got switched to that (not sure how) and we couldn't network render all of the sudden. So the speed up, ended up being a "shut down."

I'd like more time to experiment with some of the settings as well, but we've had zero downtime (yay). And so far, every milky plastic I've had to do, yeah, lots of post work. I usually render that object several times in a few different materials then composite together. I always get engineering data also. Sometimes already in keyshot so I don't have much editing power there. So there are coincident surface issues to Also contend with.

Right now, it seems my biggest disappointment (quite possibly a lack of knowledge on this item on my part) is banding in shadows. No matter the mode. I figured, send just one sample? Shouldn't be any banding. BUT not true! The shadow at the base of the product looks noisy as hell, but Way out where it's nearly white? We get a nice sharp band.
I haven't had time to really dig into it to find out why. But I thought that was one instance where real-time was really going to shine. I haven't tried using a ground plane yet though, and I think that will be the solution. I'm doing a job in after effects at the moment while my coworker finished up some renderings. Then I'll be back in keyshot for a week or so doing a few jobs.