Jeff Patton JeffPatton Location: Lexington, USA Language(s):
English Member Since: August 2002 Last Updated: 14 November 2009 Portfolio Views: 1069088 Chosen as Favorite: 521
hi jeff, thanks for all your help recently regarding photographic exposure, kelvins and the unrealistic white room effect.
just been reading through your last post and wondered if there is any chance you could post the scene for experimentation. the one with the three window slots and the chairs????
first I wanted to say thanks for all that I've learned from you.
I downloaded the max 2008 version of your material scene and puzzled around with it for a while. What struck me about it was that it takes a while to render. I just upgraded to a quad core Q6600 cpu, but it still takes me 2min+ to render the scene with the simplest of materials.
I tried switching out the photometric light with a skylight and the rendertime was cut in half. I didn't notice that much of a change in the look of the final result. I also tried reducing the number of area samples of the original photometric light and that also brought me down to about a minute. Now I've tinkered around with the "samples per pixel" setting in the rendermenu and the rendertime is about 10 seconds with the scene looking nearly the same.
My question is this:
- What is the best way of reducing the rendertime while I'm testing out a material without losing details which directly affect the material?
I want very quick renders while tweaking my materials, but I want them to look as close to the final result (when I do a hq render) as possible in terms of color, reflections, specularity, bumps etc.
Is there tricks I could learn or maybe a place where I can read up on what settings affect rendertime the most? I've bought a few books about mental ray which I can't wait to get my hands on. I'm hoping they contain some answers.
Everytime I write something it turns out to be a wall of text, sorry. So if you or anyone decides to share with me the treasured secrets of lightning quick renders it would be great, but eitherway thanks alot for everything and keep up the good work.
Also, the grid pattern in the scene I downloaded (not the picture itself, but how it looks in the renders) is alot dimmer than the one you show in the 3 sample renders.
TwiiK: I'd say the anti-aliasing settings/filter, FG settings, light sample rates, and sheer size of the render are the main items that affect render time...but as you know practically all settings affect render time one way or another.
What's the best (fastest) way to configure a material in a test scene? I'd say it entirely depends on the material. For example, if you're configuring a non-reflective brick material then you could simply create a sphere, add a light and hit render (you may not even need FG).
However, what if you're creating a realistic glass material with caustics? Well, you'll need to create a scene with reflectors, a light source that emits photons (the skylight doesn't), caustic & GI photons, and some way to measure the color shift at depth on the glass. So the render times in this scenario (at it's most basic configuration) would be MUCH higher than the previous example.
all the stuff on exposure has been great, so why not continue this and start to look at interior and exterior night scenes, focussing on daylight system and p/graphic exposure and IES lights, because the effects of the nightime presets don't work as you would expect them too
Hi Jeff,
Great Blog, maybe the following question has already been answered in a previous comment (I haven't read them all) but, has anybody converted your Max mr materials to Maya format? Basically, I use Maya but have access to Max at work. Is there a straightforward way to convert your materials?
dedicated specifically to Arch Viz and 3DS Max, at the minute it only has one post, but that is a post displaying a link to your blog as i feel it is a place everyone must visit if they wish to learn something.
Hope you don't mind - Just a bit of free advertising for you because your a legend
Dave - Always nice to see more blogs/websites about 3d, so good luck with the blog! I wish CGSociety would give our blogs the ability to add permanent links. I've thought about moving my blog over to blogger.com as well...but I always hate moving stuff like that after it's already established.
Bliz - I exported the scene as a .mi file for some people to try the configuration in Maya. I never heard back from them in regards to if it worked...so I have no idea whether it worked or not. I would assume it didn't work else there would have been a "buzz" about it. Zap mentions a process of using xml programming to share A&D settings across Max/Maya may work. However I, nor anyone I know is familiar enough with xml to write such code, so the search for a solution continues.
Thanks so much for your blog.... To be honest you are the one that inspired me to use mental ray...
I love the render... but i have a lttle problem... one time i was working on a interiour room... 4 walls boxed a roof and a floor... white textures on the walls and ceiling 1 window....(that let the light leek in) and a floor that was dark red wood cherry... with a daylight system.... Final gather bounce 5 ... for some strange reason when i rener... i was green.... But this only happen once....does mental ray randomly have problems ... or do you think it was me...?
