(WIP)Arch Viz Animation Project- Mental Ray

melviso

Hello all, I will be posting my work here as I progress hoping to get feedback on how I can improve on what I am working on.I know this is a game oriented forum but I am hoping that ppl here can help when it comes to materials and lighting since game devs understand it better and techniques involved.
This is the first shot so far.Will be posting improvements as I progress.

melviso

I have been working on this and other scenes.I am about to start rendering some of the animated shots.

Pls,does anyone know what might be causing the light under the desk?It is supposed to be completely dark.I have tried everything,googled.The scene has a daylight system with a sky portal light for the window.

melviso

Anyone?

JoshWilkinson

You're using mental ray? The light under the desk is bounced light from mental ray. Also... you want that. And you do not want the shadow under the desk to be completely black.

You also asked for help with your materials. Nothing reads correctly. Might be the lighting (as there is a ton of bounce light and no establish mood yet) and it might be the materials. If you don't mind posting some screens of individual assets/ texture flats we could get a better idea of your materials. Asking for material crit isn't very conducive when the only camera angle is on the floor.

melviso

@BringMeASunkist Thanks for replying.Never thought it was bounce light until u mentioned it.The light under the desk is from the light rays bouncing from the light on the books on the floor.Damn, I really need to start brushing up my knowledge on indirect lighting.I thought it was an error from using only FG with mental ray.

I am still fine tuning the materials.I intend to do a lot of compositing with the rendered shots once I am done with it.Most times the raw renders don't look very photorealistic. Compositing would go a long way in making it look 100% better.

Shrike

Theres no way compositing will help you if you do not understand how global illumination works when working with an offline renderer. Id recommend looking up some tutorials about that and rendering / lighting in general

"The light under the desk is from the light rays bouncing from the light on the books on the floor"

Thats not how it works, theres light everywhere in your scene, just the books are directly illuminated there

on your second pic you have a strange illumination under your desk however that looks like some sort of gamma or material issue, at the first pic there are all
those strange circular noise patterns, somethings wrong there and it shouldnt be GI

melviso

I am a noob when it comes to G.I..lol.The first one has those blotches because I reduced the fg settings in order to speed up the render while testing materials.I am going to remodel the desk again maybe it will solve the problem.I am using only FG for rendering,no G.I.

melviso

Guys,I remodelled the desk,same problem.I noticed when mental ray is calculating the final gather,the materials and shadows look accurate but when it starts the proper rendering,they look off.I think there is too much bounce light or rays per fg points? Another thing I noticed is if I render the region where the desk is only the shadows are fine but when I render the whole pic,the light under the desk comes back up.

Dave Jr

make a plane, just for organization sake name it "bounceboard". and apply a flat black material to it. Place it underneath your desk; and in the planes or "bounceboards" object properties (for max not sure where it would be for Maya) turn OFF visible to camera, cast shadows and visible to reflection/refraction.

This will take its black diffuse and darken out that area.

You'll get the result you want; for more info on this technique i'd recommend you read up on how photography light and setup scenes to achieve a desired result especially using things like bounce-boards and lighting tricks.

melviso

Thanks for replying, Dave.I tried what u said.Its still there.I am getting frustrated with this.I switched to corona and it rendered properly.Maybe the lights are corrupt or something?Maybe I should use a skylight rather than a daylight system. or is the skyportal by the window faulty?

I can't believe I have spent a whole full day trying to fix this problem with no solution or improvements.Is this why ppl don't use mental ray?

Dave Jr

melviso wrote: »

Thanks for replying, Dave.I tried what u said.Its still there.I am getting frustrated with this.I switched to corona and it rendered properly.Maybe the lights are corrupt or something?Maybe I should use a skylight rather than a daylight system. or is the skyportal by the window faulty?

I can't believe I have spent a whole full day trying to fix this problem with no solution or improvements.Is this why ppl don't use mental ray?

Try not to rely on a skylight system, your putting too much faith in achieving a good result on something with little control. Mental Ray can be just as powerful as any other render engine with the right results, instead try using a dome light to evoke light in the entire scene, and then directional lights coming in from the window.

melviso

Thanks Dave,I have tried everything...The light is still showing up there.
Then I saw this vid on youtube:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRObjsxrJzs"]Interior scanline render1 by Kyo3D 2010 - YouTube[/ame]
So I imported the models into a new scene and then started playing around with the scanline renderer using only direct and omni lights and that light was still showing under the desk. After I increased the shadow map samples of each light, it went away.So I opened the file with the scene in mental ray and reduced the shadow samples and the softness of the daylight system to 0 and tried rendering with mental ray.Its still there.
Maybe its actually bounce light from the floor??I might have to delete this shot or maybe go with corona.I can't believe I have spent three full days, playing around with settings.This sucks!!I might try out the technique used in this video.I will probably have to learn and read up on global illumination,bounce light and color bleed. Why does mental ray have to suck so much?

MrFrags

Well, first make sure to work with a proper full linear workflow (RAW output). Your materials are off. The best thing you can do in order to get decent result is to create a simple scene with one neutral environment, one or two area light, a ball, and start from there. Spend time on texture creation is crucial; actually you need more contrast, more colours, and better texture resolution.

Concerning your light leak under the desk, I'm pretty sure it come from your GI/FG settings. There is no point to increase or decrease quality settings on the fly with no clear understating of what you are doing. If I'm right about that, the light leak appears fore some scale issues. Double check the scale of your scene, if you're using Maya, then the default unit is cm, so a good idea is to make sure that the distance between the floor and the ceiling is about 270 cm. Try to render your scene with the right scale and default FG settings, then, if the artefact still there, increase the scale of your scene.

melviso

Everything is to scale.I built the scene measuring in mm.Everything is measured at a scale of 1:0.
I tried it with corona and it rendered fine.I noticed when fg is being computed,I can see the area under the desk completely darken the way it should be,when it starts rendering that's when it becomes incorrect including my materials.I am wondering if this is a bug that comes with the version of 3dsmax I am using.

MrFrags

As I said, this is not a bug. The way you described the problem make it pretty clear. It's a GI/FG problem caused by scaling. If the scene is right scaled, then, it comes from your parameters. Without pictures of your settings, we can't advise you.

melviso

Thanks for the reply, MrFrags. Decided to redo the materials and render using the scaline renderer following the video faking GI by placing bounce light around the scene. Still need to add more lights..Fixing the materials for the books.Render time 20 secs.

MrFrags

Better material reading overall. Increasing contrast and reflection help a bit. However, now your lighting looks totally faked. Bad idea to fake the light bounce. Honestly keep your material as you've got now, and go back to FG/GI/IP solution.
Post your render setting, and you should be able to fix your original problem.

melviso

Phewww!!!Finally fixed it.I now know how to use Mental ray to a considerable extent now. I still need to fix the blotches. turns out when u have tight edges and they are far from the camera,u have to fiddle with a lot of parameters to get it to recognize those details.

I have already moved away from this to creating other scenes.Mental ray is quite tricky with interiors with a lot of tiny detailed edges.There are tiny splotches which I can easily fix now.

Any thoughts?Also can one be able to batch render using Video post in 3dsmax with a render farm?

melviso

I think I am getting better with mental ray.


Still very WIP. Gonna add more assets in.

melviso

Update:

melviso

Tweaked the leaves material:

Ehsan Gamer

I'm starting to think why we should use Mental ray or Vray for this kind of projects while we have UE4 and Cryengine 3 ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWY4gtLG8sY

CosmosXXX

koola's videos and renders are just amazing.
His Unreal-Engine Forum Thread for anyone interested:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?28163-ArchViz-Lighting

melviso

Funny thing is I wanted to use a game engine for this project but a lot of my mates have been saying arch viz companies are not interested in using game engines. When Epic released 4.3 with distance field ambient occulsion and skylight global illumination. I knew there was a huge potential of achieving almost photorealistic results.

Most times,its all about the compositing. If u are good at compositng, ur final work will always look better than the raw renders. From koola's thread, u can figure out it's all about the post processing parameters. For me, I intended to use AE to tweak the captured cinematic from UE4 using matinee.



These were still wip. But I decided to abandon it. What I have always loved about game engines is the fact that rendering for hours is non existent. I am guessing with these vids from koola, a lot of archviz companies might start looking into employing ppl familiar with game engines.

melviso

Update:


Currently working on this.

BARDLER

The Wood floor looks out of place. It looks like you are going for a clean modern look, but the floor boards have a more worn out look to them. The more contrast you put in the gloss the more it will look like the clear coat is stripped away. You want more subtle variation in the gloss if you want a cleaner/newer look to the floor.

melviso

Thanks for the critic, Bradler. Unfortunately, I won't be continuing the game engine project for now. I will take note of what u have said, when I get round to continuing it.

Update: