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megacal

20.04.2024, 16:00

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Soft Shadow Comparisons

Soft Shadow Comparisons
Description:	The set up, three soft radial lights and an object (made in wings3D). All renders were performed twice. Just to be certain that nothing like a background app had meddled with the times. Top left. Regular AA. 26:27 and 29:40 Top right. Fineart (16rpp) 1:48:36 and 1:36:44 Bottom left. Premium (64rpp) 11:32 and 10:44 Bottom right. Premium (256rpp) 45:02 and 45:15 Obervations. Soft shadows is a bit of a dogs dinner in bryce, and as a result I'd not given it much thought. But given Rashads examples and his success with the efffect I have become curious. For Preumium there is a soft shadow tick box. That would seem to need ticking as well as it being set in the light source. For the regular and fine art this is not required. Which seems a bit odd. Considering the times. Regular is the worst quality by the look of it, and yet takes longer than default premium at 64rpp? Also, I would say that fineart 16rpp was on a par quality wise with premium 256rpp, yet takes over an hour longer in this test. Which also seems contradictory. There are other anomolies in the image noise, but I will let you contemplate those for yourself. Otherwise, I've been away from the computer, useing the ever dwindling summer and daylight to do horrible jobs I've been putting off for years - and now I can't put off any longer :( Edit: Sorry, forgot to add, Horo's livingroomnight.hdr used as a background image (not as a light source) providing metalic highlights on the material through a little bit of reflection.
Added by:	davidbrinnen
Keywords:	davidbrinnen, bryce6.1, soft, shadows, test, speaker, horo, hdr
Date:	08.11.2008 19:28
Hits:	4984
Downloads:	92
Rating:	0.00 (0 Vote(s))
File size:	453.0 KB

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rashadcarter1
Admin

Join Date: 06.04.2006
Comments: 2610

First off great looking model. It looks just fantastic, really! The rounded corners look picture perfect.

I agree that soft shadows is a pain in the butt in Bryce yet it is essential to realistic renders. In an indoor situation as above individual radials can provide the soft shadows, but when you are rendering an outdoor landscape single radials can no longer handle the task because the farther away the light source the harder the shadows become. One can work in a miniature world but the object and world navigation tools become very crude and extreme at those small scales making that apporach infeasible for me. Working at normal scales single radials lose their soft shadow capacities when placed far away as sunlight. In these situations you would need a cluster or dome of radials placed far away. I have found that when a cluster is used for sunlight the different render options make a significant impact on render times. Premium AA times go through the roof, light rays counts skyrocket far beyond shadow ray counts and the whole thing can take eternity twice over. That is why for my patio scene I have not yet rendered it with True Ambience. Nor have I rendered it with blurred reflections another option in mind as I consider applying the GI method to the scene. The soft shadow sun was created with 146 lgihts in a ball. Premium AA does not like that at all.

I do not know what the heck you did to that shiny metallic sort of material but it looks really great and very authentic. I assume there were 2 lights in each scene one slightly blue tinted and the other slightly tan? Maybe it is a blue specular halo creating the illusion of a blue lightsource? Anyhow the final effect is most compelling.

08.11.2008 20:23

gat
Member

Join Date: 12.21.2006
Comments: 667

followup

Dave is this in minutes and seconds?
Bottom left. Premium (64rpp)
11:32 and 10:44

Great model by the way. When you get tired of Wings give MoI a try if you haven't yet already.

08.12.2008 01:13

davidbrinnen
Admin

Join Date: 01.03.2004
Comments: 2224

Thank you.

Rashad. Three lights were used, and sorry, I forgot to say, one of Horo's light probes, Livingroomnight.hdr - I think - I started this about a month ago... so... memory issues. The light probe is not providing any light to the scene just acting as a backdrop to provide the metalic highlights you picked up on. Very low levels of materal reflection only seem to be needed to get this effect.

Gat. Yes. 11 minutes and 32 seconds. I mearly copied Bryces convention on reproducing the figures. So for fineart AA that is one hour, fourty eight minutes and thirty something seconds. I've not heard of MoI. I will have to add it to my ever expanding list of things to look at! Currently I'm mulling over a demo of Cinema 4D. Which seems to have many of the features of Carrara and Hexagon combined, but the interface suits me better and the render time is very impressive. On the other hand, it is very expensive. Although not as pricey as Maya. In terms of value for money, I don't think Bryce can be topped.

08.12.2008 08:01

Horo
Admin

Join Date: 05.26.2004
Comments: 4721

Very real looking model and nicely lit. Interesting test results you provide us here with - partly contradictionary and unsuspected. Bottom left appears to be the most time/quality efficient. If the grid in front of the speakers were more finely modelled, we would probably see a greater difference of rays/pix. Fine diagonal lines are often an issue to get rendered perfectly.

08.12.2008 20:31

gat
Member

Join Date: 12.21.2006
Comments: 667

I tried Cinema4D and rendertimes were ipressive, but user interface was what I didn't like lol. It just shows its hard to make an app that fits everyone

08.13.2008 03:08

spektyr
Member

Join Date: 07.02.2005
Comments: 1010

You had me staring at there looking for image noise anomilies so long my eyes started generating anomilies of their own. LOL

I do find it odd that fine art 16 took so much longer than premium 64 and 256. I've never played with the premium settings. it might be an interesting experiment for me. ;-)

Nice experiment here, David.

08.13.2008 13:58

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