Rendering 0.3 - Half way there

Been a while I made update on this. I started adding more objects into the scene once I was happy with the lights. Because of rendering time I decided to take away lots of photons and global illumination, instead I made sure I have enough to have smooth lighting across the room and then added area light to the ceiling to make it bit brighter, I think it works well so far.

I have about half of the objects done, since each time I bring something I have to create textures for it, which can take a while but I am enjoying it. I need to add and texture gift boxes, a drawer, some bottles and other decoration. This is my render so far:

Render time is around 1:30 minutes without shadows (those from ceiling) and spot lights for the tree lights, with them its under 4 minutes, I forgot to check it before posting this. So far I am pleased with how its coming out, potential changes include the chimney texture, I might make it just look like a stone instead of paint over them. Also the wall texture is too flat, I tried to add little bit of noise but there is too  much of it when rendered in hull HD, so I might make textures for sections of the wall, like a dirt somewhere, bumps and peeled off wallpaper/paint to make it bit more random, but only if I have time after I finish with all object.

After some feedback and looking around the scene I noticed that the windows were hollow and had gaps between them, so photons were getting stuck between the frames and it was making them glow strangely, but it should be fixed now. Also the floor I had to change a little, some of the boards were too far from each another, making it look unrealistic, it wasn't fun moving almost each of them individually.

VFX 0.5 - Nuke start

So since last post, finished rendering the planter and barrier on full HD and all passes as TARGA, it took 14 hours. Next time I will render everything as EXR already or half resolution and TIFF and less frames. It had 250 frames and I ended up with 3000 files, 60GB. In Nuke I built my EXR out of it and it went down to 1GB, so all good. In Nuke I started putting it together and got myself confused with some passes and how they need to be merged together because I didn't manage to make it look like beauty pass, but will have to sort it out soon. Other two objects are almost done, the Extinguisher needs specular map and be rendered. The notice board needs lights set up, specular map and be rendered.

Render test of the barrier and planter:

VFX 0.4 - Alpha Bumps

Due to lack of time today I only had time to work on bump maps for the models. I wanted to do Normals maps as well but they always came out kind of blurry and didn't look good on the models at all, and I am not sure why. I don't think I have the time to learn everything about normal maps so I will stick with Bump maps that I know and can get the look I want. Tomorrow hopefully I can finish specular maps as well and sort out the models in the scenes, so I can start rendering and working in Nuke.

VFX 0.3 - Alpha textures

Seems like the more work I want to do the less time I have do it, but started texturing and so far seems okay. The extinguisher was taking bit too long and still needs few more maps, but its almost ready. Only thing I am mostly worried is how long multi-pass rendering will take, but fortunately I don't have many things in the scenes, so should be okay. Starting to be confident I can finish this in good quality on time.

I made a test render with the extingusher where I am using the HDR image as lighting source and it seems good, just need to add shadows, fix the brightness of the sign and of course remove the reflecting wall.

The concentrate planter and barrier shouldn't take long, from quick texture test I can see everything matches up all right, just need to play with the textures more to fix them up. The planter needs to be bit more cleaner, as does the barrier. And then needs fixing on the inside faces that can be seen above the dirt. The barrier needs the sides match the front and back where they connect, right now it can been seen, but that will be fixed with less dirt on it. I will also add some small cracks to it, with bump/normals map. I placed them over the actual footage to compare colours and I think if I make the grey little brighter I will have no trouble setting up in Maya/Nuke to match it to the scene.

The notice board was kinda easy, only two pieces, but also disappointing because it doesn't look like the notice board in the footage. But it should be okay. I might make the wood texture more random, like so its not all orange, but I think it can be done with soft bump map. I will also add some images and papers onto the board itself. I think the texture might have to be little brighter to match with the scene, but shouldn't be too hard to do with lights and in Nuke.  

VFX 0.3 - My First HDR Lightprobe

Because the HDR thing can be pretty useful for more than just reflections on the object that match the scene I watched a quick tutorial and then did my own. It is also part of our assignment to make one. I am pretty happy with the result actually, will see how it works in the scene itself tomorrow. The original images are huge, so below are just smaller PNGs for preview, one is the final result and the other 4 HDR images I worked with to make it, those are already 6 original photos forged together in Photoshop before they were unwrapped.

It was quite fun to make, I enjoyed it. The final image is seamless panorama, so the ends connect perfectly.

Rendering 0.2 - Basic Lighting Setup

After doing some research and tutorials it was time to actually start doing some work on my assignment scene. It took a little while to get to where I am now, but I have almost clear understanding how it all works, at least about final gathering, global illumination and shaders. I really like how little things can affect the whole scene and the colours, its pretty cool.

Global illumination was fairly straight forward, nothing crazy about it once I figured out number of photones and all that. After playing around I eventually settled for this:

Render time: 0:19
Objects: Floor and walls
Lights: 1
Photones Intensity: 3,000,000
Gloal Photones: 50,000
Radius: 15

My first problem first Final Gathering was that it was making the scene way too dark for some reason. After looking around for solution I began to change the photon colour bounced from the floor and walls to something much lighter, which helped to brighten the scene. Also adjusting accuracy of final gather and using Radius Quality Control helped. Not sure if its best practice but so far I am setting the RQC max to 10% of the scene size units and min to 1% of it, so in my case it was 46 and 4.6, the scene or at least the main room is around 460 units. Below are some results of trying around different settings and position for the photon emitter light.

At the last picture I do like the "sun" reflection in the window, which I might revisit later, but there will be big ass tree in front of the windows so shouldn't worry about them too much. I have also took down diffuse of the windows frame for photons which made them much less shiny. I might turn it off or make it bit more less later but as I said, they wont be probably visible with all the objects. This is the final image for today:

Render time: 2:18
Objects: Floor and walls
Lights: 1
Photones Intensity: 4,000,000
Gloal Photones: 50,000
Radius: 15
Final Gather accuracy: 250
Radius Quality Control: Max 46, Min 4.6

And for the end, I changed the wall material a little and used spheres for my tests. In the scene there is no bump for the walls yet, not sure I need one. I am happiest about the wood material so far, I really like how it looks in the scene, especially on the floor. I like the marble too so far but will see how it will look in the scene itself.

Technical Animation 0.2 - Burn Baby Burn

More fire stuff! This time we were doing particles system in Mata, more specifically nParticles and fluid smoke. Which is actually quite fun, just need to play with the smoke more to figure out how to optimize it so its faster to cache and then render, it was taking bloody ages and then it also stopped simulating towards the end, the smoke just stopped while the particles kept moving, not quite sure what went wrong there.