Practice scene

[evalery]

Hi guys,

I've made this scene for fun but also to practice some corona stuff I haven't used before. So, I found this pic on instagram and I wanted to make it 3d.

OK, so my aim was to bring it as close as I could to the photo reference but especially the lighting. Now I know there are still a lot of problems there, I keep seeing things I got wrong but for now, I reached a point I need to stand back and look.

Anyway, one issue I want to ask, (for the crucifix up on the wall)- I used the corona displacement modifier (I attached the material I made) and it looks really crappy. One of the previous tests looks even better than the last render. So how do you use it right? Or it depends on the lighting?

Thanks

[maru]

If you look at the reference photo, the Jesus statue is actually less detailed than in your rendering. Maybe removing some detail would help (like making the whole statue more blurry). You can also zoom in (either just move camera or use the 2D pan zoom option) and try adjusting that specific object/texture until you are happy.

[evalery]

Thanks for your answer. Yes, I also realised  I had a gap between the plane with the picture and the cross and that didn't help. 

[Designerman77]

Hi Evalery,

I see the render went or 261 passes. In which amount of time?
On what machine?

[evalery]

Hi Designerman77

well I left the computer on overnight (so about 8 hours) but this was a test so I wasn't very preoccupied with the exact render time, also the resolution of the image is low. I want to render the final image at 3000px (still small but fits the purpose). I'm on a relatively old system: i7 -4770K CPU @ 3.50GHz, 3501 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processors, AMD Radeon R9, 32GB memory

[Designerman77]

Hi Evalery,

thanks for the info. I was wondering what machine calculates 260 passes in a relatively short time.
Okay... 8 hours.

Waiting more than 10 minutes for a render of 2000 pix at ca. 0.5 denoising factor, which I can pass on to the client, I find already quite frustrating.... especially if one has to do 50-60 renders per job.

I noticed that most time is needed for denoising shadow areas and getting smooth antialiasing on edges with high contrast.

In my opinion, the developers at Corona should focus on these two factors and "reserve" a higher amount of calculation power to them.

Would save a lot render time, I guess.

[evalery]

Hi Designerman77,

"Waiting more than 10 minutes for a render of 2000 pix at ca. 0.5 denoising factor, which I can pass on to the client, I find already quite frustrating.... especially if one has to do 50-60 renders per job.

[/quote]

yes, it frustrates the hell out of me too, especially with this old machine. Thing is I use Corona from 2015 and I'm amazed by the evolution of this engine.  So yes I guess it can be improved but I can live with some frustration for the moment.

Yes, denoising takes time too but I'm not even using it sometimes. Also, for the moment I don't have client work so I mess around with personal projects.

Thanks for your reply,

[Designerman77]

Hey Evalery,

one has the impression, that no matter what machine one has, it´s never fast enough...

I bought an iMac Pro 8 core some months ago... pretty fast thing.
And now some guys here in the forums who use the Threadripper with 32 cores claim that my machine is "not a render engine by any means".  :)))

In my opinion, this endless spiral of more and more cores and power should be compensated by more intelligent algorithms in the render engines.

As you said, Corona is a great renderer... my absolute favorite - especially due to its great light calculation and resulting aesthetics.

Nevertheless, a few improvements could save us from this crazy, never-ending race for GHZ. So we could focus on creativity.


P.S. on my machine, denoising takes literally just something like 20 seconds, even on large images.

But as mentioned, edges with high contrast, like on metal parts take endless render time until they have clean antialiasing.
Should be improved... in my oppinion.
 

[evalery]

of course, it could be improved, I'm sure the guys are working on it but maybe you should open a topic for these issues for the developers. Also maybe it matters if you're working in C4D or 3ds max?

Yes, I totally agree, I always want to focus on creativity and not on the technical problems. For this scene, for example, it took me a huge amount of time to create the metal materials, especially that I also used the interactive corona window and crushed every time I was trying to add more layers to the material and especially AO masks.
I'll share an update (very low res cause I'm still working on those metals)

[Designerman77]

Yes,

as you mention... I also have the impression that in 3dsMax, Corona somehow delivers better results... although it should not be like this.

Yes, today I opened a thread, suggesting to reserve more calculation power for shadow areas and antialiasing on edges.

On older machines, I cannot recommend to use the interactive render. My older Mac with an i7 3,4 GHZ could manage it only on smaller scenes.
Now, my new machine gets along with IR also in heavy scenes.

Wishing you success!

Greetings, Lucian

P.S. your practicing scene looks very nice!

[evalery]

Thanks very much, Lucian

yes, I think this is the smallest scene I ever did :))