Author Topic: Juraj's Renderings thread  (Read 487220 times)

2016-10-12, 22:06:30
Reply #465

johan belmans

  • Primary Certified Instructor
  • Active Users
  • ***
  • Posts: 761
    • View Profile
    • belly.be
Hi Juray

The LUT you are talking about, is this a home made one, or one which comes with the Corona installer?

2016-10-12, 22:12:29
Reply #466

Juraj

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 4743
    • View Profile
    • studio website
Secret custom one, "NiceLUT.cube" :- )
Please follow my new Instagram for latest projects, tips&tricks, short video tutorials and free models
Behance  Probably best updated portfolio of my work
lysfaere.com Please check the new stuff!

2016-10-13, 07:20:20
Reply #467

snakebox

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 493
    • View Profile
    • Snakebox Media
Secret custom one, "NiceLUT.cube" :- )

Do you make your LUT in PS? Setup an early look in PS on early renders, then save it out as a LUT for the framebuffer?  I'm just curious. Looks good.

2016-10-13, 15:26:33
Reply #468

Juraj

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 4743
    • View Profile
    • studio website
Nope...not yet :- ) Although Dubcat's guides are phenomenal for this.

Anyway, that is pretty cool workflow for animation&esp. Real time, but here I wanted to specifically avoid going back&forth.

My idea of framebuffer post-production, isn't actually to produce finalized image, save it as jpeg and send to client. Contrary to what might someone think, I do like post-production a lot and still make some serious adjustments. I just don't want those adjustments to be the typical CGI corrections, to turn something shit into something usable, and only then work on it creatively. I want the image from framebuffer, to look like the nice jpeg preview you see when you shoot with DSLR. It looks good, but still warrant post-production from creative side (compositing new elements, making local color choices,etc..).

Please follow my new Instagram for latest projects, tips&tricks, short video tutorials and free models
Behance  Probably best updated portfolio of my work
lysfaere.com Please check the new stuff!

2016-10-13, 16:42:29
Reply #469

agentdark45

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 579
    • View Profile
Wow, that's a huge difference between the 2nd and 3rd images! Is the 3rd image post processed or the pure corona output? Went from CGI to SLR.
Vray who?

2016-10-13, 16:44:32
Reply #470

Juraj

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 4743
    • View Profile
    • studio website
Wow, that's a huge difference between the 2nd and 3rd images! Is the 3rd image post processed or the pure corona output? Went from CGI to SLR.

I pretty much just added flare and some local tweaks. It looked pretty identical on first sight :- ).

Can't wait for curves, that will be another level.
Please follow my new Instagram for latest projects, tips&tricks, short video tutorials and free models
Behance  Probably best updated portfolio of my work
lysfaere.com Please check the new stuff!

2016-10-14, 16:41:48
Reply #471

Juraj

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 4743
    • View Profile
    • studio website

In meantime, imma go upgrade to 10gbe because all those 8k textures aren't being friendly to 1gbit network..


As I'm currently planning my studio implementation I wonder if i have to do this aswell. I'm starting from scratch so I need to build a futur proof installation. But it cost a lot. Network adapter, NAS, cables, rooter.... What's more, it looks like SSDs are a must have to enjoy real capabilities of 10Gbe (in raid 1 for security purpose). Let us know your findings !

I will post a guide how I went about it, it's not that expensive actually if you choose specific products and I stayed conservative, no SPF optics or Infiniband stupidity. Traditional copper wiring with RJ45, CAT6a cables, and Netgear prosafe series. You can do it under 1.5k for small office. I think it's almost the same price as regular link-aggregated setup, but much more useful.

Actually it's not even so much textures I realized :- ) It's Distributed .exr dumps. If you render high-res (like 8k), that's almost 40 Mpx, you need to set the pixel transfer to atleast 1/10 of this to even see any distributed benefit in real-time, otherwise it will just keep sending like 50 strips forever....not very useful visually. And sometimes distributed malfunction and doesn't even finish sending the remaining data outside of those strips in the end. Uh.
So 8k render, with tons of passes like Lightmixer, that amount to heavy, heavy amount of bandwidth. Each node will be sending like 1GB .exr every minute, that takes 12 seconds over 1gbit network, so 5 nodes will totally saturate it (when reaching the master workstation).

People with backburner animation rendering are fine, you can have even 40 PCs over 1gbit in such case, it will just take longer time for them to start-up the first-time they need to cache textures, but then it's breeze. But damn, I like distributed to be instant and useful in real-time.

Having a good synced back-up instead of ssd raid is more useful these days. There is very small chance SSDs will fail, if ever, but if they do it's usually because of reasons that would flail the other ones in raid also.
Please follow my new Instagram for latest projects, tips&tricks, short video tutorials and free models
Behance  Probably best updated portfolio of my work
lysfaere.com Please check the new stuff!

2016-10-14, 17:45:04
Reply #472

Fluss

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 553
    • View Profile
yeah, SFP+ is just overkill for a home network. I plan to by a QNAP TS-531p (https://www.qnap.com/fr-fr/product/model.php?II=210) with their 10GBASE-T card and link evrything with RJ45. To me, it's the best performance/price ratio.

Edit: if you can advice me on a cheap 10GBe card model, it would be nice !

2016-10-14, 22:30:53
Reply #473

Juraj

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 4743
    • View Profile
    • studio website
Heh, I watched that particular NAS long time ago, because it's the cheapest that has option of 10gbe card. But honestly, together it comes up to 1000 euros, and for that, you can just build regular fileserver PC, which will be superior in every single sense. Which is what I did, I used my old i7 2600k as fileserver with Windows 2012 server.

I still have Synology NAS but I wouldn't use them as fileservers, even the best completely pale in performance to normal PC/Server, while the price is pretty much identical.

There's tons of Intel dual NICs 10gbe RJ45 cards on ebay for 200 euros a piece, or less. SFP+ cards can be bought for 40 bucks but like I said I am avoiding those for the hassle (and also because it's hard to find good affordable switch that has a lot of 10gbe SFP+ ports, usually it's only 2-4 at most and then billion 1gbit NICs).

The Netgear ProSafe run from 800+ euros for 8 full 10Gbit NICs. That's as good deal as it can get. Asus released an unmanaged switch with 8x 1gbit NICs and 2x10gbit nics for 200 euros only. Really good deal as secondary switch if needed. I'll get both.
Please follow my new Instagram for latest projects, tips&tricks, short video tutorials and free models
Behance  Probably best updated portfolio of my work
lysfaere.com Please check the new stuff!

2016-10-15, 16:33:16
Reply #474

Fluss

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 553
    • View Profile
mmmmmm interesting.. My actual machine (2600k OCed to 4.4GHz, gtx 770) could be my fileserver.. I originally planned to use it as a spawner but... Thanks for the idea, I'll think about it

2016-10-15, 16:43:30
Reply #475

Juraj

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 4743
    • View Profile
    • studio website
Actually I use it as a general server, there's lot more stuff running. It's syncing stuff, doing back-ups, hosting some occasional web stuff, licence machine, etc. I back-up to regular Synology NAS from there.

I had it right under my hands, its performance no longer useful compared to some xeon machines I have (each one is like 6-8 times faster, so what is the point to keep them), and it saved me the investment into QNAP.
Please follow my new Instagram for latest projects, tips&tricks, short video tutorials and free models
Behance  Probably best updated portfolio of my work
lysfaere.com Please check the new stuff!

2016-10-15, 17:20:02
Reply #476

Fluss

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 553
    • View Profile
Actually that sounds great. I could save the money from the QNAP to build a cheap spawner like the one in your guide. Cheaper, better performances in every single aspects of the infrastructure.

2016-10-18, 08:13:16
Reply #477

philippelamoureux

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 218
    • View Profile
Short post update:

Was testing some post-production stuff using LUTs, testing out ArionFx (some cool stuff, but I'll stay with VFB+, even though the glare seems more advanced).
Did 3 new pics in my test project (during single Thursday night): (I am updating them on website : http://talcikdemovicova.com/house-ipes/ ). Now I'll move finally into dusk mood with tons of artificial light.

I wish I could post our commercial projects, but we have such NDAs that I would be homeless overnight : / So... Sometimes in September/October.







If you wonder, how I got clean DOF, I didn't :- ) Not even after 2000 passes :- D (Default 16/2 !!!) I simply used denoised 100perc. version overlayed using Z-Depth mask, so only the DOF in the background is denoised, but nothing else.
I often use z-depth for masking exposure, or color balance, but this worked too.

Post-production step: VFB+ (Filmic mapping, Bloom/Glare, LUT), then Photoshop CameraRaw.



Someone asked about the white paint, it's all about the textures. The base I bought from http://www.extremetextures.com/
The rest is 1.4 IOR and 0.7 Specular, because of the wrong fresnel. In fully functioning PBR shader, it would be 1.52 and 1.0. The variance is only though (roughness) glossiness map.




Actually, I have issue with this (and few other) scene, the GI on the ceiling is absurdly noisy. It's not the material, even if I put 128GB diffuse it's still noisy. Rays/sample are only 26 +/- so this isn't complicated project.
Adaptivity does surprisingly almost nothing, Denoising saves the day (plus 2000 passes !! few hours on my...ehm, 200 threads). So who can guess what I do wrong ? Is it too many high-res textures ? Too many rough materials (everything is specular) ?
Or too much use of 3dsMax composite node ?
Something makes this scene awfully hard to clean out. It's always the ceiling in other scenes too. Sometimes it's backwall. I trace it to some kind of GI+Rough specular occurrence. Something about it can't sample well.



I think I'll render the scene with 128RGB diffuse override, and then 128RGB low-glossy override to see behind. It's not the lights, the noise is the same with single Sun&Sky there.


This scene looks so good! Both the architecture and the renderings :-)

2016-10-21, 04:39:00
Reply #478

Juraj

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 4743
    • View Profile
    • studio website
Bought Vizpark Walls & Tiles. Painful learning curve... I think I have biggest problem using the damn bercon procedurals from presets (had no good textures of mine, last minute job), I just don't get procedural stuff. Will photo-source or cut some of those new PetersenTegl stuff and avoid bercon. Doesn't look like we're gonna be friends.

But waiting for displacement is even more painful :- D Here is one of 80 thread nodes...doing 40 minutes + routine of pre-calculating. Master workstation is twice slower but did it under 20 minutes (nothing amazing either). DR nodes always half-ass the whole pre-render phasing.



Edit: Damn, Walls & Tiles really fuck-up during distributed, like whole different seed, behavior or something, the heck. No error message from Corona. Anyone use this stuff here ?

« Last Edit: 2016-10-21, 04:51:18 by Juraj_Talcik »
Please follow my new Instagram for latest projects, tips&tricks, short video tutorials and free models
Behance  Probably best updated portfolio of my work
lysfaere.com Please check the new stuff!

2016-10-21, 22:36:21
Reply #479

steyin

  • Active Users
  • **
  • Posts: 375
  • BALLS
    • View Profile
    • Instagram Page
I stopped using W&T as I found it easier to just setup brick/tiles mats using bercon mats alone. I usually photograph brick from sample boards and create variations in PS, then plug those into a bercon tile map with multi-texture map.


I remember W&T having issues with bump and displacement for Corona, but Vizpark claims they fixed that error. Don't know how true that is as I was still having issues with bump maps. The bump map fix for using bercon tiles posted here (https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,9659.msg83927.html#msg83927) works for me with just using bercon maps alone, so I'd try it with W&T too. Never tested it with W&T, but if it indeed works maybe I'd go back to using the plugin.

Can't speak on the DR issue though.