First attempt at Kerkythea - your opinion, suggestions pleas

Nick W · 23 Jan 2008, 20:23

I'm having trouble eliminating the little spotlight refractions from the water - it shoots little blue spots up above and around. Anyone have suggestions as to how to reduce this effect?

Also, the jagginess in the water is undesirable. I could fix it quickly in Photoshop, but it woul dbe nice to be able to render it smoothly. the water surface is physically bumpy. I used K to smooth the surface - could it be helpful to smooth the surface before exporting from SketchUp? (I didn't soften the edges).

ps - thanks to OzKid for the boat. Is it standard professional practice to not use other people's components in your models? Or just to ask permission first? Sorry I'm not familiar with etiquette.

architectboy · 23 Jan 2008, 20:24

That's pretty good, about the average first render in Kerkythea. Yes, you should smooth out the water before exporting, although doing that only increases the resolution of the jaggedness, the smaller the jags the better (they vanish at about 3 pixels). And turn on antialiasing, it'll improve it a lot.

Nick W · 23 Jan 2008, 20:26

thanks for the tips. much appreciated. I've smoothed the surface - it looks like the little spotlight refractions are still scattered about.

here's a cleaned up version of the previous.

architectboy · 23 Jan 2008, 20:26

For the refractions you could probably just change the angle of refraction in the material properties, whatever you need to do with the water Is going to be in those properties. And I still don't see any antialiasing, are you waiting for it to finish completely?

Krisidious · 23 Jan 2008, 20:27

for s first render... that's pretty nice...

Nick W · 23 Jan 2008, 20:28

thanks Kris. and thanks for the suggestion to do a night render in Kerky too. that was the nudge I needed to download it and dig in!

Nick W · 23 Jan 2008, 20:29

@unknownuser said:

ArchitectBoy wrote:
For the refractions you could probably just change the angle of refraction in the material properties, whatever you need to do with the water Is going to be in those properties. And I still don't see any antialiasing, are you waiting for it to finish completely?

yes, I was waiting for the render to finish. I had to go, but I'll take a look around again to find the antialiasing settings. I changed a smoothing angle for something in an attempt to try softening the refracted light... I'm still learning to crawl, you know.

thanks very much for your helpful suggestions. I'm eager to learn.

Krisidious · 23 Jan 2008, 20:30

yes I love the night views... and your stars are just awesome shinning through the trellis... and the light at the bottom of the hot tub is perfect.

mexico · 23 Jan 2008, 20:31

@unknownuser said:

Nick W wrote:
I'm having trouble eliminating the little spotlight refractions from the water - it shoots little blue spots up above and around. Anyone have suggestions as to how to reduce this effect?

Also, the jagginess in the water is undesirable. I could fix it quickly in Photoshop, but it woul dbe nice to be able to render it smoothly. the water surface is physically bumpy. I used K to smooth the surface - could it be helpful to smooth the surface before exporting from SketchUp? (I didn't soften the edges).

ps - thanks to OzKid for the boat. Is it standard professional practice to not use other people's components in your models? Or just to ask permission first? Sorry I'm not familiar with etiquette.

how put the texture of the water ? its really cool you sorry iam new . i like a pool but ia dont have waves water , i only have the texture water.

Nick W · 23 Jan 2008, 20:34

mexico, I found this tutorial on a K site -http://www.kerkythea.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=18890&sid=f8b73bdaa110ecf236ef04b6620abbb7%20b6620abbb7

I downloaded the large video file but never got it to work - just audio - but it was enough to step through most of the tutorial.

As for the bumpy water, I just made a mesh with the sandbox tool in SketchUp and used the Smoove tool to make a bunch of bumps and valleys. There might be a better way but I don't know it Smile it took me probably 20 minutes.

Bruce, thanks for the compliment. It is very encouraging.

Nick W · 23 Jan 2008, 20:35

ArchitectBoy, I'm waiting on a render with AA enabled. Thanks for the helpful tips

It just occurred to me, could the little spotty refractions be eliminated by changing the lights in the bottom of the hot tub from spot lights to omni lights? They're in little recessed cans, so it should still illuminate the tub properly - maybe with some tweaking - and then the pointy little refractions may become more like soft blobbies of light, which would be perfect...

Any thoughts on this from experienced K folks? Thanks!

architectboy · 23 Jan 2008, 20:37

Most of my Kerkythea stuff doesn't use lights like that (just the sun and a back light) so I don't have to much experience in that area but it does look like your spotlights have a narrow angle on them (do they?) if that is the case than either widening the angle or changing the to omni lights would work.

Frederik · 23 Jan 2008, 20:38

Hi Nick,

First of all, I suggest that you post your question at the KT Forum...
This forum is GREAT, but I'm sure that you'll get much more qualified help at the KT Forum...

I wonder what material you've used for the water and also what render preset... Confused
To me it looks as if you haven't been using one of the render presets where caustics is present, but I could be wrong...
Have you also remembered to amend the Global Illumination Method in the Render Rettings..??

The material is also very important, and you can find some very good and realistic water materials in the KT forum...

Looking forward to see the progress you're making on this...

Cheers
Kim Frederik

Nick W · 23 Jan 2008, 20:39

Kim, thanks for tips and for the encouragement.

I'm new at this, so any tidbits of basic information would be very helpful.

I just used a standard glass material for the water (as you said in your tutorial), but didn't apply a bump map because I made the model itself bumpy. Does this answer your question?

I have generally been using the Photonmap - Quick render setting, as anything with caustics or AA seems to take multiple hours to render. Is that normal or could it be on account of the many lights and large model? I am running on a Pentium 4 3.20GHz, 1G RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT 256MB. I had amended the Global Illumination settings as you desscribed in your tutorial, but I gather now that it doesn't matter if you don't use a render setting with caustics... I am gaining understanding every day!

I will take a look around the KT forum for water materials - thanks for the tip

Frederik · 23 Jan 2008, 20:42

@unknownuser said:

Nick W wrote:
Kim, thanks for tips and for the encouragement.

You're very welcome..

@unknownuser said:

Nick W wrote:
I'm new at this, so any tidbits of basic information would be very helpful.

Well - I'm also learning new things regarding render techniques every day...
At the KT Forum, you can find many useful tips and tricks... And if you can't find an immediate answer to your question, you can post one and the users there will always try helping you...

@unknownuser said:

Nick W wrote:
I just used a standard glass material for the water (as you said in your tutorial), but didn't apply a bump map because I made the model itself bumpy. Does this answer your question?

First of all, I assume you're mixing me up with Fade..!? Rolling Eyes Wink
I've made the Getting Started tutorial, but not the water/pool video tutorials...
Any way - a glass material will be the right choice...

@unknownuser said:

Nick W wrote:
I have generally been using the Photonmap - Quick render setting, as anything with caustics or AA seems to take multiple hours to render. Is that normal or could it be on account of the many lights and large model?

Multiple hours is normal, especially given the information that you have used many lights (point-, spot- and mesh- lights)...
Also the choice of materials can increase the render time significantly, but it's something you'll learn along the way...

In my opinion, you should only use the Quick render preset for tests... When you're happy with the materials etc., change to a higher preset and let it run during the night, while you're asleep...
For a scene like this, I would use the MLT preset...
It will take several hours to clear up, but you don't need to let it run for all 10,000 passes. At around 200 passes I'm sure it will be very clear, and remaining noise can get removed by using a program like NeatImage...

@unknownuser said:

Nick W wrote:
I had amended the Global Illumination settings as you described in your tutorial, but I gather now that it doesn't matter if you don't use a render setting with caustics... I am gaining understanding every day!

You're absolutely right...
If you have done everything Fade has described in his video-tutorial, it's the render preset that will do the trick for you...

Cheers
Kim Frederik