Indigo Render Experiment

Dave R

Thought I'd see what I could do with Indigo and the new Skindigo exporter. Not bad fro someone who is just blundering around. I might figure out the materials thing to make some improvements. This is after about 15 minutes of render time.

Whaat

@dave r said:

Not bad fro someone who is just blundering around.

That's the beauty of Indigo. You don't need to know anything about rendering to get a really nice image. You just need a bit of patience.
:ewink:
Keep experimenting! The best way to learn about material settings is to take a look at the settings for the material presets included with SkIndigo. And, of course, using the new material preview feature.
I usually use the shiny plastic or dull plastic preset for most wood materials to give it a bit of shine.

Keep it up Dave!

Dave R

Thank you for the advice. Here's another one. I tried adjusting the light to reduce the intensity a little. I tried changing the woods to Phong with adjustments to IoR and Exponent but I don't see any difference.

Anssi

Hi
I must be doing something wrong with Skindigo, or then everyone else has a supercomputer! My first interior test below, after rendering for nearly 30 hours. The result is still very grainy, and the renderer had reached only less than 90 samples/pixel by that time
Anssi

download.php.jpeg

Whaat

@anssi said:

Hi
I must be doing something wrong with Skindigo, or then everyone else has a supercomputer! My first interior test below, after rendering for nearly 30 hours. The result is still very grainy, and the renderer had reached only less than 90 samples/pixel by that time
Anssi

Wow, I am shocked! What computer are you using? What resolution are you rendering at?

I only have a single core AMD Athlon XP 2700. Judging by the complexity of your scene, it should be clean of noise in 4-6 hours if it was rendered on my system (if the resolution was the same size that you posted)

Here are some possible reaons why the scene is rendering extremely slow:

You may be using Path Tracing (PT) rendering method (slow for indirect light and glass). This type of scene should be rendered using Bidir MLT for better efficiency. Usually Bidir MLT is the best choice for almost any scene.
You may be using the glossy tranparent material type for your windows. Try using the Glass preset material. If you use this material, the windows must have thickness. If you are using the Thin Glass material type, try using an exponent value of 1 million for your window material
You have an excessive amount of glass in your scene. Even so, I would expect the render to be quicker.
You are rendering a very large resolution (eg. larger than your monitor size). If you are rendering large resolutions, you will want to be using a very powerful PC or use network rendering.

Before giving up on Indigo, I suggest you try rendering some other scenes to see if you get quicker results. Indigo is very comparable to Maxwell and Fryrender in terms of speed. Let me know how things turn out!

Whaat

Dave R

I'm surprised at the time, too. Of course I'm no judge of these things since I'm so new to this. Perhpas it has to do with all the reflective glass surfaces and the lights?

FWIW, this is what I got after 10 hrs and 43 min. It only ran that long because that's how long I was away. I set the materials for the floor, small table and the tall cabinet to dull plastic as advised. I don't see any difference in the tall cabinet but I can see the reflections on the floor and the little Greene and Greene side table has a bit of shine to it now. (Click the picture to enlarge)

Anssi

Whaat,

Thanks for the advice. My setup is very similar to yours, a 2.8GHz P IV, no HT, 1.5 GB of memory. I was trying to render 1600 pixels wide, with the exporter's default settings. It must be the glass. Also now that I started a new test, disabling the IGI files seems to speed it up too a bit (and I don't know how to use them anyhow).

What is meant by "thick glass"? Must it be two parallel faces close to each other, or must the sides be modelled too?

Dave, sorry for hijacking yout thread. Your renders look fabulous!

Anssi

Whaat

@anssi said:

What is meant by "thick glass"? Must it be two parallel faces close to each other, or must the sides be modelled too?

If you have a couple of minutes, you should check out the SkIndigo tutorials for version 0.9:
http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2317
They are interactive skippies. 'Thick Glass' would be glass that is modeled as a closed volume. I think for windows, you would not have to model the sides to get the correct result (not sure though). It is pretty easy just to push/pull your windows 1/2" in order model the window correctly. However, you can also avoid this step by using the 'Thin Glass' material. It works pretty well for windows but I would not use it for glassware. If you use 'Thin Glass' make sure the exponent (glossiness) is set to 1 million so you get near-perfect reflections. Lower values will result in a glossy appearance.
If you use the 'Glass' material preset, you will get perfect realistic glass, but the glass must have thickness.
I think your render was slow because of the high resolution and the large amount of windows that cause the light rays to keep bouncing back and forth. This is also the reason why materials that are completely white tend to stay noisy much longer (lots of light bouncing)