Indigo for dummies
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I thought I'd start a thread and add to it as I learn Indigo render (i have dabbled with it before but never took the time to actually learn it)
So today I decided to learn it as I need to be fluent in at least one unbiased render engine (things are a little slow on the work front)
I must be honest unbiased engines need patience as the term "quick render" does not exist.There are two tutorials available from the SU forum thread at Indigo, and I must say they are fantastic, I was able to get a basic understanding very quick, thanks to whoever did them (me suspects Dale)
Indigo is free, completely free (how do these guys eat?) and powerful, but such power comes at a price.... Time!, give them a week and they give you a brilliant render.
Anyway, I used a 3DWH model (
yes there are a few good ones if you look hard enough) and did a few modifications, applied some new found Indigo material skills, and a few indigo adjustments (not much) and hit render.
After an hour I stopped it as one hour is enough to render the Last supper IMO.It was very 'grainy' (looked like a 1900's photo but with color) so I decided to export a SU line style and overlap in post edit and throw in some soft focus for good measure.
I really like the result, mind you I would never post if I didn't.
I encourage everyone to at least try Indigo, and do use the tutorials as they are very helpful, did I mention it's free?
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Very nice Pete!
Your re-textured scene would make a great test model (to share?) in the tradition Pibuz started.
Did you texture it in Vue? -
Chris, believe it or not this model came pretty well textured from the 3DWH (
I know, hard to believe)I just changed a few and mapped one or two better (graffitti was mirrored... think REDRUM)
I also doubled the size (wanted a bigger warehouse feel)Here is the model for us all to play (I believe someone actually posted this one once, but to the life of me I cannot remember):
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Thanks for sharing that.
Pete, can we play with it in this thread or do you want to keep it clean? -
Maybe a new thread would be better as the title to this suggests folks can learn Indigo with me.
Start a new one with a heading like 'lets play in a warehouse' or something.I wanna try that warehouse using Brazil (my new toy)
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Beautiful! Care to talk us through the settings?
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Thanks Chango70.
I used the 'sun/sky' setting in environment, with shadows set as per model. Actually come think about it the model should have my indigo setting on it.
If not, I added bump from texture (no seperate map), used the simple UI to reduce roughness and reflection (even though in hindsight it should be lower)
um, that's about it, unbiased engines do not take much to render well, why they intimidated me in the past is beyond me.
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Pete, Brazil, eh? Are you using it with max? I've heard good things about 2.0. It's supposed to be as fast as vray. It's almost funny mentioning Brazil in an Indigo thread. hehe
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Adam, I'm also learning Rhino, so I am learniang brazil for Rhino. I never knew there was a Brazil for max....hmmm, now you got me distracted.
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Sorry bout that. Seems you're a lot like me. Always learning 10 new things at once....stuck in an endless revolving obsession.
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i must say from what you have posted indigo is also good ah... hows the rendering speed comparing with other rendering engines? like vraysu, podium, vue?? i have not tried it yet, but as what you said is fairly easy to catch up.. i will try it pete.
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Adam, we must be brothers as I'm just like you, I was a landscape designer and always learning new things,trying to learn too many things at once and ending up knowing a little about everything but not enough to do anything.(not saying you cannot do anything)
Nomeradona, I am not sure if you have used an unbiased engine yet, I have only seen your Podium and Vray renders. anyway unbiased engines are very forgiving and if it was not for it's horrendous render speeds they would be king. You can model poop and blindly adjust your settings to Hellen keller values and end up with a great render, as long as you are willing to wait 9 months for it to render.
So as far as speed goes, Podium is king (but lacks some elementary features like displacement and refraction), Vue a second on exteriors but sadly a third for interiors (but then again Vue is the landscape champ)But this is January, imagine what will be available this time next year?
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Hi Solo
Very nice first try
But i think that 1 hour is too much time for a render that size with that geometry and just the sunlight. Did you turn off the low cpu priority in the advanced settings?I really like unbiased renders (be carefull they can be addictive) because, as you said, they the're very easy to set up. The only problem it's most of the times you'll always have to do some post work, and probably allways too clean the noise (plugins like Ninja Noise and alikes can really do miracles)
But if you're trying unbiased renders now you should try the progressive path tracing method, i don't know how it works but it's like the best of the biased and unbiased renders, unbiased quality with the biased speed, i don't remember if indigo has it, but kerkythea does. But i think it's best when you only use the sun as light.
Keep them coming, and when you have time show us something render with brazil if it's not too much trouble
David
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Low CPU priority? please elaborate, sounds like a trick we can all use.
'Ninja noise' as far as I know is only a Photoshop plugin, I'm unfortunately a Corel Paintshop pro guy.
I will check out the progressive path thing, I am sure Indigo has it, at least I hope so, cannot check right now as I'm rendering (a phrase never used using an unbiased engine)
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In sketchup go to plugins - skindigo - advanced. There you'll see a check in the Low cpu priority (it's checked by default). Uncheck it and it will use all your cpu power to render much faster, but you probably won't be able to work in your pc as long as indigo it's rendering.
In indigo advanced settings you'll also see the render method availables. I don't really remember all the details about everyone, so the best it's to read about them and try them all in diferent conditions (just sunlight, many lights, naby glass, caustics etc)
One great feature you'll probably like it's turning any component into instances so you can render like 100 cars in the same scene but with a very fast export (it just exports one car model and all the others are instaces and copys of that car, and the instances can be components like rectangles to keep the SU model light and they will be still rendered as cars)
Ninja noise can be used as a plugin or stand alone, and you can try it before buying it (comes with a watermark)
I started my unbised adventures with indigo but sometimes it can be very unstable, that in conjuction with sketchup poly limitations and you'll find impossible to even start rendering very heavy models (my bridge project, that i posted just before the forum went down, couldn't render in indigo). But beeing able to do everything inside skethcup it's indigo best feature.
I switched for kerkythea because until now it never let me down and can render biased and unbiased (so i can easyly adapt to every deadline i have) and has a lot of other options. But i miss doing everything inside sketchup so i'll probably give it another try when the new version is released.
David
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guys,
stop playing with brazil. we have a whole government team dedicated to it. let them spoil it by themselves. do not get involved.
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Good stuff solo, and welcome to the indigo club
With regards to increasing the speed, you can also set the number of threads you want indigo to run on (aka how many cores you have), you can find it in the same place as the 'low cpu priority' checkbox.
Indigo can also do network renders, although i havent tried it before.
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Really nice render, Pete...!!
And great idea to make it a public effort...
@unknownuser said:
I switched for kerkythea because until now it never let me down and can render biased and unbiased (so i can easyly adapt to every deadline i have) and has a lot of other options. But i miss doing everything inside sketchup...
Let's see how things will develop in the future...
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@solo said:
Here is the model for us all to play (I believe someone actually posted this one once, but to the life of me I cannot remember)
IT WAS ME! IT WAS ME! IT WAS ME! IT WAS ME! IT WAS ME!
THE YOUNG PIBUZ AT WORK!!!!!!!!
It was filled with metallic storages that time...Ok guys, let's give it a go once again then!!!!
Now I'm a little busy planning my next sharing work, when i have some clearer idea i'll surely give this a go! looks really promising, and industrial themes always...poke me! -
I am currently looking into Rhino as well.
It is a complete modeling suite , plugin based as well(Bongo for animation, Grasshopper for parametrics etc...) and it has all the major render engines.
When things would go bad for Sketchup in the future, Rhino is a good backup.
It has a built-in 'Layout' and its suited for printing 2D drawings.
Not a bad option...
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