Rayscaper, My trip down the road to adjumacation.

[pixelcruncher]

Hey @Mike-Amos

Did what @Rich-O-Brien work? If the depth is insufficient, the render engine will cut paths short before reaching a light source, and the mirror will be black.

How are you creating a mirror? Using the simple mirror material or something else?

You can pack up the whole scene and send it my way (via the Create Archive option). Then I can have a look.

Cheers,
Thomas

[Mike Amos]

@pixelcruncher

I tried all that, pretty Elf explanatory tbh.

Nada.

I shall try to pm the archive file.

[pixelcruncher]

@Mike-Amos Yup, send it my way. I will have a look.

[Mike Amos]

@pixelcruncher

Via email.

[pixelcruncher]

@Mike-Amos Thanks for the scene. That was helpful.

The problem is that the color of the mirror is black, so it won't reflect anything:

Setting the color to white (or anything non-black) will result in a mirror:

Sorry, I butchered your camera setup to make it more evident that the mirror works now.

Cheers,
Thomas

[Mike Amos]

@pixelcruncher

Thanks, I guess the 'problem' is that the render engines I have used preferred black as the colur in Sketchup.

I just defaulted to this from habit.

[pixelcruncher]

@Mike-Amos said in Rayscaper, My trip down the road to adjumacation.:

@pixelcruncher

Thanks, I guess the 'problem' is that the render engines I have used preferred black as the colur in Sketchup.

I just defaulted to this from habit.

No worries, I'm glad we got it sorted!

[Mike Amos]

@pixelcruncher

Moving onwards, some of the lights appear to have gone AWOL but then, so has the skirting board.......

[pixelcruncher]

@Mike-Amos sounds like a bug. Let's fix that.

Do you mind sending me your most recent scene again?

• What is the name of the light component or components that disappeared?
• Is the skirting board modeled as geometry at the bottom of the wall? I will check that out as well once I have your model file.

Cheers,
Thomas

[Mike Amos]

@pixelcruncher

The lights are directional lights, the skirting board is geometry that has been removed from Sketchup the model, pardon the pun.

I am concerned that memory handling is an issue and will probably remain that way until the basic hardware is fixed, should go off for repair this week. Crossed fingers included.

[Mike Amos]

@Mike-Amos

OK, replaced the missing skirting board and put the lights back. Wotcha fink folks?

[Bryan K]

Overall, really nice, but I would change the light temp (seems kinds of orange-ish yellow in this shot) and up the exposure just a but more.

Just a little less orange in the light. Natural light is orange-ish yellow.

[Mike Amos]

@Bryan-K

Ta mate, feedback always helpful. Building and rendering the scene can lead to missing/ignoring stuff.

[Rich O Brien]

@Mike-Amos If the sun coming in the window is a directional light you should raise the angle values slightly to soften the shadow.

I sometime mix both HDRIs and Directional Lights to get the light the way I want it.

HDRs are great but some might offer you the background you want but not the light direction or power. Adding a directional to give you more artistic controls is sometimes a good hack.

Be mindful of power values and balance it.

A directional light with zero angle results in crisp clean shadows...

Increasing it to 2-3 will soften edges....

[massimo]

Rich's ones are good advices. Even if the best HDRIs, for example P.Guthrie's and CGSource's ones just to name two, don't need any extra sun because produce nice shadows, most of them need a bit of boost.
Does Rayscaper have something like this however?

I mean that you can move the sun in the physical sky until it will match the one in the HDRI. Because if not would be really difficult to align the two suns and this could lead to a fake result.

[Rich O Brien]

@massimo said in Rayscaper, My trip down the road to adjumacation.:

Does Rayscaper have something like this however?

No, it's guesswork if you want to align HDR sun and a directional light.

[massimo]

@Rich-O-Brien Ok, maybe a suggestion for the next release then.

[Mike Amos]

@Rich-O-Brien

On the subject of artificial lighting, is there a way to introduce a 'glow' to the light unit somehow? Something to essentially, mimic a lightbulb.

[Mike Amos]

Moved on somewhat.

[Rich O Brien]

@Mike-Amos said in Rayscaper, My trip down the road to adjumacation.:

On the subject of artificial lighting, is there a way to introduce a 'glow' to the light unit somehow? Something to essentially, mimic a lightbulb.

A couple of versions back there was a way. But at the moment it seems to me there's a bug with having both emissive materials and lights in a scene.

I need to test more to see if that is the case.

But to your bulb appearance query. I couldn't get any shader to respect how light should behave as it passes through a frosted glass. When I did get close the render times weren't worth the effort. It also crashed a few times during testing so that dampens my enthusiasm a tad.

I will try though. Thomas would benefit from seeing where shaders are not doing what is expected from a users point of reference.