Hello everybody,

I just stumbled upon this Texture Collection and have the same problem as Musah.
20/21 Links on 4Shared are still perfectly find. Only part 18 is no longer available.

Is there anybody who could re-upload the last part so this collection is available for the Sketchup Community? Your help would be much appreciated!

Best regards
niX.

Hey,

just writing to let you know that I found the problem.

Turns out that the HDRI was a bad choice for lighting. It didnt generate enough shadow to see the shadow catcher at work. Now that I use the TexSky for Environment Lighting everything works fine, see attached.

Best regards
niX.

@andybot said:

niX - is the shadow in your final render? The prepass doesn't matter, it's normal to see the plane during the LC calculation. Can you post a finished render or an SU model?

Andy

Hey, I just made a quick render with Low Quality Exterior Presets and attached it along with a screenshot of the model.
One more thing I noticed is that you can see the plane in the reflection even in the final render.

If that doesnt help I can send you the model.

Thank you for the tutorial. It's the only tut for shadow catcher that I have found and very easy to follow.

Unfortunately it seems like there are other settings that influence the render of the shadow catcher and I was hoping that someone knows how to solve my current problem.

I am trying to render an object using vray 2.0 with HQ exterior (or any oher) presets, default lights turned on and a HDRI in both Environment slots.
The shadow catcher is set up and applied exactly as described in your tutorial.

When I use the normal render I can see the plane + shadows while vray is building the light cache. After this step the plane disappears along with the shadows during the Prepass.

The RT engine works better. I still see the shadows and the plane has almost disappeared. However the render didnt update for over 10 minutes while preparing the global light manager. So this wont work either.

Any ideas on what the reason for my problem could be?

Many thanks in advance!

Best regards
niX.

Ok. I think I will just keep looking for different HDRI and continue experimenting. Thanks for the link. Very interesting. I already started thinking about the lack of shadows in my render but wanted to tackle the size problem first.

Thank you for helping me.
You have a very interesting blog and many great renderings.

Best regards
niX.

Thank you for the advice.

I used the override function in the Vray options to change the FOV from 35 to 90 (just to see if it makes a difference). Anything above that will just distort the image.

The new render looks different but I still dont think that the dimensions are in proper relations to the HDRI dimensions. The object has a height of 2,60m and the base has a radius of about 0,9m.

Is there anything else I could try? Or does it really just depend on how the HDRI was made in terms of camera distance?

Hello,

I am currently experimenting with Vray and tried using a HDRI for GI and Background.

The problem, as you can see in the attached picture, is that the object appears to be way too small in relation to the background.

I have used the search function and googled extensively but I did not find a solution. The best answert that I found was that it is not possible to resize the HDRI and that you have to find a HDRI that was photographed in a manner that fits your scene. Does this still apply or are there new techniques?

Is there a possibility to resize the HDRI with vray2.0?

Or any other workaround to fix the relation between background and object?

As far as I know it is possible to edit HDRI with Photoshop. Is it possible to resize the image in PS to fix the problem?

For comparison and to help make things clear i attached a second image. I think that in the second image, 1 meter in the model looks like it could equal 1 meter in the background. Obviously I need to render the whole object and not just this small part.

The HDRI is applied as TexBitmap to GI and Background. The UVWType is UVWGenEnvironment and the mapping Type is spherical.

Best regards
niX.

@daniel said:

Are there more gems? Yes. And there seems to be new ones coming out all the time. I don't think anyone mentioned LightUp - the guy who developed it, Adam(?) is a member of Skechucation. If you go to the Gallery there is a "Render Application Homepages" thread that list quite a few. Also, if you can find a bookstore that carries the trade magazines 3D Artist and 3D World, you can find additional information - and in the descriptions of all the renderings they will list what software was used to create them.

I think you will often find that the price of the software is commensurate with how many bells and whistles it has. You'll just have to determine what you want it to do and how much your willing to pay (or save up for) for that.

Yes, LumenRT and Lumion are both expensive, but as you say they look very attractive. I had planned on saving up for Lumion, but EON Software offered me a very good deal on LumenRT, and so far I am pleased with it - it is easy and very fast. It appears to operate very similar to Lumion.

I probably don't have to tell you that you need to make sure your computer meets the system requirements for whatever software you end up getting.

Great post. Thank you. I already had a look at LightUp a while ago and the realtime walkthrough appeared to be quite useful in my eyes, and also very unique. Then I found some other renders with realtime walkthrough and realized how little I know about the current features of renders. Thats why I created this thread.

I browsed through the thrad you recommended and think I have a good overview now.
At the moment I am going to choose one render that does not cost too much to start learning. This means I will probably try Twilight, LightUp, Kerkythea and maybe LuxRender and choose one of them. As soon as I "mastered" the chosen software I am probably going for something like Thea or Vray. And if I am not satisfied after leaning those or need more features etc. I am going to look at something like Vue, Lumion, Artlantis oder LumenRT. I really love the feature videos but I do not think that it is smart to start off with such an advanced render.

Thank you very much for taking the time to help me.

@numerobis said:

@daniel said:

Looking in the trade magazines, most professional architectural illustrators seem to favor 3DS Max, but it costs an arm, 2 legs, and your first born.[/attachment]

Max comes with Mental Ray... but you don't need to buy a feature packed app like Max, if the only thing you want is the renderer.

Lumion is nice for exterior animations, but not for interiors. The current GI quality is a joke. And you can't compare the level of realism to full GI renderes like Maxwell or V-Ray. The material system in Lumion is very limited.
But it all depends on your needs... for fast exterior animations Lumion looks quite good.

Thank you for your input too. I will keep in mind that Lumion may be the better choice if I need a good solution for exterior animations.

As for Mental Ray, i totally agree with you. I think Max is a great software. But for me it is far too complicated and I think you can do many of the things you can do in Max with Sketchup plugins too if you know how.

Best regards
niX.

@daniel said:

Some programs I don't think were listed above, that you might consider looking at, are:

Lumion (this looks very good on it's website, appears similar to LumenRT; I considered purchasing it myself, but I've already blown my computer budget this year)
Vue (there are many versions to choose from; I don't think Vue can be beat at creating a natural environment - but depending on what version you get, it can get pricey).
Looking in the trade magazines, most professional architectural illustrators seem to favor 3DS Max, but it costs an arm, 2 legs, and your first born.

I have Vue Infinite and LumenRT 4 Studio - the later I've just started playing around with - it's easy and fast, but the images aren't exactly photoreal. Below is a rendering using LumenRT of a coworkers sad little model - the only editing I did was to replace his trees with LumenRT trees. The program automatically recognized the glass materials and added a reflection. It took only a few minutes to create that image. If you go with an Eon Software product (Vue, LumenRT), I suggest you get the maintenance plan - it will pay for itself when updates and new versions of the program are released.

[attachment=0:d697z65j]<!-- ia0 -->1834 Cost Reduction Scheme 3 - 2013-08-28.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:d697z65j]

Wow. Thanks for the post! I thought the LumenRT preview video looked cool, but that was before you mentioned Lumion.

The video is absolutely amazing. It really puts the focus on architecture as you can add animated people, animals, water, trees, video textures etc. later with a few clicks. Especially the environment looks awesome. Even though it may not be very photorealistic the rendered video results will be quite impressive.

Unfortunately Lumion is so expensive. Same goes for Vue and LumenRT.
I really love them. Thanks again for mentioning Lumuion especially.
After I gathered some experience with cheaper renderng software I will make sure to put something like Lumion on my wishlist.

Are there more gems in rendering software out there?

Best regards
niX.

@unknownuser said:

Indigo:

• slow
• outstanding quality
• easy to use, thanks to Whaat's excellent plugin
• good support

Vray:

-very fast
-possibly too complex for beginners
-great deal of tutorials etc out there
-produces great images, if configured correctly

Podium:

-fast
-good quality
-easy to use
-great support
-specifically geared to non-specialists

Thea:

-versatile (biased, unbiased and gpu-based rendering)
-has a studio app
-bit hard for beginners, I think (though this might not be the case if you stick with Tomasz' plugin, instead of using Thea itself)
-good support
-materials, tree models etc available

I'd consider all of the above apps as 'good'. For beginners, I'd suggest Podium. Although Kerkythea (which I didn't list) is a decent choice also.
It's free, and there's comprehensible tutorials available. Twilight (Kerky's little brother, if you will) isn't a bad choice either.

Important: try before you buy.

Thank you for this great post. It is interesting that all renders that come from Kerkythea look quite promising. Even though I like what I see from Vray, I really think it would be quite difficult to begin with. After taking a closer look at Thea I must say that it looks quite promising but you are probably right when you say its rather complicated for beginners.

Right now I think I go ahead and try Podium and Twilight as my start point and may move up to something like Thea, Vray etc. in the future.

As I seem to be attracted to renders from the Kerkythea family I might even try to learn Kerkythea. When I tried it some time ago I had trouble with libraries and so on. But now that the website is up again and everything starts to get organized again I might be able to work this out.

@numerobis said:

Maxwell Render!

(www.maxwellrender.com)

Highest quality with strictly unbiased rendering and physically correct materials and camera model.
Great feature set and free plugins for many applications including photoshop, nuke and after effects (http://www.maxwellrender.com/index.php/products/maxwell_render_suite/plugins/) - and a standalone app. (a great SU plugin) I use it since beta v1 now (2005) with SU and 3DSmax - since a few years as main production renderer on a daily basis (arch viz).
...progressive rendering (incl. save/resume), multilight, interactive rendering on CPU supporting all features, layered materials, render elements, mxs instances, grass, multilens, material gallery (http://resources.maxwellrender.com/), a great support - especially for the SU plugin
http://www.maxwellrender.com/index.php/products/maxwell_render_suite/features/

Problems are caustics behind glass/dielectrics and the shading of bump/normal mapped rounded shapes under direct light - which i really hope will be solved in the upcoming V3 (october) but i'm not sure about it. And maybe speed if you don't have a farm, but more for interior than for exterior shots.
Here are the new features that are announced/leaked so far:

• Great speed optimizations for large scenes
• GPU accelerated multilight/multilens modifications in realtime
• Completely new, easy-to-use material editor
• Procedural textures
• Rendertime Boolean and subdivision surfaces
• Double-sided materials
• Object cloner (Scattering/instance tools)
• Light projectors (for film projectors etc.)
• Open exr 2 and deep compositing support
• New special lens models including spherical, pin hole, fisheye and orthographic
• Wireframe rendering
• Custom textured Sun + Custom Sun radius
• Alembic support
• API Extensions

• many more

looking forward to the release...

Thanks for the detailed post. I had a look and some pictures in the gallery are really amazing. But I have to admit that Maxwell looks quite intimidating to me I will consider it for my next step after taking foot in the whole rendering world.

Thanks everybody. This has been really helpful. Please feel free to share more experiences with different renders and what you think makes them unique.

Best regards
niX.