Posts made by fluid

We just released a new demo version, featuring:

-Improved UI readability
-IES light profiles
-Layered materials

You can grab it here: http://www.fluidray.com/downloads/

Hi EarthMover,

Thanks for the kind words!

Yes, FluidRay is still in beta. May I ask how many polygons does your scene have?

Yep, I totally agree.

Hi Frederik,

@unknownuser said:

I.e. How do I create a glass material, which allows the sun-light to pass through the window...??

Creating a glass material is actually quite simple, just select "transparent" in the scattering tab and "dielectric" in the medium tab. Or you can import it directly from the material library. Then set the medium precedence for your glass object to a value greater than 1.
Please refer to the "glass" tutorial for a step by step guide.
The medium precedence is necessary because it allows you to create transparent objects in complex configurations, for example a glass ball inside a water glass.

@unknownuser said:

Now... I know this is doable, but I also know that even with an unbiased render it will increase the render time tremendously...

I don't necessarily agree with this, again, it really depends on the scene and lighting configuration. Please also note that there are other well established physically based renderers that don't have point or spot lights.

@unknownuser said:

In all other unbiased render applications I know, you have point- and spot-light as well as IES and projector light options and they're physically correct, so I really don't understand exactly what you're referring to...

I'd like to distinguish between IES lighting profiles and point - spot lights. A IES profile (among other things) specifies the distribution of emission directions, which in FluidRay is called "directional emission" in the material editor. IES profiles will be just another type of directional emission, and will be already available in the next demo version. Point and spot lights, on the other hand, produce images that don't really exist in reality. That is really what I mean for "physically correct". Nevertheless, point and spot lights will be added to FluidRay pretty soon.

@unknownuser said:

Is it possible to create layered materials...??

It will be available in the next demo version.

I'd like to take this chance to mention the design philosophy behind the material editor, which might look intimidating at first, but gives actually a huge flexibility once you grasp it. There are five tabs in the material editor:
-scattering - how light is scattered once it hits the surface, here you can distinguish between metal, plastic, matte, etc.
-displacement - how the surface is locally perturbed, for example with bump mapping
-area emission - how light is emitted over a surface, for example you could have that certain points on the surface emit more light than others.
-directional emission - once a point on the surface has been chosen for emission, here you decide how the direction is chosen, could be a cone of directions, or an IES profile, etc.
-medium - the type of medium that is inside the surface, it could be air, glass, skin, etc. This will turn out extremely important when we'll add subsurface scattering.
Having these five material characteristics vary one independently from the others really allows you to create a huge selection of materials.

Nicola

Hi Frederik,
Yes, you can get soft shadows in your renders, it all depends on the light setup you are using. I assume you are using the sun and sky, which are there by default (They are called infinite emissions - meaning light coming ideally from infinity). The sun, in particular, produces very sharp shadows, since it's rays are almost parallel to each other.
There are multiple ways to get soft shadows: If your scene is an exterior, you can just remove the sun and leave the sky. Or, you can remove the sun and use a "distant" infinite emission and turn up the cone angle parameter. Or you can use an environment map. Please check the "environment map" tutorial for a quick overview of the process.

Besides this, every Sketchup surface can emit light, you just have to set it up in the material editor. This allows you to create an area light for example, which will give you soft shadows. Please check the "area light" tutorial about that.
The way you can set up surface emission is very tweakable, and support for IES light profiles will be there very soon.
FluidRay does not have point lights or spotlights for now, because in real life, it's impossible to create a light source that is infinitely small and infinitely bright (even a light bulb has a surface). Said that, in FluidRay it's still possible to create point light or spot light effects in a physically correct way. For example, you can create a small sphere an make it emit all over its surface, and you'll have a point light.
Support for ideal lights like spot lights and point lights is planned, but since it can produce results that are not physically correct, we gave it a lower priority.

Can you please point out the which terms are you referring to? The material parameters? That would greatly help us increase the clarity and usability of FluidRay.

Thanks for your questions, they are of great help!

Nicola Candussi

Hi Everybody,

I'm Nicola Candussi from FluidRay.com. We are constantly working at improving the clarity of our website so people can better appreciate what FluidRay can offer.
We posted some screenshots of the UI in the Gallery: http://www.fluidray.com/gallery
Also, we have the tutorials online: http://www.fluidray.com/documentation/tutorials

Please also note that the tutorials are made on extremely simple scenes on purpose, to give a quick overview of the work-flow. They shouldn't be taken as the deciding factor of what the underlying render engine is capable of.
The render engine, developed in-house, is a bidirectional path tracer with Metropolis sampling, which is really among the best algorithms that the current research in unbiased physically based rendering can offer. Where it really shines is in complex scenes with realistic materials and complex lighting configurations.
Nevertheless, we are currently working on optimizations and feature improvements.
All the tutorials and the renderings in the gallery were made with a three years old quad-core 2.4Ghz Q6600.

We greatly appreciate all your feedback, since it really is the way for us to improve FluidRay.

Nicola Candussi