How can I do these things?

Hi,

I've been using this thing for a week now, first time rendering anything. Got some nice results with the presets and a little tweaking, but I'd like to know a bit more about making my renders better. If anyone could help, that'd be much appreciated.

- Custom skies. I can see how to import a picture of sky under Planar HDRi, but when I do that it's really zoomed in. Does the picture have to be specific dimensions? Is it possible to adjust in a frame? I tried using Layer Wizard somewhere, but it won't budge at all or scale.

- Dynamics. My renders are looking a bit flat. They're lacking something in the light dept. but I'm not sure what I need to do. It's an outdoor shot of a building. How do I get some bright sunlight on there? And how do I get the windows to reflect bright light - like highlights?

- How do I adjust the focus to make the forground sharp and the rest blurred?

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Permalink Reply by Richcat on April 5, 2012 at 4:53am

Hi Peter

You are doing the right thing by using the presets, then its a matter of tweaking lights etc

Always start off with small check renders, and then whe you are happy max it up.

Have you checked out the help videos?

http://www.renderplus.com/wk/Tutorials_w.htm.

The lighting channels will help when you what to add more pop.

There are two ways to add the depth blur and focus, one you can set up before renderinghttp://www.renderplus.com/wk/Depth_of_Field_w.htm, the other in the image editor.http://www.renderplus.com/wk/NXt_Image_Editor_w.htm

I tend to use the path tracer, rather than packet engine, gives more natural results in my opinion.

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Permalink Reply by Richcat on April 5, 2012 at 9:01am

Hi Peter

Post an image here on the forum, I'm sure someone will give constructive feedback.

Recently I have been using alot more photo shop tweaking (like many of the others do with various rendering packages), like altering the contrast adding warm, smoothing, de speckling etc to give just to give that little more pop. It a lot quicker than rendering.

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Permalink Reply by Peter on April 5, 2012 at 12:48pm

Hi Rich,

Yeah, I've browsed nearly all of the tutorial videos, they're quite good. I'd somehow missed the image editor and didn't even know it was there. Thanks.

Any clue how to make a new sky? I can't find the right information about it. There's also a problem of the sky image being pixelated (with the stock HDRi skies), would this be because I need to do more passes (currently doing 20 with the packet engine) or something else?

Here's a screenshot. I have no idea what anyone will make of it.

Attachments:

upload.png, 758 KB

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on April 5, 2012 at 4:25pm

Here is your Sky image. (In the future use the image icon - to the right of the link icon above the reply window - to place your images directly into your posts so they are easier to see.

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on April 5, 2012 at 4:29pm

HDR images will not get less pixelated as you add more passes. You need to start with a better HDRi image.

If your 700 pixel image has a 30 degree field of view - then only 1/12th (360/30) of the width of the HDRi will appear as the sky so the HDRi should have 8,400 pixels width for perfect reproduction, or 1/2 that for fairly good reproduction.

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Permalink Reply by Peter on April 5, 2012 at 4:33pm

Ok, so I'll make the sky bigger.

i've only been using the default skies so far and this is the only usuable one that doesn't have trees and stuff in it. But is the sky what's making the scene look a bit cold? Does it affect the sun and light settings? What can I do to liven up this picture?

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Permalink Reply by Mike Halls on April 6, 2012 at 2:38am

Rather than use a HDRI sky try using an image of a sky as a background.

Go to NXT setup

Go to Background

Browse for a sky image

Use the layer wizard to stretch / adjust the sky to how you want it relative to your model

then close

Your render will have a nice sky.

The attached PDF shows the 4 steps.

Also attached a couple of skies for you to play with.

Hope this helps

Regards

Mike

Attachments:

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on April 6, 2012 at 8:06am

HDRi skies very much effect lighting, etc. They are sky images which contain illumination information, as well as visual information, and that is why they have to be complete 360 degree panaormas.

As Mike points out, if you main purpose is to have a sky background, which is not used for illumination, of window reflections, then a simple background image may work much better.

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Permalink Reply by Richcat on April 6, 2012 at 3:42pm

Hi Peter

I would use automatic sky mode, and play around with time of day in sketchup and with a detail background, as suggested.

Just ran your image through http://www.optikvervelabs.com/ with warm setting a few times to get some quick warmth and pop.

Al we have always had this pixellated issue with HDRis, I notice the accurender guys have a blur tool they can use with these- any chance we could have that. http://www.accurender.com/forum/topics/hdri-seems-at-low-def