RPC Trees

I'm trying out iRender with Sketchup and also experimenting with RPC entourage. When I render trees, they are much darker and duller than the rest of the scene. I had a similar issue with RPC trees in 3ds Max and found some setting that would brighten them. I'm not finding anything similar in iRender. Any ideas or assistance would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Wade

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on August 7, 2012 at 4:16pm

I don't think there is any way to brighten the RPC trees now.

We'll add a way to increase the brightness of the RPCs.

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Permalink Reply by Wade Miller on August 9, 2012 at 1:55pm

Another follow on questions related to RPC trees - I'm getting a shadow cast across it. I'm sure this is a common problem with an easy fix - I just can't seem to figure it out! Thanks!

Attachments:

rpc_tree.jpg, 51 KB

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on August 9, 2012 at 2:17pm

Those RPC trees are nothing more that an image of a tree on a single face.

There is a setting on our Support dialog for:

"Use Criss-Cross for 2D RPC shadow rendering"

If that is set (the default), then we render it using 2 perpendicular faces, so that the shadow it casts is more realistic. Otherwise it sometimes be a thin line, if the sun is off to the side. That may be part of the reason that the trees are darker than you'd like.

If you'd rather just have the one face in the rendering, facing the camera, then un-check that.

If you want to use the Criss-Cross for the shadows on the ground, but don't want to see the shadow on the tree itself, then you need to un-check "Receive Shadows" on the component instance.

Or, better yet, use the nXt Plant library and get Fractal trees in your rendering, and correct shadows

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Permalink Reply by Wade Miller on August 17, 2012 at 7:16am

Rich, I'm trying out the option of shadows on the ground but not shadows on the tree and it doesn't seem to work. I've left the Criss-Cross setting checked, and tried a couple of things with the tree component. First, I selected the tree and unchecked 'receive shadows' for the entity. When I render, I still get shadows on the tree. Next, I edited the tree component and for each face in the tree component, I unchecked 'receive shadows'. When rendered, the tree is still receiving shadows. Is this a bug in the renderer? Thanks!!!

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on August 17, 2012 at 7:24am

Wade,

We don't process the SketchUp "receives shadows" setting. Instead you have to use "self glow" to make an object brighter.

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Permalink Reply by Wade Miller on August 17, 2012 at 12:50pm

Al, I'm not sure I understand your response. Rich had suggested in his post above that "If you want to use the Criss-Cross for the shadows on the ground, but don't want to see the shadow on the tree itself, then you need to un-check "Receive Shadows" on the component instance." That is what I tried and it does not work. Am I missing something? Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on August 18, 2012 at 9:30am

I think Rich was hoping that would work - but we don't have process receive shadows in our renderer. It is much easier to implement that inside SketchUp - where only the sun can cast shadows, but harder in a Photo-realistic rendering package. (Rich may have a better answer for this, but he is on vacation until next Thursday)

I thought you could add self glow to the trees, but you cannot do that either (yet)

Rich and I will look at this more next week.

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on August 23, 2012 at 10:17am

I was confused about the "Receive Shadows" check box. We can use the "Cast Shadows" setting, but not the "Receive Shadows" setting, so you cannot use the Criss-Cross option for RPCs unless you can live with the odd shadow on the tree itself, or the lack of shadows cast from the trees.