I want to see if the community is interested in this.

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

Hello!.. It’s been a long time.

I’ll cut to the chase immediately… What do you think of these images?.. Especially about the quality/look of the lighting and GI.

upload.jpg960×540 143 KB

upload.jpg960×540 267 KB

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How about this animation?

http://i.imgur.com/P5OFrsF.gif

Now… What would you think or say if I tell you that these are the original renders?

http://i.imgur.com/NOyywfO.gif

Zero diffuce bounces. The GI is entirely node-based (SSGI) in compositing in 10-30 seconds after render. No scripting, no addons, 100% native nodes. All images and animation use almost the same, default parameters.

Now that hopefully I got the attention of some of you, I’ll allow myself to be blunt… I’m planning on releasing this node group for free, but…

I’m venezuelan, things here are tough, money is tight and I’d really appreciate donations if you find this product useful… I don’t plan to sell this, because, first of all, although I’ve been using and improving this node for over a year, it’s only me the one person that has been using it, it’s adapted to my workflow and there’s a possibility that for some of you it won’t fill your expectations. I don’t want the pressure and responsibilities of releasing and maintaining a product with the time, Internet connection, electricity and money constraints that I’m living in right now. But I believe in the usefulness of this little thing for the community, so I’ll give it a try.

Also, even when saving some money is the underlying reason for this, I don’t want to put a price on it, because first of all, it’s the first time I do this, but more important than that, I don’t want to limit or restrict the usefulness or help that this could offer to some people that maybe are in the same (or worse) situation than me…

I’m doing renders, final testing-&-fine-tuning and over the weekend I’ll prepare a nice documentation a-la “bmps project” included PDF to have a proper release between next Monday and Wednesday. Depending on the success of this experiment, I have a few other personal projects I can add to the package… Who knows, maybe this could be the start of something that helps me save enough money to move to another less-struggling country.

Anyway, I hope you are interested in this… Here’s an image of the “still in development” node group (a few parameters will change, be added or disappear).

P.S.: Yeah, I’m the creator and maintainer of the “bmps” project: [https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?151903-b.m.p.s.-1.5!](http://“bmps” project) (a -long overdue- new version is coming, BTW).

2

:spin: Wow amazing. Sure this is worth money.

3

For a rather large chunk of cases, this could be a fine solution.

However, it should be noted that users should not expect unbiased results (it seems that there are some limitations in terms of reflections and getting lighting info from geometry invisible to the camera), but I don’t see any way to resolve those without going into the Blender source and improving the way Blender makes passes (such as the ability to make reflected and refracted information).

Overall though, it’s a major step up from no GI (or limited GI, depending on which settings you use). To really get an idea, it would be nice to see comparisons to ground-truth images (ie. images making full use of real GI).

4

I am interested in anything that can improve my renderings. It would need testing first.

5

Holy shit this is just hacks!

but… i wonder what’s the catch?

I mean
surely the BF,autodesk and the rest arent just over complicating the GI process for the heck of it, right?

6

Hey, thanks for the feedback…

@AD, you are absolutely right.

I hope people understand the limitations of an SSGI (Screen Space Global Illumination) solution… Basically, it doesn’t take into account anything that’s outside the view. e.g., if we have a scene where’s a big, red wall outside the view, but it’s kind of obvious that from the camera we should see some red light bouncing off that wall onto other objects in the view, well, an SSGI solution won’t be able to do that… Although, a great thing about the node I’m offering is that you can use, for example, 1 bounce of real (Path Tracing) GI + my SSGI node to simulate the other subsequent bounces. This gives the best of both worlds. The physically correct solution of PT as an initial (and most “important” bounce) + the speed and noiseless result of my SSGI thing. It’s a good compromise between speed and quality.

@fdfxd, That’s the main reason I’ll release this as a free/donation thing. People should not have to trust me on the usefulness of this. Screen Space solutions have limitations as I mentioned in the above paragraph, Any developer will aim for physically plausible renders over Screen Space solutions. Screen Space solutions are more or less popular in the videogame industry, where speed is crucial. But that doesn’t mean that if used properly, a screen space solution won’t be useful, even for commercial, high profile projects.

In the help/how to use file I’m creating, I’ll explain some of the limitations of this node in more detail and with examples. Hopefully that will help most of you have realistic expectations for the node.

Also, maybe some people’s workflows can be difficult to adapt to this node requirements… But I plan to release a few example scenes with the node so you can check and experiment yourself.

Thanks again for the feedback!

7

I want to buy it. When is this available and how to pay?

8

Thanks, bigdad… You (and everybody else) will have it for free hopefully around Tuesday-Wednesday (I’m doing some renders for the help/manual and making sure everything is tidy and consistent)… You can donate (or not) absolutely whatever amount you want, no matter how small (In current Venezuela’s economy, even 50 cents are helpful)… I’ll be able to receive donations through PayPal, and most cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Dash, Ethereum, Monero…) In case you’re wondering, cryptocurrencies are actually much easier to deal with here than PayPal and $… I don’t want to get political, but the government restricts and controls pretty much all “official” dollars in the country. Cryptocurrencies are becoming life savers here.

9

I’m really happy and motivated just by the feedback I’m receiving here!.. I don’t want to post any donation link yet, since my idea and purpose is first to share with you something that you find valuable and then, if you feel like it, donate some bucks.

And as I said in the first post. I have other node groups (shaders/materials, compositing, environment…) that I could share with you to keep the ball rolling, but always with the main purpose unchanged: first, sharing with you something useful and only then, if you indeed find it useful, feel free to donate.

For example, here’s a couple that you might find useful as well:

A 100% procedural sky (even the sun is procedural), which you can also animate:
http://s5.postimg.org/9yy98u1lh/gif_im_color_dither_64_a4caaced6d.gif

A compositing anamorphic lens flare effect:
http://s5.postimg.org/kjhdiwkut/0005.gif

Greets!

10

this is good stuff

11

wow, its hard to tell some of those aren’t real photos, really incredible work

12

I don’t have any words to describe how awesome all your creations are. I’m saving up for college, but I will try to donate. You surely deserve the help.

13

great work - this will be useful to lot of people.i also hope that your current economic situation improves.may i suggest you to make post title indicate what you are offering.

14

Thanks as always for the feedback!..

@Remade Yeah, the plan is to open a new thread specifically for the “products”… I’m planing on a thread called “Tuqueque’s stuff” and that’s where I’ll be posting the real stuff. This thread is intended to be temporal. I wanted to check first if the community was even interested before bothering people with yet another thread of things nobody is interested in.

15

Looks good! Personally I think too much lens flare, but some people like that.

16

I think it looks awesome, I would give it a try and donate some $.

17

It’s not often that I see a fellow Venezuelan on these forums.

Anyhows, yeah, those nodes will see good use from interested users if you post them. You should also consider trying to get them featured on blendernation.com

18

I want to see the .blend files too !

Community will appreciate video-tutorials too … lel :cool:!
Happy Blend! Cheers …

19

You seem to be living in a tight economic situation. My recommendation is that you take courage and see if you can spend a little more time to properly support the product, with bug fixes and tutorials. This for you to definitely decide to sell it, and not depend on donations.

I am a hobbyist with Blender, I have no money to buy Blender products or addons, but it is my sincere recommendation to you.

20

Considering the state of the Venezuelan Bolivar (now worth less than a US penny and dropping), he would need to have a way where he can keep his donation money in the form of Dollars or Euros (otherwise the value will drop dramatically over time as his country uses the Zimbabwe method of printing larger and larger denominations).

It’s a sad situations for sure (for reasons that this forum forbids discussion of).