Thanks a lot Roger, Alvaro et al., this thread is the best that I have seen in… some time. I will subscribe to it even if it hasn’t new posts. All blenderartists should do or work IMHO with this way of clean and helpful contents and no fanboy-geekish attitude.
Thank you very much, sincerely. You have do this day a more little happy!
Glaurung
edit: i have forget to say that these images are very impressive (in part thanks to Alvaro, can be ? :-)) and i hope this is not fanboyism, but seeing the type of images that I want to do and how to achieve him. Yafray is indeed often under-“used”.
Im surprised you haven’t linked to this thread yet Samo (alvaro) - but for everyone else; this is a thread to help refined and improve your yafray renders at the yafray forum - very very helpful
I usually don’t use photons. I turn refinement all the way down and make the quality Best. I change other settings, but I can’t remember them at the moment.
Thanks a lot for your help guys! I really really appreciate it!
I just got back from vacation (was a very nice week) and will try and put my mind together: I’m really in bliss right now: Blender 2.34 and Yafray 0.0.9!!
Thanks Alvaro, Samo for posting it there. It is indeed an amazing topic, I’l register there as soon as I can.
Thanks for the nice words and I’l post updates as soon as I can. In the mean time, have fun with the new and improved Blender and Yafray!
Roger, imagine your are taking a photograph of that scene.
Your camera is likely to use a high exposure value, because there is little light. It is an indoor with almost no direct light.
Well, you setup up your camera for a high exposure. What would happen with the stripes of direct light if a high exposure is used?
IMO, they would appear much brighter, almost white, because your exposure is balanced for a little light and those light stripes are likely to appear overexposed, unless it is a cloudy day.
In lighting, like in character desing and in animation, it works better an unbalanced setup, when you try to focus people’s attention by using every element in your scene, lighting and shadows included. However, other elements of the composition maybe should appear more balanced such as funiture distribution. For instance move the telly to the right to balance the armchair on the left and so on, and work with composition lines.
Thanks for the critics. But my aim at the minute is the lightning. Not the composition, modelling or texturing. The stripes on the floor need more exposure, that´s for sure. But I am working on understanding Yafray better at the moment, and that´s why I am not buzy with other things at the moment. But thanks a lot for the comment.
PS in your signature there is the Yaf 0.0.8 Release notes while there is 0.0.9 already.
Use Full method and turn on the Cashe and set the “Refinement” to something low… maybe even as low as .03
In some scenes that gets rid of the botched shadows. It depends of your settings for lights.
That last image you posted.
What are the setting for that one?
Auto AA
Clamp RGB
AA Passes
AA Samples
Psz
Thr
Raydepth
Bi
Gamma
Exp
Method
Quality
Cache
No Bump
Shadow Qu.
Prec
Refinement
EmitPwr
GI Pwr
Depth
C Depth
Photons
Count
Radius
Mix Count
The problem is that photons are shot from the outside, many bounce back in the venetian curtain and don’t get inside. A solution is to put your whole scene inside an sphere, anyway it is not going to be seen, with an emit material.
The second problem is that the default radius is not optimised for the size of that scene. That’s why in your original scene there was a hugue disproportion between photons stored in the photonmap and photons eventually gathered.
In the scene I’ve posted the problem is almost solved with a small radius and more photon emitters, but there is still some problems to solve, for instance, the difference between photons stored and gathered is still big IMO, there is noise (not seen because the lighting is not strong) and there is more room for improvements in lighting and composition.
Photons are only used to help GI, just like particles are used to help Fluid sim. Photons are not the most accurate way of making GI, though they don’t look bad and if you have enough you can’t tell that there is a lot of color bleeding lost. I found this out when trying to render a cornell box with photons.
Instead, just turn them off, turn on Cache, and turn Refinement all the way down, and make the quality on Best.
Notice that in your most recent render, the floor is brown wood, and the wall is white. Even though that is true, you don’t see any of the brown being reflected onto the white wall, which is supposed to be what GI is for. That is caused by using photons. It looks good, but it isn’t accurate, and will never look truly photorealistic unless everything was one color, or one shade of color.
