I've attached a subset of a scene I'm working on.

Here's the whole scene:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/lg8xqbgkyekwci9/ldview_povray_datsville_rev367.zip

LightSysIV and the LGEO part library need to be installed:
* http://www.ignorancia.org/en/index.php?page=Lightsys
* http://www.digitalbricks.org/lgeo.html

Any tips on improving the render? I added focal blur at one point in time, but
that slowed the render by a factor of 10 I think.

Thanks.


Mike

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"posfan12" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> I've attached a subset of a scene I'm working on.

Cool scene, posfan.

> Any tips on improving the render? I added focal blur at one point in time, but
> that slowed the render by a factor of 10 I think.

1) Subsurface scattering. (Important if rendering closeups.)
2) Dramatic lighting, provided by a table lamp or sunlight set off to one side,
and a moody sky/environment.
3) Radiosity with a low error_bound and a highish count.
4) Blurred reflections.
5) A night render, with fade_power 2 area lights in the street lamps and house
windows.

Any one of those suggestions is going to increase the rendering time,
unfortunately. Hate to suggest it around here, but using Blender + Cycles is
better for rendering Legos, as many of the rendering features necessary for
rendering plastics come cheaply.

Check out these two images I rendered using Blender + Cycles:

http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq199/stbenge/misc%20renders/LegoSet18m_48s.jpg
http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq199/stbenge/misc%20renders/LegoSet8m_42s.jpg

The rendering times are included in the image names. (hardware used: CPU, 4 x
2.4 GHZ)

I think Mr. Lipka has been working on modifications that will eventually make
combining radiosity, SSS and focal blur more efficient (if I'm not
misunderstanding his goals). My hope is that someday soon POV-Ray will rival
Cycles in terms of render speed (not taking into account GPU-accelerated
rendering, which is always severely limited by VRAM).

Sam

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"Samuel Benge" <stb### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Check out these two images I rendered using Blender + Cycles:
>
> http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq199/stbenge/misc%20renders/LegoSet18m_48s.jpg
> http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq199/stbenge/misc%20renders/LegoSet8m_42s.jpg
>
> The rendering times are included in the image names. (hardware used: CPU, 4 x
> 2.4 GHZ)

Have you tried Yafaray? I found it uses an SDL as well so it should be possible
to export LDraw models to it.

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"posfan12" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> "Samuel Benge" <stb### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> > Check out these two images I rendered using Blender + Cycles:
> >
> > http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq199/stbenge/misc%20renders/LegoSet18m_48s.jpg
> > http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq199/stbenge/misc%20renders/LegoSet8m_42s.jpg
> >
> > The rendering times are included in the image names. (hardware used: CPU, 4 x
> > 2.4 GHZ)
>
> Have you tried Yafaray? I found it uses an SDL as well so it should be possible
> to export LDraw models to it.

I tried Yafaray once, back in Blender's 2.49 days, but I wasn't very impressed.

The models I linked to, BTW, were adapted from some files Reuben P. uploaded. I
was able to add beveling in Blender and set up a snapping grid for object
placement. Works fairly well.

Oh yeah, in response to your original request for rendering tips, you might be
able to just render the scene with area_lights (low sample), focal blur and
blurred reflections (using clipka's awesome patch). Make sure your ambient is
set to 0 for all finishes, and maybe raise the brilliance to some value above
default. Since Legos aren't too translucent, you might not even need to add SSS.

Sam

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On 1/5/2014 1:35 PM, Samuel Benge wrote:
> Check out these two images I rendered using Blender + Cycles:
>
> http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq199/stbenge/misc%20renders/LegoSet18m_48s.jpg
> http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq199/stbenge/misc%20renders/LegoSet8m_42s.jpg
>
> The rendering times are included in the image names. (hardware used: CPU, 4 x
> 2.4 GHZ)
>

Those are very nice pictures, but you only have one model to render. 
Eventually I will have to render a lot more.


Mike


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posfan12 <pos### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> On 1/5/2014 1:35 PM, Samuel Benge wrote:
> > Check out these two images I rendered using Blender + Cycles:
> >
> > http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq199/stbenge/misc%20renders/LegoSet18m_48s.jpg
> > http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq199/stbenge/misc%20renders/LegoSet8m_42s.jpg
> >
> > The rendering times are included in the image names. (hardware used: CPU, 4 x
> > 2.4 GHZ)
> >
>
> Those are very nice pictures, but you only have one model to render.
> Eventually I will have to render a lot more.

Hi Mike,

I didn't have much luck getting a nice & fast Lego render out of POV-Ray
yesterday... The attached is what I came up with. I used UberPOV with:

* micronormals for everything (cheaper than reflection blurring)
* focal blur (1 sample)
* radiosity (1 sample; it shows)
* one area_light (2 samples)
* antialiasing method 3 (+a0.001 +am3 +r3)

Antialising method 3 lets you get away fewer samples for everything else. The
micronormals I used were too weak to hide radiosity artifacts in shadowed areas,
otherwise this image would have looked a bit better. The lack of SSS is really
evident; compare this image to the ones I rendered in Cycles and you'll see what
I mean.

Also, the conversion process was doing its best to mangle this object.
Consequently, I had to ditch beveling for some pieces, and the pegs came out
faceted. Kind of annoying, but it's entirely my fault because I wasn't taking my
time :\

Anyway, the attached rendered in 31 minutes, 41 seconds. Not too great, but
better than it used to be :)

Probably doesn't help your situation much. I'd say try to use only radiosity and
antialiasing... and maybe a low-sample area_light as your main source. But
considering the fact that you're running out of memory, I don't know how much
luck you'll have at any rate!

Sam

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On 1/11/2014 3:12 PM, Samuel Benge wrote:
> Anyway, the attached rendered in 31 minutes, 41 seconds. Not too great, but
> better than it used to be :)
>
> Probably doesn't help your situation much. I'd say try to use only radiosity and
> antialiasing... and maybe a low-sample area_light as your main source. But
> considering the fact that you're running out of memory, I don't know how much
> luck you'll have at any rate!


Thanks for the suggestions. I think I will have to put the project on 
hold until I get some seriously new hardware. I can't really ask people 
to do the renders for me every time I make a little change to the scene.


Mike

-- 
http://isometricland.net

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"posfan12" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Any tips on improving the render? I added focal blur at one point in time, but
> that slowed the render by a factor of 10 I think.

Hi Mike,

I cannot really give you any tips on improving your render, but a few months ago
I was playing with a lego scene and Jaime's Lightsys, too.

See attached image.

Render-time was about 31 hours on my Core2Duo.

Source code at https://github.com/koppi/lego-buggy

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