[caryjames]

Hi Thomas: It finally finished rendering... I think it looks pretty good! Any suggestions are more than welcome!!!! Thanks again for all your help and advice.
Cary

[Thomas An.]

Looks nice. It seems you accomplished your goal to reduce the DOF effect.

[ivox3]

Cary ..... looks good. Now that you have your camera stuff down, ..you might want to try bringing in a lighting setup with more interest.

Try a highlight emitter up front or even use two (one left and right) with a larger fill plane --- remember that smaller emitters will create more distinct caustics.

Also: Maybe add an HDR (try using all the channels or disabling them) I usually kill off the background channel and what I get with trying out the illumination/reflection/refraction.

Also: try using long skinny geometry for the fill light ---- it still fills, ..but creates a more desired thin-line highlights and eliminates those big white reflections.

Also: definitely use multi-light

Pretty basic stuff, .. but it all goes to adding that little something extra that separates good generic renders from spectacular ones.

[caryjames]

Thanks for the comments guys!

Ivox what do you mean by
" .....with a fill larger fill plane --- remember that smaller emitters will create more distinct caustics"

Do you mean for me to use small emitters? If so how would that create a larger fill plane? Here is a photo of my setup with fill lights



In that scene I have a long rectangular emitter in front of the ring and a sperical emitter behind the ring. Do you think I should add other smaller emitters to the scene?

I will try to figure out HDR's I was a bit concerned that I would have leaves or something like that reflecting in my jewellery so I haven't bothered with it yet. . But I am inferring from reading all of these posts that HDR's are the way to go. Thanks
Cary

[ivox3]

That was a typo .... lol. I just meant to simply say with a larger fill plane.

Let's start over ...

The smaller emitters are for highlights and not intended for use as a general fill. They create a little more drama in the contrast. The fill light just fills --- I usually use that behind the object and use the -ml slider to adjust.

Now, .. a couple of things about your lighting. Although you can use solid geometry as emitters, ..it's not efficient. Try to just use single planes .. There's no point in sending light into nowhere --- using focused emitters should help your BM and render times. Also, .. try to keep your scene just larger than what the camera sees --- the larger your ground plane, ..the more calculations MW is doing that you'll never see -- again, rendertimes and BM.

As far as having unwanted reflections --- it's true, but you can always just use an abstract B&W HDR/LDR/MXI instead to create intesting reflections.

My advice is to first get really comfortable lighting the scene with standard emitters, ...and then move into HDR experimentation.

And my biggest piece of advice ------think unorthodox !
First establish the basics, ..but after that you will still have only achieved competent renders (of which there are and will be many just like it). Same old input = same old output.
Moving renders into that higher level of aesthetic, composition and realism requires a different input -- if you want a different output.

Try stuff, ...there are no rules, .....creatively speaking that is ...

[caryjames]

Thanks Ivox: I will definitely change my emitters to more simple geometry. And I will have to start thinking out of the box...... now how to do that ! Here is a render that I think is a little better that I ran before you posted. Better but I will try to come up with some better ideas over the next weeks and will post results as I finish. Thanks again
Cary

[caryjames]

Thought the glass idea was cool to try, I am not that thrilled with the idea but I do like the render... if that makes sense. . Anyway, any comments are definitely welcome!!
Cary

[richardfollett]

Something I find useful for DOF is this.
Setup your scene in rhino then transfer to MXST (max studio).
Once in here you can right click the screen and then use the 'FOCUS TO' option and then select a point on your ring you want in focus. This gives go results with fstop at 5.6 and realistic ring size models.

Rich

[JDHill]

Hi Rich,

Also, look in the plugin's Camera toolbar; there's a button with 'f.d.' on its icon - it runs the Maxwell_PickCameraFocalDistance command. This will help you to do the same thing in Rhino.

JD