[hdesbois]

My new attempt with Lightwave...

Some nasty atefacts due to digital confusion post DOF (still on a laptop). I'll post a new image a soon as I'm back on my main computer. Blurry reflections made with procedural bump + G2 shader. Still not quite happy with the gold material. I'd like to have the advice of the Lightwave masters of this forum on this case (now entirely with gradients).
HD

[Thomas An.]

Glebe, HD,

Your Lightwave images are certainly a step up from before !

Blebe,

Try using the 3ds file ... it seems people using the OBJ are having distortions due to mesh issues (those distortions are most likely affecting your caustics)

[glebe digital]

Thanks Thomas, I'll try the 3ds and see if that's any better.

[ajlynn]

I'm so surprised how poorly Lightwave has performed in these tests, I was certainly expecting better.

I don't think you're giving your Lightwave render a fair treatment here - the challenge said best render in lowest time and your Lightwave render owns the time category. Not sure how this is all done in Lightwave, but with the results you have so far if you increase AA sampling by one notch and up caustics photons by ... well, a lot ... you should get an excellent image in under 30 minutes.

[Thomas An.]

Any idea what this dark line is? It is showing in the Maxwell renders and is not in the reference photo.

-Greg

Hi Greg,

The ring of the photo is not identical to the ring of the model (in other words that ring was very close but not digitized). The modelled ring has the same inner and outer diameters as well as height ... but ... it has more roundness to it, including more curvature around the inner side. This extra curvature is most likely responsible for the pronounced separation of the primary and secondary caustic; since the emitter rays do not reach the underside of the curved lip as much and the caustic is dimmer near its base, thus making the secondary caustic stand out more. (Furthermore if we look at the Vray image ... it is nearly identical to Maxwell).

(Also, as we slightly move the beam, we obsere the caustic changes as it follows the light and sometimes the separation is a little more evident; other times not so much ... at the moment of the snapshot, given the emitter position and ring shape, the separation was not as evident in the photo)

[glebe digital]

ajlynn wrote:

I don't think you're giving your Lightwave render a fair treatment here - the challenge said best render in lowest time and your Lightwave render owns the time category. Not sure how this is all done in Lightwave, but with the results you have so far if you increase AA sampling by one notch and up caustics photons by ... well, a lot ... you should get an excellent image in under 30 minutes.

Thanks AJ, yes you're probably right that LW could achieve a better result in more time, unfortunately caustic quality is at its highest on that image already!........I'll certainly try more AA though. To get a better result I'd also have to 'cheat' the scene and I wanted to keep to the exact set-up as specified by Thomas. I like HD's lightwave result so far, think he's on to a better solution.

[GM5]

Thomas, thanks for the reply. Makes sense to me. I didn't realize that the curvature on the inner surface was different. I haven't had a chance to play with caustics (or a need to with the type of work that I do) so this has been fun. I also tried to do the test using Brazil. All I really accomplished was remembering why I hate using photons! The setup took way longer than Maxwell and had questionable results. None of the renders using Brasil were worth posting.

-Greg

[hdesbois]

This is my last attemps with Lightwave :



Rendertime is four hours, with 17 pass antialiasing, which is probably an overkill. Still room for improvement, but it would require better skills than mine. Area emitters, 0.1% caustics, no image processing, classic enhanced high AA with classic reconstruction filter.
HD

[Thomas An.]

Hi HD,

Looks good
The antialiasing now is a lot better than the previous try.

-Thomas

[tom]

Very nice result from LW hdesbois!

[Thomas An.]

Hi all,

This challenge has run for a couple of months.
This is a good point to close this round and start the voting.

Please feel free to make your choices !

Voting page:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/doehtal-r ... ntries.htm

Challenge Home page:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/doehtal-r ... eIntro.htm

Many, many thanks to all who took the time to place an entry participating in this effort.

-Thomas

[sandykoufax]

Thanks for you effort about that, Thomas.

It's really difficult to choice because there are too many great renders.

anyway I voted too.

[Thomas An.]

Thanks for you effort about that, Thomas.

It's really difficult to choice because there are too many great renders.

anyway I voted too.

Thank you for your votes !
(Also one thing to note is, a person can pick more than one images during their vote)

[ivox3]

what do you mean they can pick more than one ? how many?

I didn't know that ......I only picked one. I've been cheated! !

did I not read something? ahhhhhhhh!.

[Thomas An.]

what do you mean they can pick more than one ? how many?

I didn't know that ......I only picked one. I've been cheated! !

did I not read something? ahhhhhhhh!.

Hi Chris

I have made them checkboxes ... so you can tick more boxes.
(otherwise they would be radio buttons)

This was your cue: "Which image(s) from...."