- Wed Aug 05, 2009 4:28 pm
#305448
Hi all,
Apologies for the multitude of questions, but I felt it would be better than posting in a bunch of different ones.
I've been testing Maxwell out for a few days and used it quite a bit back in the beta days, and hope to use it in production starting this week, but have a few things I'd like to check up front:
questions:
1) In order to get an emitter to light further (i.e. slower falloff, so it reaches further) do you need to increase the size of the emitter or the power of the material? If i need visibly small emitters but powerful light, is the best way to use 2 emitters, one visible (small but with no emitter material) and one invisible (large)? is there an "emitter material" that doesn't actually light the scene, but is bright enough to look like one? is this possible with MAX or do I need to use Studio?
2) What is the best general glass MXM for interior/exterior use? Needs to have reflections, refractions and render reasonably quickly when viewed internally or externally. Or should I be using a unique glass MXM for different situations?
3) should I avoid using instances at all? I've had issues with objects not rendering at all when instanced, and some emitters (mirrored ones) not rendering at all.
4) what is more efficient in rendertimes for displacement - more geometric detail or higher precision value?
5) what is the best file format to export an MXI to to correct white balance? EXR? HDR? What is the best software to handle this in post?
6) what is the best solution for keeping maps stored on a system? use a network path that all scenes point to? I need to render COOP and I'm getting missing maps warnings.
7) is it "safe" to render directly from 3ds max or better to export an MXS and tweak it first? anything that max plugin can't handle that should be done in Studio before rendering?
8) does it always generally take a long time for emitter light to appear in reflective materials? (such as a light reflecting in a pool of water).
9) can MW handle Color Correct materials reliably without issue, and ok over a network render?
10) when rendering a COOP image, is it best to set up the COOP first, or is it ok to just render the same image on 2 machines and merge the two, even if they covered the same SL range? e.g. both machines render an image from SL0 to SL12, then merge, does this produce SL24 or just a less noisy SL12? Or do I need to render the image on one machine from SL0 to SL12, then render on the other machine from SL12 to SL24 and merge?
11) apart from emitters, what are the common features of a scene that can slow down a render? displacement? reflectivity of materials? physical sun? do they make much of a difference as with other renderers? any general rules of thumb for keeping rendertimes down? (apart from keeping Ref 0 RGB <240, using small and lowpoly emitters etc.)
Again, sorry for the long list but I'm bashing out work for a big project and don't have too much time to test and find out some of these things, hoping someone else might be able to answer for me.
Cheers,
Apologies for the multitude of questions, but I felt it would be better than posting in a bunch of different ones.
I've been testing Maxwell out for a few days and used it quite a bit back in the beta days, and hope to use it in production starting this week, but have a few things I'd like to check up front:
questions:
1) In order to get an emitter to light further (i.e. slower falloff, so it reaches further) do you need to increase the size of the emitter or the power of the material? If i need visibly small emitters but powerful light, is the best way to use 2 emitters, one visible (small but with no emitter material) and one invisible (large)? is there an "emitter material" that doesn't actually light the scene, but is bright enough to look like one? is this possible with MAX or do I need to use Studio?
2) What is the best general glass MXM for interior/exterior use? Needs to have reflections, refractions and render reasonably quickly when viewed internally or externally. Or should I be using a unique glass MXM for different situations?
3) should I avoid using instances at all? I've had issues with objects not rendering at all when instanced, and some emitters (mirrored ones) not rendering at all.
4) what is more efficient in rendertimes for displacement - more geometric detail or higher precision value?
5) what is the best file format to export an MXI to to correct white balance? EXR? HDR? What is the best software to handle this in post?
6) what is the best solution for keeping maps stored on a system? use a network path that all scenes point to? I need to render COOP and I'm getting missing maps warnings.
7) is it "safe" to render directly from 3ds max or better to export an MXS and tweak it first? anything that max plugin can't handle that should be done in Studio before rendering?
8) does it always generally take a long time for emitter light to appear in reflective materials? (such as a light reflecting in a pool of water).
9) can MW handle Color Correct materials reliably without issue, and ok over a network render?
10) when rendering a COOP image, is it best to set up the COOP first, or is it ok to just render the same image on 2 machines and merge the two, even if they covered the same SL range? e.g. both machines render an image from SL0 to SL12, then merge, does this produce SL24 or just a less noisy SL12? Or do I need to render the image on one machine from SL0 to SL12, then render on the other machine from SL12 to SL24 and merge?
11) apart from emitters, what are the common features of a scene that can slow down a render? displacement? reflectivity of materials? physical sun? do they make much of a difference as with other renderers? any general rules of thumb for keeping rendertimes down? (apart from keeping Ref 0 RGB <240, using small and lowpoly emitters etc.)
Again, sorry for the long list but I'm bashing out work for a big project and don't have too much time to test and find out some of these things, hoping someone else might be able to answer for me.
Cheers,