[Maximus3D]

Brett, you are correct. I have no idea how i could miss such a obvious thing. This is the proof people have been waiting for all this time.

I am officially an idiot

Thank you Brett. I will take a look at the wattage values for all emitters, they were all wrong in all tests i posted here before.

90 minute testrender at centimeter scale.
Shutter: 1/250
ISO: 100
Fstop: 5,724




Some examples by a friend of mine from his private setup, the diffuser has a 150W lamp and it's good enough for most shots.




/ Max

[polynurb]

max, the last renders with the elefant look really good!

i favor the second one, in terms of realism.
is that the original resolutin @ 90 min for a two emitter multilight render?
.. i am asking because i was expecting more noise to come from the extra geomety in your modelled light setup, but it looks very clean.

i think it would be very interesting to see a comparison between the geometric setup and a mxi emitter derived from it.
it might well prove that your setup can achive an atmosphere with more depth than just a set of planar mxi emitters!

[Maximus3D]

polynurb: Thank you. They're all 3 the same rendering but i switched off one diffuser at a time for the two images below the first one just to show what each diffuser adds to the scene. The original resolution is 1024x768 but they seem to been downsized by the imagehost noise cleared faster than 90 minutes, i just let it run for that time because i had no internet so i could not post them earlier. They were clean when 30-40 minutes passed which is a positive thing.
The main problem now is that i cannot emit light through geometry because it will add a huge amount of noise and increase the rendertime perhaps by a factor of 10 or more and that's just impossible. Which is why i have now used large planes at the front of these diffusers to simulate how it would work in real life. This is not the way i wanna do it as it's not very accurate and good, it's not the way these props were intented to work. With the limitations of Maxwell there's nothing more and better i can do about it.

The only benefit you will have from all these props at the moment is the actual manual setup and rigging in the 'studio' when you prepare your scene for the shot, these are easier to position and rotate in place than standard emitterplanes are for newbies. Seasoned professionals may think this is stupid and lame and they will most likely stick to their emitterplanes instead.

IF Maxwell 2.0 will have something to offer that makes it possible for me to emit light through the thin cloth properly within normal humanlife rendertimes then i will be happy to adapt it to that. It could be 6+ months until we know more about that...

I'm a bit shattered if i should try to complete this for the current Maxwell version or if i should put it on hold for 2.0

This is a 26 minute render, pretty clean already..


/ Max

[simmsimaging]

Looks good Max, and once again: there is no point emitting light through geometry. Making the light source bigger (although with some gradation which you can do with HDRI image maps etc.) you will get the exact same look.

b

[polynurb]

as brett said, i think everything that involves translucent cloth, you can render once into an mxi, so you get the falloff properties of the softbox but things like light-barns (is that the word? ) and gratings for manipulating the light slightly should still work, i suppose..

[Maximus3D]

Maybe you're correct Brett, maybe you are.. then all my geometry behind the emitterplanes themselves is unnecessary they serve no other purpose than for the placement and rotation of your emitterplanes. I tried to paint a rough hdr emitter late last night (3am ..yawn!) and you can see the results of that test below. I don't know how light emits when it emits from a plane with Maxwell, if it emits straight forward or if it emits at a 180 degree angle, meaning straight forward and +90 degrees to each side and -90 degrees to the other sides of the plane in the direction of the normal of the emitting surface. Why am i wondering, beacuse i wanna get some lightbleeding happening on the sides.

Yes polynurb, i will try that and my results using hdr can you too see below. They're not perfect yet as the map i painted is kinda poor but it gives you a idea what effect they would have.

8 hours rendering during the night (yes i do sleep sometimes) at 1280x960 resolution.




My setup in C4D with the new test hdr emitters applied which i painted, you can see them on the front most planes of each diffuser.


This is what the hdr look like.. not the prettiest sight ever seen


/ Max

[JorisMX]

Very nice, Max!

I like the look of everything after the "I am offically an idiot" post
Seems like you got the last knack to it.

One question though? In your lightsetup it looks like the emitter planes would be intersecting with your softboxes.
Is this really what I am seeing? Because your image seems to clear rather fast.

[Maximus3D]

Thank you very much Joris

Hehe i do feel like an idiot when i miss something that obvious, but i been sick all weekend long and still is so perhaps i can blame it on the nasty cold. The intersecting meshes you see there where the emitterplane intersects so nicely with the rest of the rig is something i have to fix. I noticed it but i tried to ignore it and hoped it would go away which it didn't.. and yeap that is what you're looking at.

Atleast in theory it should have increased both noise and rendertime as far as i know, but it didn't in any of all my testrenders. Both when using the hdr emitter and when using the objectplane emitter, it worked fine in all cases. Maybe i'm doing something wrong when it's working.

/ Max

[Maximus3D]

I found this reference online and thought i would attempt at replicating the look and feel using my own setup. So i went ahead and replicated everything except for the chick in the original shot. My setup is approximately the same, meaning i have no exact measurements so i had to shoot from the hip but thisd should be exact enough for you guys to see that it actually works!

The original shot and setup


My setup in C4D


My noisy 30 minute rendering


/ Max

[rusteberg]

great studies you are working on max. I would suggest that if you are gun ho about publishing these in some sort of studio package that you also put together a manual to go along with it that spells out/illustrates the various methods used in real world studio setups.... "Hook, line, and sinker"

love the elephant shots!

[Maximus3D]

Rusteberg: Thanks, and i agree about including some sort of manual describing the basic usage of each setup and prop within a studio with exampleimages rendered would be the ideal thing to throw into this package. One problem is time.. i'm not sure how i'm going to be able to get everything done that needs to be done already. I have a very long tasklist of stuff to do for this project. It would help if i had more knowledge about real world studiophotography also, at the moment i have very little and only what can be found online.

Those elephants turned out ok.

/ Max

[rusteberg]

patience is a virtue my friend..... one that I never seem to have time for either

i'll keep an eye out for any related material if i come accross. i'm sure you'll have this packaged better than an apple product in no time!

[Maximus3D]

Thanks Rusteberg but i decided to stuff this whole project in the freezer for unknown time. I'm not sure when and if i will finish it, i might hand it over to someone else to finish it and then he will put it all up for sale.

Edit: The main reason now is that some bigger projects have landed on my desk, the type of projects that puts food on your table and they will have priority 1. This studio stuff will get the lowest priority for now and unless it's too late to finish this when i get more time later on then i will do so. But for the time beeing no i'm sorry i will have no time. I'm sure other solutions will surface that let's you guys do the same thing. thanks for all your interest so far, it has been wonderful!

http://img2.pict.com/9e/b6/30/3a9d578b9 ... chicka.jpg
http://img2.pict.com/4e/1d/41/a3d05cf84 ... chickb.jpg
http://img2.pict.com/4d/0e/b1/5a177992d ... chickc.jpg
http://img2.pict.com/23/f4/30/1ff663270 ... chickd.jpg
http://img2.pict.com/81/f4/f9/739d6d08d ... etup.j.jpg

/ Max

[big K]

come on max !
don´t stop this project.

you are always short of money - this is an excellent opportunity to get some things going !

[Tea_Bag]

come on max !
don´t stop this project.

you are always short of money - this is an excellent opportunity to get some things going !

Yes - You've already put alot of time and research ino this so dont put it in the freezer just yet maybe spend some time here and there on it but
focusing your main time on the main projects! That way its till in progress