[Maximus3D]

4Hero: Thanks man more to come.. see below

jvanmetre: Thank you! yep i think so too, it would be a nice addition to Studio. But how it should be done practically i have no idea..

Brett: Great to hear i was not 100% sure about the name but now i know for sure it's called that, weird name for it.. heh

One more model, this is the classical backdrop in a photostudio, one smooth one and one with a draped cloth. I might make more later, perhaps upon requests.







/ Max

[Bige]

oww better iron that

[Maximus3D]

Hehe, i wish!

Now i merged them all into one scene, i know the studio looks messy right now ..too much stuff in it but i'll clean it up, remove some lamps which are not needed for a first testrender and then i cook something with Maxwell.




/ Max

[Bubbaloo]

then i cook something with Maxwell.

That's what I'm waiting for.

[JorisMX]

This is a great idea max!

I would be very interested in seeing some kind of library in conjunction with NL or something.
Perhaps even as Library Item in MXST for 2.0, aye

About Maxwell being able to get results close to real studio setups,
I guess in some cases it would be a good idea to render out some direct shots of the lamps. These could then be used as Image emitters.

Also, nice seeing that youre modeling in cinema, I really need to get that cloth plug-in.

great stuff as always!

[Maximus3D]

Bubba, it looks like you're in for a very long wait.. because these setups are SLOW to render more info below

Joris: Thank you! yep it might be a good idea to merge something similar into Studio. But it's not my call, and i doubt i can convince NL to take on something like this. With the long rendertimes these things require to clean up in Maxwell i don't think they will appreciate that from a marketing point of view. That would be like "Buy the new Maxwell Render 2.0, now even slower than before!" not the best slogan..

Yes to render out the lamps themselves as images at highresolution and then planarmap them onto planes might work be a temporary solution. But i'm not very fond of such cheap and fake solutions.

Cinema4D modeling well it works for some models but i can't say the tools and the modeling workflow is as sexy as it is in Modo, far from.. unfortunately.

Ok, now i created a very rough setup and pre-alpha materials for this and i also tested various solutions to get this to render relatively fast and noisefree and so far not much seems to end in acceptable results, i'm pretty dissapointed. you can see my two first early tests below. I'll provide more detailed descriptions with each image.

For the first testrender i used one single umbrella on the left side of the model as seen in this viewport shot.



This is the testrender of the above setup with one umbrella emitter, for this i were unable to create a satisfying clothmaterial with semitransparency. It failed completly. Instead i applied the emittermaterial to the umbrella facing the model.
SL: 10,21 Time: 16min24sec Benchmark: 98,83



For this, the second shot i wanted to use two emitters. The umbrella i used in the first scene above and the big diffuser with a net infront of the cloth. Again the semitransparent cloth material completly failed. So i mapped the emittermaterial to the plane behind the net.



Here's the rendering of the above.
SL: 12,00 Time: 36min41sec Benchmark: 92,12



/ Max

[Mihai]

Very nice project! I think you need to make the net on the softbox deeper so it focuses the light properly.

[simmsimaging]

So far it's looking good Max.

Considering that Maxwell *only* uses emitter planes/poly's then it won't really be a cheat to do that here, just different.

I think using the diffusion material on the umbrella is unecessary anyway, since it's only purpose is to take a small light and make it into a larger one - given that a good umbrella light HDRI mapped onto it would be just as good really.

For your net on the softbox: those grids are meant to focus light into straighter lines, but you really won't see much difference on your key subject or in the reflections. It's more to control how it spills light around the scene AFAIK. It will probably give you somewhat sharper/darker shadows too though.

I will look tomorrow to see if I still have some umbrellas in my kit downstairs. If so I may be able to hook up an old Normal strobe pack and create some HDRI emitters for your geometry. I dont' have a softbox for sure, but the umbrellas are distinctly possible. I was thinking about digging them up for Ron's HDRI studio kit project anyway.

b

[sandykoufax]

wow, cool studio.

[itsallgoode9]

those renders do look mighty nice. I'd like to see you do a sample using the same lighting setup/potions only using more traditional maxwell setups (just using plane emitters for softboxes, or similar technique) and see how the render compares to these.

I'm curios if these renders look good because it's a good lighting setup or if htey look good becaue these lights are made to real world standards.

[Maximus3D]

Thanks Mihai i'm glad you like it. I have now made the net go deeper, but i need to do some further adjustments on it tomorrow as i noticed another mistake i did on it.

Brett: Thank you! i think i understand what you're saying, hmm.. interesting. I didn't know the net's purpose is to focus the light, i thought it was to create a nice type of window like reflection on the subject heh. It would be awesome if you could create such a hdri emitter. Then i could simply map that onto the umbrella and it's done! thanks in advance Brett.

Koufax: Thanks!

itsallgood: Thanks and without rendering out those samples you asked for i can say that the result will probably be pretty much the same with planar emitters as they are with this setup. But the thing i noticed during my initial experiments when setting up lights using this setup instead of the standard planes is that this way it's more intuitive. You get a better feel of how big the lamps really are in comparison to your subject, how you should place them, rotate them and how strong your lamp should be. Although they're somewhat heavier to work with it feels much more like you're a virtual photographer when you got this sorta setup in your hands. If that counts for anything i don't know but that's what i experienced during my testruns last night.

I let this render during the night to see if it would clear up and it did quite nicely, more render specs below. I used the umbrella and the large net softbox for this test and the subject in the shot has my brass number two material on it. The box it stands on has the marble sss presetmaterial on it.

Renderspecs
SL: 15,22
Time: 5hours 58min 21secs
Benchmark: 58,19

Scene with both lamps, umbrella on the left side and softbox+net on the right side.


Scene with umbrella lamp on the left side only.


Scene with softbox+net on the right side only.


/ Max

[RobMitchell]

Incredible work, the latest images look amazing.

[JorisMX]

I love softbox with net render!
Esp. how it brings out the little dent on the top of the box.

[-Adrian]

Don't be hard on yourself Max, those look fantastic, even the first tests. ML must be a godsend in those situations

[Maximus3D]

Rob: I'm glad you like it, thank you! keep in mind these are so far only my first early testrenders. There's more to come..

Joris: Hehe so you like that one i prefer the other one myself.

Adrian: It's the only way to produce good results if you think everything you create looks perfect then you will be satisfied with junk. I want better than that.. hehe

Btw guys, i will only be able to post updates and work more on this a few hours during the evening and at weekends now for a while. I got another big commercial project running during daytime for a couple of weeks.

/ Max