[emarvets]

My goal is to get a good render of jewelry. My models are in Rhino.

1st problem: I have yet to get a quality render from Maxwell.

Diamonds (using diamond.ior) always look bad. Probably the lighting. No metal intersecting. If I fiddle and fiddle and fiddle with lights I get something decent enough to send a client. Sometimes I hide an invisible emitter just of the top of a large stone with a clipping mask to force black and dispersion. They always look fake, but at least they are returning light.

2nd problem: I'm investigating HDR Light studio as a solution to my 1st problem, but it doesn't work inside Rhino.

I'm learning Maxwell Studio and finding it unusable for macro photography. I can set the grid to absolute with 1mm spacing and see that my object is scaled correctly. But I cannot work with the camera coordinates as they are in meters. Scrolling them jumps a meter at a time.

I'm at my wits end. 6 months with Maxwell and it has just been a bear. No jewelry tutorials. No macro tutorials.

[dariolanza]

Hello emarvets,

There are no tutorials aimed specifically to the jewelry industry, but I can send you a nice test scene that could help you as a good starting point.

Write to our Technical Support and I can send it to your email.

Greetings

Dario Lanza

[seghier]

hello
i create scene for test with rhino
camera of maxwell work fine and inside studio try to use compact camera
to work with camera easily focus it to an object than use the mouse and the keyboard

[emarvets]

dariolanza, I sent a support ticket and referenced you.

seghier, I'm not sure what you are trying to say. I can render in Rhino. They just look bad. The cameras in Maxwell Studio are unusable for macro photography because the units for camera coordinates are in meters.

This is how small diamonds look for me. Either washed out or unlit:

[seghier]

you can move your camera using mouse . that what i say to avoid the problem with units .
i don't try small diamond before but i try render a gold ring and the result was good.
how you setup your scene ?

[Mihai]

But I cannot work with the camera coordinates as they are in meters. Scrolling them jumps a meter at a time.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly with "scrolling", but have you tried simply to look through the Camera view, and moving the camera using Alt + the mousebuttons? Left, Middle, Right. Furthermore, you can press F to focus the camera to whatever is in the middle of the focus circle in the camera view. Check out the documentation site: http://support.nextlimit.com/display/ma ... +in+Studio

I'm at my wits end. 6 months with Maxwell and it has just been a bear. No jewelry tutorials. No macro tutorials.

I would suggest really to look at photography tutorials, everything you learn there can be directly applied in Maxwell. If you don't have any photography experience, how can you expect to make world class jewelry "photographs" pushing a few buttons in a software? It's a craft that can take a while to master, so start with the basics...

[emarvets]

That was just a plain HDRI. I'm rendering another one with my other light studio setup, which mimics my real world macro photography setup.

I use two directional lights hitting bounce cards to light the pieces. There is a backlight to light up the ground plane behind the pieces:




There is one thing you can't see, which is a giant emitter that softly lights the whole scene. I will post the render when it completes.

[emarvets]

I'm not sure what you mean exactly with "scrolling"

These are camera coordinates. There is an up/down button. You can also use a scroll wheel of your mouse to adjust. They move in 1 m increments when scrolled, which makes them useless when making .001 m adjustments. All I wanted to know is if you could adjust the units of these coordinates. I can look through the camera and adjust it just fine, although it is difficult to fine tune, even with ctrl + atl. I have read all the documentation.

I would suggest really to look at photography tutorials

I have read every post in this forum that has the word jewelry in it. If I had a dollar for every time this answer was given for a problem a user was having...

I'm having a problem with Maxwell. I'm not having a problem with my macro photography. They look just fine:

[Mihai]

Just don't use those buttons. You can of course also type in a value if you really want to get precise. You can right click it and choose the decimal precision. If not even Alt with Ctrl is enough, I think you may have the camera target somewhere not in the middle of where your jewelry is. You can open a second viewport and see where the camera target is. In fact when you use F to focus, all it's doing is moving the camera target. So make sure to first aim for your ring or whatever, then press F so the target moves there. Now you can move in the viewport with Alt or Alt +Ctrl for finer movements.

As for that pic you posted vs the renders you are getting....I'm sorry to point out the obvious but isn't your render a bit over exposed? Have you tried tuning your lighting using MultiLight? Are you using first of all real world emitter values and not one hundred thousand watts emitters? Are you using real world camera exposure values (Shutterspeed/ISO/fStop)?

[emarvets]

I stopped the macro photography lighting setup render at SL13. It wasn't getting any better. The diamonds look like crap:



Normally, this is where I start fiddling, where I spend 2 to 5 times as long lighting the scene than I did modeling the ring in the first place. Most times I use an invisible emitter, placed just above each stone with a mask:



It takes forever, it still looks fake, and there's proof of the invisible emitter on the metal prong holding the diamond, but I can get something passable:

[seghier]

nice photo
your render very bright . try multilight with color
i try this render in the same scene and i use hdr image and two lights with multilight color enabled
than i play with lighting .
render time ; sl 18 with dispersion ; (600x449) :take 1hr in my laptop.
model used :
http://tf3dm.com/3d-model/ring-26787.html
sl:14

[emarvets]

Just don't use those buttons.

Fine. They are unusable, so I just won't use them.

As for that pic you posted vs the renders you are getting....I'm sorry to point out the obvious but isn't your render a bit over exposed?

your render very bright . try multilight with color

I can underexpose the hell out of it and get the diamonds looking better. Too bad I need the white (245, 245, 245) ground plane to be white, which is a requirement I am able to meet in my real world photography. I have not tried multilight with color, because I am always tweaking intensity.

Set in Rhino
fStop - 32, same as I use on my DSLR for DOF

From Multilight:
ISO - 200, same as I set on my DSLR
Shutter - 3, i set my DSLR to auto and adjust the over/under exposure setting as needed
2 directional lights that hit the bounce card - 150 W, same as I use on my light studio
Top light - 150 watts, same as my light studio

Giant emitter is giant. It simulates the ambient light of the room and removes the total black shadow that now appears on the ring. I set it to 2,000 watts as a guestimate. I have turned it off for this photo:

[seghier]

white color increase the render time .
can you upload small scene with your setup and diamond ?
sometimes the problem in geometry ; with flipped faces

[RichG]

I just think you can't rely on a default light setup for every jewelry shot. Those ring surfaces are very angular so you will have to spend some time playing with your light positions to avoid the ugly shapes you're seeing reflected. HDRLS is great for this sort of situation, and while it may not work directly inside Rhino, it will work with Fire in Maxwell Studio. Plus, of course, it's HDR output can be used anywhere.

I think Seghier's render proves Maxwell's totally capable of getting you the results you want.

[emarvets]

seghier, you are very talented. It was a pleasure viewing your gallery.

A white background is a requirement I have to work with. The ground plane is not even supposed to be as gray as it is in my overexposed renders.

I take the nurbs model into 3D-Coat to relax the sharp edges and bring a heavy mesh back into Rhino. I deleted one of the rings and reduced the mesh of the remaining ring so I can upload it. The stone's and light studio are untouched.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pvfi8recxc4umqe/Scene1.7z

RichG, sorry, but no. A) seghier had a good render, but it did not have a diamond and it was not on a white background. B) In the real world, I have a default light setup.

Look at the aquamarine and look at the diamonds in my render. The aquamarine looks good except for the yellow band reflecting in the bottom of the stones table (I'm not sure how to clean that up). The diamonds are complete overexposed garbage.

I looked at HDRLS, used the trial version, but the limitation of seeing the results in Fire has not convinced me. I don't know if it will work and spending additional money making Maxwell functional feels like a gamble. If I had 1 good render of a diamond from Maxwell and knew that it was possible and that HDRLS would speed things up, I'd buy it. But right now, I'm 6 months in, have spent hundreds of hours, and have 0 good renders.