[caustics]

Finally I got it done ... but you are right, in MW Studio this comes out to be somewhat cumbersome, sure there is some potential for NL to improve that.

But I am still not satisfied with the camera ... it got somewhat weird: fL=50mm, fS=8, SS=1/0,5, ISO 1200.

As I scaled down my objects, I had to turn up the fS to 8 because the DOF went to 0 at fS 2 which was before.

The light is a standard "Compact Fluorescent 9W" represented by a shape 7cm by 7cm which is roughly what they are in real world. The light source is about 1,5m above the sink and the whole scene is enclosed in a cube 3m x 3m x 4m which would correspand a small room (kitchen).

Well, visually it works as it is, but for the better understanding I would like to get some more "realistic" setup.

The field of view is ok, and I would like to stay with that.

What are the options a more experienced MW user would consider?

Cutting some windows into the walls? Simulating ambient light by a larger emitter and keep the Fluorescent as key or transforming the Fluorescent into a camera flash (how would that be done)?

Regards.

[Mihai]

To transform it into a "flash", just create a single poly plane (import the 1x1 plane from the object library), scale it down to the size of a real camera flash and apply an emitter material to it. Place it near the camera where a real flash would be positioned. Either on camera or off camera flash. As mentioned the default size of objects from the object library is 1m. Just take a look at the Studio and Camera sections in the manual, will save you a lot of time in the end.

The lighting is up to you.....you could create a fake room by modeling a cube with some window openings in it and set Environment lighting to skydome or sky, or IBL...or just use IBL. I'd suggest IBL as a starting point, especially if you have a good interior HDR map. Use FIRE to get instant feedback as you rotate the hdr and move the emitter. It's easy

[caustics]

Hi Mihai,

thanks for your explanation. I am still studying the manual, currently reading thru chapter 10 the "Materials". I have to say that the manual is an exceptional good piece of documentation. Really well written and easy understandable.

Concerning my scene, I will try the various options we talked about here to see how they come out. With the lighting I configured yesterday, the scene came out fairly well, but the low DOF ruined it in the end in high resolution. I didn't perceive this from the test render ... so the final render 1920x1080 @ SL16 was run during the night ... and this morning ... surprise

Regards.

[Mihai]

Should everything in the scene perfect focus? Because that can be pretty difficult with your scene, the scale is pretty small. Just remember you can set the camera to auto exposure and then change the fstop. This way the lighting will stay the same, just the shutter speed will change to keep the same exposure. If a very high fstop like 22 still makes parts look blurry, you can scale the scene up 2x. It won't make that much difference to the lighting in this case.

[caustics]

Hi Mihai,

... just to show what came out so far.

The focus problem seems solved. What do you think ... does it make sense to go at higher sample levels to get significant improvements concerning the image quality? It is a little bit too dark ... this can be corrected turning up the ISO somewhat more, but doing so, the highlights get a bit blown out.

MW Render @ SL 18 (ISO 4800 SS 8s fStop 32 DOF 0.3m):


The reference scene produced by Biased Render:


I think I have to start over and review the whole lightning setup to get somewhat closer to the reference scene. But get me right, I don't want MW to render the biased way. Choose this scene only because it is simple to setup and has only to materials to deal with

Regards.

[Half Life]

What are your settings for the Maxwell metal roughness and anisotropy? The reason I ask is the material roughness and anisotropy look much different in the biased render which is contributing heavily to the different result -- here's a MXM I threw together to show what I mean:

http://www.spotoarts.com/jason/sink%20bottom.zip

BTW, if you don't know there are some free material tutorial videos here:
http://think.maxwellrender.com/tutorial ... thor=73948

Start at the one called "introduction" and go down from there in order for the next few pages... it will help alot with some of the basics of materials.

Best,
Jason.

[caustics]

Hi Half Life,

Thanks for posting ... my shader settings from the images posted before are as follows: anisotropy=0.5 and roughness=20.

I got your shader and saw you have an anisotropy of 50.0 and at the first look it gets really a lot closer in comparison to the reference shader. Right now I am finishing SL 20 ... after that I will do a new scene and adjust the lights and material somewhat.

We'll see how it comes out.

Got thru the manual right now ... next step will take me to the tutorials. There is a lot of new stuff to learn

Regards.

What are your settings for the Maxwell metal roughness and anisotropy? The reason I ask is the material roughness and anisotropy look much different in the biased render which is contributing heavily to the different result -- here's a MXM I threw together to show what I mean:

http://www.spotoarts.com/jason/sink%20bottom.zip

BTW, if you don't know there are some free material tutorial videos here:
http://think.maxwellrender.com/tutorial ... thor=73948

Start at the one called "introduction" and go down from there in order for the next few pages... it will help alot with some of the basics of materials.

Best,
Jason.

[Mihai]

This looks like a perfect case for FIRE You can move your light source and see exactly where the reflections will fall.

[caustics]

Hi Mihai,

FIRE is great! ... wouldn't know how to do it w/o.

The new scene got 2 lights ... a larger one for filling and one to set the keys. Still have to tweak the material a little bit.

Regards.

This looks like a perfect case for FIRE You can move your light source and see exactly where the reflections will fall.