Everything related to Maxwell Render and general stuff that doesn't fit in other categories.
By arcmos
#396854
Thank you, Matthew!! That was great! Especially the lighting part with your photo- and cinematography background was very interesting. I wouldn’t mind to see you again in a special episode “Lighting like a photographer” or something like this. 8)
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By Mihai
#396857
Yes, a lot of good info and time passed very quickly. Thanks a lot for taking the time Matthew! If you'd like it would be great to have you on at some later date and do what arcmos suggested, doing the lighting of a scene (perhaps a simpler one), and we can hear you thinking out loud while in the lighting process.
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By mjcherry
#396865
That would be fun. Maybe start with a simple still life, like a food shot and then a room. One of the issues for me is that I often light in a way that is in keeping with cinematography but not necessarily rendering, and that is something I'm currently working out. What do I mean by this....

For still work I use high powered studio strobes and for motion work I use fresnel lamps (I sometimes use these for studio as well). That means I'm used to thinking in terms of light sources that throw 2K to 10K watts of light so that I can keep my ISO in the 100-400 range. Some new digital cameras have high ISO features that allow for cleaner shooting at high ISOs, but for the cleanest file possible, you still want a low ISO. Rendering does not have this restriction, so I'm now experimenting with using a higher ISO with less power to the lights, which allows for the same EV.

I always find if funny when rendering instruction says to keep lighting to "real world" values. I shoot in the real world and my values can be pretty freaking high!

The attached photo is a straight portrait I shot of my fiancee. The big studio light to camera left is a 2K fresnel and the light is barely registering on her, she's actually lit by a strobe which is throwing about five times that much light!
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By Mihai
#396866
Watts isn't such a good measure for specifying "amount of light" because it just specifies how much power the light bulb consumes. Maybe it made more sense in the studio strobe world because most filaments had about the same efficacy, but in Maxwell we also have to accommodate everything from common incandescent bulbs to highly efficient fluorescents.

We also have to specify quite a lot in the manual to stick to "real world values" because we saw a lot of people have no clue how camera exposure is controlled so they set their emitters to 1.5 million watts because by default the camera is set to bright daylight exposure. So they can end up with a lot of noise and possibly also artifacts...

For users new to rendering coming from a photography background I usually tell them to use the Lumens setting as this is well correlated to real world lights, whether strobes or big fresnel lights. Usually the "lumens at 1m" specified by the manufacturer is all that's needed and they can enter this directly in the emitter settings.

PS. I hope the 30s-40s fashion starts coming back because there is no era with more elegant womens fashion. Or mens for that matter. But we can keep the bikini...
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By mjcherry
#396868
Well with strobes we tend to use "Watt Seconds" which is also problematic for the exact reason you mention. Yes, lumens are better as they reference the actual output of the lamp (bulb). The best for strobes is the use of guide numbers which is a measure of how much light hits a target at a specified distance, measured in fStops, but that gets pretty convoluted... Ultimately though it is very similar to your lumens at one meter suggestion, so I will try that. I use watts simply because that's what I'm used to thinking in (at least in terms of what light I would reach for, if using hot lights). The most photographic way, of course, would be to be able to measure the light at the subject using a virtual light meter, but that's probably unrealistic.

And yes, a world without bikinis is not a world in which I would choose to live. ;)
Mihai wrote:
Mon Mar 26, 2018 6:43 pm
Watts isn't such a good measure for specifying "amount of light" because it just specifies how much power the light bulb consumes. Maybe it made more sense in the studio strobe world because most filaments had about the same efficacy, but in Maxwell we also have to accommodate everything from common incandescent bulbs to highly efficient fluorescents.

We also have to specify quite a lot in the manual to stick to "real world values" because we saw a lot of people have no clue how camera exposure is controlled so they set their emitters to 1.5 million watts because by default the camera is set to bright daylight exposure. So they can end up with a lot of noise and possibly also artifacts...

For users new to rendering coming from a photography background I usually tell them to use the Lumens setting as this is well correlated to real world lights, whether strobes or big fresnel lights. Usually the "lumens at 1m" specified by the manufacturer is all that's needed and they can enter this directly in the emitter settings.

PS. I hope the 30s-40s fashion starts coming back because there is no era with more elegant womens fashion. Or mens for that matter. But we can keep the bikini...
Will there be a Maxwell Render 6 ?

Let's be realistic. What's left of NL is only milk[…]