[jomaga]

I´ve made an exterior test, and the results are totally different, there´s no extra rendering time in high reflectances. Extra time is due to the bounces into a closed room, but in outdoor scenes there are very few bounces, and high reflectances only causes lack of contrast, and very flat images.

[Hervé]

good test, it shows clearly what I thought.... and if you set everything white 255,255,255 in a room at the end your render becomes totally white...

what do you think of my test above... I did not want to change the color, but could avoid that color from having to much reflectance with a map in the reflection channel of a diffuse material...

and you'r right about render times... the first picture took almost twice the time to reach sample 18... and has lots of noise.. and does not look so real...

[tom]

Herve, "reflection for diffuse" is simply like a coefficient for diffuse color.

[Hervé]

ahhh , in one phrase Tom is resolving questions... Tom you are a Lantern in a dark cave... or better a stroboscope in a club ( viper room, L.A.)

We are damn lucky to have you around...

now where did I put my sardines...?

[tom]

I'm here to make things easier. Thank you!
Sardines...hmmm... Now I'll go home and eat some

[Hervé]

I know , but there are several ways to make it easier... with a hammer, or with a nice breeze... Man you are a breeze... ! (+ you rock..)

now go and make nice sardines...

[tokiop]

We'll have to do grilled sardines for the party

Thanks Jomaga, Tom, Hervé, for working on that.. i did some tests tonight but hadn't succeded.. It is really nice to avoid too much color bleeding in interiors..

[Axe]

Excellent tests! Thank you for taking the time to put together such a comprehensive explanation.

[Thomas An.]

Very nice presentation and test

[iker]

Thanks so much!

[spa]Brutal Jose, brutal! Muchas gracias! [/spa]

[mverta]

I still don't understand how you'd measure the reflectance of a multi-colored map, like a painting or a poster. I suppose you could go into Photoshop and just pass along the entire surface with the cursor and watch the info palette, but if you were trying to make a corresponding specular map, how would you assure that the combination of specular and color map didn't exceed 255, or perhaps 224 if you're trying to be realistic.

_Mike

[mverta]

To be honest, I don't think it can be solved in Maxwell or the host application. Even a weighted function to normalize your values wouldn't apply correctly for the most complex maps. Having a limiter which says "dont' exceed 255 per channel" would be arbitrarily "crunching" the whole shader.

I think there's going to need to be a plugin written for Photoshop/After Effects where you can select a reflectance target (say, 80%) and then it would interactively analyze a color map and a specular map simultaneously so you can monitor its combined value. A really clever plugin would allow you to handle the potential target overages with luminance and color sliders.


_Mike

[Hervé]

Good idea Mverta... ok, there is money to makehere.... Tom, king of math, are you up for such plugin..?

[tom]

Don't worry about actual limits, as you know material editor is on the way.

[Hervé]

I hear you Tom...