Chess!
 

A project I've been working on for the last month so far...
I'm going to create a glass chess like one I've got (though it has a LOT less details... Maybe I'll post a pic when I quit being lazy :p )

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/5671/tempsf5.th.pnghttp://img404.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

Wireframe - All:
http://img55.imageshack.us/img55/3822/temp2ay5.th.pnghttp://img55.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

Wireframe - Knight
http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/2092/temp3pk4.th.pnghttp://img216.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif


Wireframe - Other
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/749/temp4mt0.th.pnghttp://img100.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

C&C please,
Benny

In chess the castles used to be elephants.....

I love making chess pieces, they're one of my favorite practice models.

There pretty high poly.

Are they the smoothed version or the base mesh?

Also with the knight I would try to get rid of the point at the tip of the snout, try to round it off using sqaure quads, that way you wont have pinching there

They are smoothed (besides the rook. I had major problems with that one so I revolved it to it's current level of detail and worked on from there) , though for the knight I had to make some finishing touches after smoothing, and I don't have the unsmoothed versions (besides the knight).
Can you post a pic about the advice for the knight? I don't know how to make those quads besides deleting some edges but that doesn't help much.
Benny

Heres the bet way to describe it,

It looks like you started with a sphere and have kept the points at the top and/or the bottom, hence the point (on the left) on the right is a smoothed cube, try to get the nose of your model like that as then you have a nice surface flow, as the mesh is really dense it's hard to say where you should make the changes, but if you unsmooth and look a the model you should get an idea.

I like these, I think they're really cute. And gster is right, they are a bit dense, next time, copy the low res versions and chuck em' away in a layer or export them, thats usually my "just incase sh*t happens" move.

Hehe, LOL,
Thanks for the advice, I;ll post some progress in a few days I hope,
Benny

Little update:
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/2922/tempug1.th.jpghttp://img408.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif
Benny

Some updates:

Mapped the UVs for practice, made the board and fixed lots of my geometry... I also created low poly versions for future use.

2 questions:
What could be the problem with the figures (besides the pawns)?
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/27/tempwc6.th.pnghttp://img517.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif
They have the same material as the pawns...
EDIT: if anyone encounters this the normals are probably reversed.


How do I set up a material(what do I need to connect) from 2 shaders and a checker, so that every color of the checker will use a different shader? that is, where the checker is black output from first(black/white) shader will be used and vice versa...

Thanks,
Benny

OK, first problem solved with no obvious reason... I'm still having problems with the second one - I tried it with a layered shader but problem is both materials have their own transparency value so I have no idea how to set it up...

Here's a render I did with lots of refraction and reflection blurring in 6 min.

Does someone know a better way to get a translucent mat effect? translucency doesn't appear to make a difference for some reason :(
Thanks,
Benny

PS: I'm having some problems with imageshack so I'll just attach this one:

Since I didn't get any help with that I decided to break it up into sixty four pieces and assign the material for each one. Played some more with the material attributes and here's what I've came up with:
C&C please
Benny
PS: Does somebody know how to export an image as it is in the render view (no transparency) without exporting to .jpg?

You can use the fast skin shader (I like the skin shader ^^) or you can use a ramp shader, tweak the incandescence and ambient to fake it. Also I think you can just uncheck alpha in the render settings, under the camera section for your transparency issue.

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/n...skin__ramp.jpg

Thanks a lot! I'll post some progress soon...

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/6602/tempzf6.th.jpghttp://img403.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif
:attn: imageshack is working again

I decided to go wit my super blurred refractions glass - I probably don't know how to set up the misss fast skin and ramp shader but this just looks better :)

added a HDRI as well. Next step will be a wooden/marble surface and some more lighting

Here's the reference:
http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/f...n41/chess1.jpg
I found it in Google but it's the exact same set as mine :)
saves me the trouble of photographing it and getting the photo on the PC.
Benny

Edit: I'm rendering a new version with lower specularity and other minor changes now so it should look better.

That's much more like it, still need work though:
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/1853/tempbu0.th.jpghttp://img89.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif
I'm done for today.

Does someone know what I need to do to get rid of these specific(grain(or whatever it's called) like) artifacts? I raised the overall quality an it's better then it was before but I don't want to raise anything that I don't need. render time is already 5:30 for this one(and a half) figure(s)...
Thanks,
Benny

Yeah now that I see your ref, the super mega blurry refractions would look best. And your samples are too low hence the grain. What material are you using?

Thanks, I'll have a look there.
Here are the materials:
murky glass| clear glass
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/5278/tempwk4.th.jpg
(did I mention I love SnagIt?)
Benny
EDIT: raising anti aliasing sampling worked. Thanks again :bow:

Lol yeah SnagIt makes things soooo much easier and more fun. And raising anti aliasing helps with grain but theres an attribute on the shaders to help eliminate that, kinda like the relationship between light radius and shadow rays.

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/n...eT/tempwk4.jpg

Thanks, I'll look at that as well in the next render - I need to use the 16 to 256 currently to eliminate it completely and it take way too much time to render a 320X480 with it, and I really don't want to find out how long it takes to render a 1600X1200 with it :)

Here's what I've(my computer have) done overnight:
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/2857/templi1.th.png

Added irradiance and scattering and it addes exactly the feeling I was looking for, even though I don't really know what these attributes do :) ...

I'll try to improve the clear glass shader before I go on because it looks a bit disappointing...

Holiday over so I don't know when the next post (that is containing progress) will be :(
C&C please,
Benny

Its coming along. Though I think the lighting needs tweaking as its really burning out the details on the pieces, you really see it around the bases.

Its looking good but imo the pieces aren't looking like they are from the same box.

Thanks :attn:
I'll see what I can do about the lights.

Here's another render after adding Fresnel effect and chrome for the clear glass:
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/9962/tempnb2.th.pnghttp://img518.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif
2h 8m already :(
:headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang:

hammer.horror: do they? what's imo btw?

And I have a little question: how can I create something like what I get with bookmarks for cameras for the render settings? I tried presets but it doesn't work right :(
Thanks in advance,
Benny

The presets don't work right, how so? I've never had a problem with it. 2h 8m is a lot for this but then again I don't know your specs. Most likely you jacked up a setting way higher than need be.

Nvm the presets, they work now... I don't know why I had problems with them.
Here are my specs:
Intel Pentium 4 Prescott (800kb cash) 2.6GHz
1 GB RAM DDR 400MHz
ATI Radeon 9550 256MB (AGP 8X)
Windows XP sp2

Don't know what else could be relevant...

Here are my render settings for the 2h 8m render:
http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/7489/tempnv8.th.jpg

Anything you think I need to lower/raise or turn on/of etc. to improve the quality/performance ratio?
I've also got two more questions about MR:
*What does 'Acceleration' under Raytracing do?
*What does the primary framebuffer do? Especially 'Data type'.

Here's a test render with low quality that took 16m:
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/8805/tempbe2.th.pnghttp://img528.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif
presets make life much easier :)

Benny

framebuffers deals with the type of data your writing out of mental ray. For example if you want to write out to a larger bit depth like with .exr format you would want to set it to rgba_fp (floating point) or rgba_h (16 bit) data type.

exr format is a fantastic . Maya 2009 will come with much better support for this format, i suggest it becomes everyones default if your not using it allready.
Read up on it especially if your into compositing.

If you just want to do standard rendering you really dont have to worry too much.

acceleration is just how mental ray will deal with the scene at render time. Read about it in the help files its all there, i allways tend to callibrate my bsp properly if im doing ray tracing. There is a diagnose tab in mental ray where you can see the results of your bsp settings visually, very usefull.

Your renders look ok, I really think you need an enviroment to refract and reflect a bit, clear glass will get all its surface shading values from reflection and refraction, so its important to have somthing there to get a convincing result.

Oh and on render settings, set your max sample level to 2 for production, you need to be rendering at super high res to warrent any higher. If your just testing turn it to 0.

Under raytracing remember that your reflectoin and refraction number setting referes to the number of bounces in the scene not the quality of the raytrace itself. When you have reflections and refractions set to 10, mental ray will refract/ reflect 10 times before returning a sample value. think about how many times it will need to refract or reflect. Start at low 2 maybe 3 and then work up only if you need to.

When it come to blurring reflections and refractoins, i would do that in post if possible, render out refractions and reflections sperately and then blur them. You will need an ID pass as well to have correct matts for each object.

Thanks (again) for the reply :bow:
I'll do some testing for reflection/refraction amount now. This scene contains enough reflections and refractions for a super computer to calculate for a few weeks so I thought It needs to be high. I don't know why I haven't thought about checking what actually helps...

About the max sampling - for a value of 2 I get the result I got in the first post of this page(2). Genny's advise about reflection and refraction rays didn't help much.

just a few more questions:
*Since I've never touched BSP I don't really know how to optimize it. What settings do you recommend I use for a scene like this? 'large scenes' in Maya help isn't really specific...
*What exactly is exr? I found all sort's of mixed up stuff in Google, not much help... was also mentioned a few times in Maya help together with OpenEXR which probably isn't it...
Anyway, What's exr?

Thanks in advance,
Benny

exr is a 32 bit format developed by ilm ages ago, its industry standard as it has the most detail in it compared to other floating point formats like log luv.

The difference between luminance the eye can detect is around 4%. If the value step is greater than this you start to get banding and ugly format problems, most hdri formats have around 2-3% difference, but exr can hold 1% which is good for cgi as it can hold up well to lots of blending, layering and manipulation.

Exr doesnt have as high a dynamic range as other formats but its plenty for cgi. The best thing about exr is that it can hold hold multiple passes like occlusion, UV, world space normals, z depth, reflections, refractions, shadows, ID whatever you want. So its really good for compositing, unfortunately maya 2008 doesnt support that functionality of the exr format, im sure you can do it with mental ray but its too much to be bothered with, so i usually just output all my auxillary information as seperate sequences.

The artifacting your getting looks like its due to your refractions being undersampled, i would really just do those blurs in post. Its a bit like motion blur, it looks nice as its truely 3D in mental ray but it really isnt worth the render time. Render out a reflection and refraction pass, and an ID pass then you can blur and tweak in post.

With your bsp, for a scene like this i would jsut use defaults, its not a heavy scene, its important if you have busy scenes as there is a chance of maya crashing if it tries do deal with too much at onces. For example if it tries to render an area at once which has hundreds of polygons and textures in.

Do you have any compositing experience? Or have any compositing packages, if your on mac buy shake, its cheap now, or if your on PC AE is the affordable option.

If your rich, i would go for nuke or digital fusion are great out the box.

Benny even messing with BSP settings a teeny tiny bit can shoot the render time all to hell if you don't have proper settings. And for this scene you don't need to touch it, first thing I noticed was the really high AA settings.. The refraction rays do influence the grain in the refraction blur, turn down your AA settings and try again.

So basically I need to use a half or a floating point framebuffer format, lower anti aliasing samples, increase refraction rays, lower refraction and reflection limits and not touch the BSP. Simple enough, Thanks :)

Sorry for the late response ( :zzz: ) .
Here's a render I left overnight :
http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/8641/tempks9.th.pnghttp://img444.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif
2h 18m for this one.
that's weird, since it's a much more dance scene and I've added 4 spotlights (instead of the directional I had) and a HDRI (last HDRI was in a slightly different version).

I'll work on some of the above now...
C&C please
Benny

EDIT: almost forgot, I've got no compositing experience and everything I now about post is what I can do in Photoshop if it counts... LOL

Are you using the hdi as a light source?
Just use it to fill in the blanks for the reflections and refractions. Keep your render quality and raytrace quality really far down while you get your lighiting right. Shove a lambert on everything so you can see how the light is going over your scene, get some color variation, have a keylight, with variation on the fill lighting. It looks a little flat at the moment.

I'm using The HDRI mainly to have something to reflect, but it also creates a bit of variation in the lighting.
My lighting is made out of 1 area light, 4 spot lights and the HDRI currently. I set it up using '7' on the keyboard (forgot how this mode is called :headbang: ). I'll try improving this though after I'm done with the current render.

I did some testing with reflection and refraction limits and lowered the refractions limit to half of the previous amount. also increased the refraction rays a bit and lowered anti aliasing samples (I don't know why it didn't work the first time...).
I let it render just about the same scene it rendered yesterday in 2h 8m. I just want to see how long it'll take now.
Thanks again for the help,
Benny

My brother was using IE while the render was running so so much for testing render times...

2h 25.5m:
http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/2295/tempmb0.th.png
Older version for comparison:
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/9962/tempnb2.th.png

Looks pretty good though :attn:
I'll take care of the lighting and the rest of this project in a few days once a new holiday starts...

C&C please,
Benny

Area lights introduce grain unless you boost the samples on the shadows (now I see why you thought you had to raise the AA to 3><), same thing if you check "Area Light" on another light source. The machine you're on isn't going to give you great render times anyway so don't sweat it, keep testing til you find a nice balance.

Made some progress with the lights and surface:
http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/9691/tempwi0.th.png
I swapped the area light with another directional. I'm not really happy with it but I can't think of a better way to set up lighting.

The marble surface:
http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/5933/tempyh8.th.png
A different angle:
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/6301/tempwj3.th.pnghttp://img527.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif
Do you see a Fresnel effect on it? I'm not sure I set it up properly...

Here's the shader:
http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/7486/tempoc6.th.jpghttp://img386.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif
Do I need the 'place2dtexture' for the ramp?

One more thing: what are your favorite lighting set ups? What do you usually use? I might learn something from that...

Thanks in advance,
Benny

(bump) (Still need help with lighting and shader set up)

Another version - three point lighting this time, still sucks though...
http://img55.imageshack.us/img55/2350/temphe4.th.png
also made minor modification to the materials.

Benny

Whatever it is that you did killed the contrast in the scene. What look do you have in mind? Use simple shaders and add one light at a time as you need them. Have you given thought to the final viewing angle? The angles right now aren't flattering since it's just floating there in space. And with that being said, I'm guessing that you're not adding an environment since now you're testing shaders/lighting (not planning this stuff can bite you in the ass huh? lol).

Yep, the last version sucks...
Here's a new one:
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/431/tempot2.th.pnghttp://img521.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif
@ Genny - I guess it answers your question?

New lighting, simplest so far - 2 point lights and the HDRI.
New problem however - the murky glass starts to glow whenever it's lighten. Somebody knows how I can prevent that? Here's the shader for it:
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/3610/tempmc0.th.jpghttp://img137.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

and another question: How can I get the background to be out of focus?

How about the Fresnel effect BTW?

Thanks in advance,
Benny

Ok, turn off ambient color, you really dont need it for this, and turn off translusunce. Its hard to give feedback without knowing what your going for and at what level. A good practice is to research into the kind of look you want, google up some photos which kinda have the same feel, show us and then people can pitch in and say how they would solve it.

I think your lighting is off, ditch the hdri for now, i think its confusing the whole thing. Frankly ditch the glass shader and just put some lamberts on so you can see what the lighting set up is like on its own. The raytrace reflections and refractions take too long for you to render for it to be a viable way of testing your scene.

Use a three point light set up. Standard set up would be one key light which is your main light source and shadow source, one fill light which is the color of the diffuse light in the space ( a blue for a bright day or the resultant ambient from bounced light in a room), and one back/ rim light which is placed behind the focus object.

Yup, start from the bottom and work up, only add bits when needed.