Cinema 4D - Irradiance Map

With Jaime's suggestion of testing the GI in Cinema 4d, its another possibility that might be a possible workflow Sketch up user, or an alternative Mac's render engine. The export of 3ds work well in C4D, it keeps the camera view ( field of view is a slightly difference from SU, but the angel is correct) and the material map and UV coordinate. which means its easy to export it from SU. And it supports sun light system as well which gives a fast and accurate light setting for building renders. The good impression for me like a non C4D user is that the setting is simple, the render method is not as complex as Vray, there's two main options, one is Irradiance map and one is Irradiance Map + QMC, it is the same biased method like Vray. All u have to do is to determine the quality of the sampling which saves a lot of time tweaking the parameters. Another good effect that C4D has is the ambient occlusion, it gives certain detail of soft shadow that will enhance the edges. The easy settings of material is another advantages, works similar as 3dMax, the material property index, u can simply tick the box and give the amount of the effect, such as transparency and reflection. And it also has the layer property like Maxwell material. So a glossy wooden floor will be diffuse + multiplied layer refection. The speed/quality of rendering for a new user is very convincing, u don't feel frustrated like using Vray (if u miss some settings the quality is entire different) the following images take 5hrs with 2 GI passes (IR method) The only disadvantages is that it doesn;t support IES lighting, there's plugin that can do the job but not with default shader.  On material view, the glossiness of the reflection doesn't work properly as I expected, its a bit flat if u see the wooden table. But the bump and sharpness work really well. To sum up, I believe c4D is a good balance between easy settings and render speed.

Vray - Irradiance Map + Light Cache

Finally I got this right, for interiors its better to use Light Cache instead of DMC, its less noisy and faster. And the intensity of the material shouldn't be too high, before I set it as 15 and thats why it makes so many black shadows. This time reduce it to 2.5 and lower the noise threshold, the render speed improve so much and also the quality as well. This one only took like 4hrs and with quite a nice quality already. The wood of the table doesn't look nice yet, but its just matter of tweaking it. In this case, Vray has a big advantages in render speed comparing to Kerkythea in Interior models. This is due to the irradiance map and the light cache method that Kerkythea don't have. 

Vray - Irradiance Map + DMC with Adaptive AA

This week I've being testing the vray plugin for Sketchup to test out the performance and the workflow, the good thing about the plugin is that its intergrated, there's no export and import problem. it directs renders from your Sketchup windows, and the material can be set by picking up the material names, this is very useful that it minimize the time of material settings. Compare to Kerkythea its more of less the same, the only difference is that Kerkythea needs to export the model and will lose the face-me object, and if u change the model u need to re-export it. So if this case, the Vray can used as a default render for daily use with better quality GI output. But...the speed is always the concern. in this case I prefer not to use too many advance material, just glass and matte material, something  flat cartoon like rendering will be really fast.

Again, using the same model and difficult indirect light condition to test out the speed and performance of interior scene which is always the hardcore for GI. In this model I didn't use any rectangle light to fake the sun light ( It will have better quality I guess, u get to setup subdivision of the light emitter) instead, I want to use the SU sun settings to simulate the actual shadow. After 10hr rendering, with 5 passes of Irradiance map + 16 subdivision DMC + Adaptive AA sampling,  the result come up a bit blurry and with common problem of Irradiance map, the black dot. During the testing, I use DMC + 5000 Light Cache, and fixed AA, still come up the same blurry image which is very irritating. I'm not such a vray expert so if u know where is the key settings I need to improve please drop me a message. Here are the settings.

 

Kerkthea MTL + Depth Map

Original Output

After the deadline of the BFI competition project, I got a little to play around with this free render engine, the MTL algorithm is a more accurate one compare to photon mapping, especially in the details and edges. The best well know software that use MTL is Maxwell, and it ends up with easy settings and accurate light calculation. The biggest problem with MTL is the slow render speed and the grain, it needs more passes for each frame to get better result. But an advantage is that u can stop whenever u want and save the image. I use Tadao Ando's the church of light as a model, because its a simple geometry with simple light fittings, it will be the best condition to test the software, especially on the indirect sun light. After 20hr of render which I think its too much for everyday use, but the result end up quite satisfying. the indirect light do illuminate the interior and u get the fadeout effect on the floor of light reflections. Another very useful settings is the depth map, and it takes only seconds to get this depth of field mask that can apply to the original image in Photoshop very easily. There's no need of using DOF camera that take ages to render. I'm sure other program like Vray or Mental Ray can easily achieve this result and maybe better, but a software for free and with easy settings, it really done a good job.  

Depth Map

Final Result in Photoshop

Exb_Saatchi Gallery