Hello everyone
This is my second project in Max, you can see the first one here http://dariorubilovic.deviantart.com/ (has nothing to do with architecture, i was just testing myself).

First a few facts:
- Max 2012 and Mental ray used.
- This was done on 3 computers (with bucket rendering), each of those a Pentium dual core @ 2.6GHz. I know… They were bought two years ago for AutoCAD.
- I started doing this with a tutorial, but very quickly continued on my own (tutorial was with iray, and frankly i saw it was below my level of knowledge). You can see it here http://www.rockthe3d.com/creating-an-architectural-scene-in-3ds-max/
Just “borrowed” :) the idea, everything else did on my own.

And now - to the renders!

Day 01:

Night 01:

Night 02:

Question 01
Those fireflies are most noticeable in the night scenes. Material is a blend material of A&D and one from Autodesk material library, both are set to 0 glossy samples. I did try with 32 glossy samples and the result was about 32 times worse :) Like this:

I also tried what this article suggests http://www.ronenbekerman.com/making-of-the-house-3d-mental-ray-animation/
Disabled specular on all of the lights, but all that did is remove reflection of lights on glass surface. I tried falloff to Color distance limitation in the A&D, but that also behaved very strangely (falloff would have to be very small, almost like reflection is off altogether), and results just looked bad. The only one i didn’t try is brute force render, since that would take about a month an my system to finish.
I also tried Fast interpolate and that just created huge “stains” where speckles are. Disabling bump maps also did nothing.

The ceiling material looks the worse, but those speckles are also visible on the walls (beyond the last lamp on the wall). Any ideas what is wrong here? I don’t know what else to try :(

Question 02
In the Night scene 02 i tested caustics. Rendering this image took 8 hours, 25 minutes and 7 seconds!?!
Could someone please take a look at this file and see did i do something wrong with mental ray for it to last so long (day scene took 2 hours, and night scene without the caustics one hour).
Or is that normal on such a slow system?

Here is the file, don’t know if uploading files of this size is allowed on forum, so i uploaded it to box:
http://www.box.net/shared/yrvybv6x3m42rh3gtc20
http://www.box.net/shared/juoqhvoxaqkj36rckcn2
http://www.box.net/shared/4bjyvr1nup52fvrjh332

If you don’t want to / don’t have the time to download the scene here are my settings

I know that recommendation for Maximum sampling radius is - leave it alone. In this scene i have a cylinder for the background that is very far away from the room itself, so i assumed that wouldn’t work OK. That’s why i set it to 140cm which is roughly 10% of the scene without that cylinder.

Finally, question 03
What would you do to make this look more realistic (materials, lightning and rendering, not details in the scene)? I did receive very nice reviews for this render (since it is my second project), but i’ve been looking at it for some time now and probably have lost objectivity, it is still a little to CG for me.

Long post, hope you managed it :), thanks in advance for any help or advice, especially for those damn speckles!

Im not an expert on MR but I take a shot in the dark: it seems 80% like a matter of samples in the material + antialising settings. Try a region rendering there with 32 samples+ 1-64 aa settings. Usually the small white dots appear on blurry reflections. SI materials have also problems when reflected on surfaces. Use only the A+D materials for MR, they seem to work more proper than any other material

Now about the CG thing, try improve the environment at first glance. It shouldnt be so obvious outside. When you make an interior you shouldnt be able to see outside almost at all due to the exposure. So the environment must be almost white, it s a natural phenomenon. Try a daylight system + skyportals on the windows and u ll have a more natural result. Im sorry for my bad english :P

ps. i think this is wrong but increasing a bit the samples on the lights might help.

3ds max 2010 x64 sp1 | Mental Ray

i7 920 @ 2.67GHz / ASUS P6T deluxe / 12GB RAM Corsair dominator DDR3 / ATI Radeon Sapphire 6950 HD 2Gb ram / Velociraptor 150GB 10000 rpm / OCZ vertex 2 SSD 60GB

ALso.. you have increased the scene’s contrast settings. I am thinking this will enhance low sample rates on other parts of your scene. The spotty reflections on the shutters and ceiling could be light/reflection sample rate related.

Actually it’s non of the above. I’ve tried everything in the last couple of days, and nothing works. On one forum even a bug is mentioned.
Here is the same scene merged in to a new one and striped down completely. I’ve even assigned new UVW map modifier. Just two materials used, A&D matte, and A&D satin varnished wood. The higher the glossy samples, the worse the result. Makes no sense…

File:
http://www.box.net/shared/23btyn97xzjdm3utloxz

If this is the crap i’ll have to go every time i need glossy reflection, i’m willing to spend an extra month on learning V-ray. Any other recommendations besides “VRay - The Complete Guide”, and SolidRocks?

Well it is a material+aa problem. U just had ur lights inside ur fixtures -some of em passing through the geometry- which caused weird shadows, burns and highlights. U should place ur lights just close to ur light sources and not inside em.
Another thing I d like to add about spots in the middle -cause as u noticed when i moved em the shadows changed- is that I would pick different lights. I would pick a photometric spotlight for them with diffuse distribution, so it would keep the shadows proper on ceiling, plus the IES profile u chose makes weird the spotlight highlight on the floor.
In first pic I have just moved ur lights a bit further from their fixtures, thats it and u can already see significant improvement in the samples. In second pic I have the mat samples to 24 and the aa to 4-64. Last thing, I d put SI cylinders to represent the lights on the sides (without illuminating scene through FG though cause doesnt provide accurate lighting and that makes also materials with blurry reflection look jagged).
I hope I helped cause I m also new to mr :P Vray is a renderer that Im learning atm, but I think both -if u know how to master em- provide similar solutions. The thing I like in Vray is that works great with SI objects unlike MR which u have to do tweaks in order to achieve a good result. The thing that I like in MR is the glow shader which Vray doesnt have it or idk yet :D

3ds max 2010 x64 sp1 | Mental Ray

i7 920 @ 2.67GHz / ASUS P6T deluxe / 12GB RAM Corsair dominator DDR3 / ATI Radeon Sapphire 6950 HD 2Gb ram / Velociraptor 150GB 10000 rpm / OCZ vertex 2 SSD 60GB

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thanulee 29 September 2011 02:47 AM

Well it is a material+aa problem. U just had ur lights inside ur fixtures -some of em passing through the geometry- which caused weird shadows, burns and highlights. U should place ur lights just close to ur light sources and not inside em.

You are right! Moving them away, setting higher glossy samples and AA at 4-64 solves it. I’m just not clear on how do you know in advance how far to move them from the fixtures. In my render it is quite obvious which are moved enough and which are not.

And here is a version with Max reflection distance enabled and edited. This way both glossy samples and AA can go down quite a bit, i.e. faster render.

plus the IES profile u chose makes weird the spotlight highlight on the floor.

That is exaclty why i chose it :-)

I hope I helped cause I m also new to mr :P Vray is a renderer that Im learning atm, but I think both -if u know how to master em- provide similar solutions.

Sure did, thank you!

I don’t know what to think any more. Almost everyone, ESPECIALLY those that do archviz (which is what i’m after) are yelling at me when they hear i’m using Mental :-)
I’m starting to think maybe i should start to learn V-ray before i get to deep in Mental.

thanulee

Well, zoom in and just place the light a bit further away from each item / fixture, unless u use translucent mat.

I have to ask :-), what if i am using a translucent material?
I you look at the renders in my firs post, those lights are with orange translucent material.

Come on now....don’t leave us hanging. Post a final image… :)

Max Design 2012 SP2 / Win 7 Pro
NVidia Quadro FX 4800 x 2 (non sli)
HP Z800 - 2 Xeon X5680 @ 3.33 GHz; 36 GB ram

pyro777 30 September 2011 02:48 AM

Come on now....don’t leave us hanging. Post a final image… :)

All these problems with that damn ceiling made me hate this scene :-) No way i’m rendering it again. I just removed the “glitter” in GIMP, and said FINISHED! :-))
Important thing is that now i understand what was causing it.