Dinner for eight

[Hannes]

Another try for indoor lighting. The only additional lighting I used are three small lightsources for the candles. Otherwise only sunlight and environment light (Strength on surfaces: 3).
I had two issues here. First there are some subtle square shaped patterns on the ceiling. Even with a higher resolution of the ceiling plane it's still there but smaller. Couldn't get rid of it. So probably there's only the Photoshop solution for that I guess.
And another issue occured: Each glass behind another glass renders reflective but black. I tried everything. I was talking about this in another thread:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,19199.msg189340.html#msg189340
Really annoying.

Most models are from Archive3D.
I created the room itself in 3Ds Max. Even only the room with windows and the door were really hard to handle in Max. And once again TG showed its power in handling huge amounts of models. Worked like a charm.

[Kevin F]

Sorry Hannes but photographs are not allowed on this thread! 

[Hannes]

Thanks!!! 

[Kadri]

Looks very nice especially for a Terragen indoor scene

Hannes pure guess but how is the ceiling made? One big polygon or few polygons? Trigons or not?
If so, have you tried to subdivide the ceiling much more...made it to trigons...
Maybe smoothed and not smoothed too etc. You know what i mean.

[Hannes]

Looks very nice especially for a Terragen indoor scene

Hannes pure guess but how is the ceiling made? One big polygon or few polygons? Trigons or not?
If so, have you tried to subdivide the ceiling much more...made it to trigons...
Maybe smoothed and not smoothed too etc. You know what i mean.

Hi Kadri, thanks!!
In this image it was a one polygon (quad) per side box. I tried it way more subdivided (24 X 36 polygons). Still visible but smaller squares. Looked even worse in my opinion.
This is not the worst problem to me. It's quite easy to photoshop this away, but the glass issue is way more annoying.
See attached image (the dark area directly under the glass is the shadow. I mean the black area where one of the glasses covers the other one).
I'm not sure if I already reported this as a bug, but in case I didn't:
BUG!!

[Kadri]

There are so many threads about transparency problems i gave up searching.
It is a limitation-bug of Terragen most probably but just to play around can you share that glass scene Hannes? 

[Dune]

I suppose it's gone when you turn shadows off in the glass. But you still need a vague shadow (at least on the ground), and that's a problem indeed.

[Jo Kariboo]

Excellent light and very realistic, except the reflections that surrounds the base of the ceiling light.

[inkydigit]

exquisite lighting and scene set up, beautiful details everywhere! - bummer about the glass(es)
...

[Kadri]

Curious, can you make a test render with a white color background node Hannes?

[Dune]

Are the curtain 'real', or part of a large texture on the walls? They have a very fine semi-transparency.

[j meyer]

Seeing you glasses I'd assume it's the ray depth problem I encountered
earlier as well. Must be a thread in the support section somwhere.

As for those squares have you tried with lots of GI samples?
Might be worth a try, but I'm just guessing here.


Edit: found it
       http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,19517.0.html

[bobbystahr]

This was Matt responding to a query about water but it seems relevant:

Reflections are currently hardcoded to a maximum ray depth of 6 (with ray 1 being the surface visible to the camera), meaning 5 reflections, or 4 reflections after the first reflection. However, surfaces in the last reflection appear black or show only their luminosity, due to shadow rays being treated as a higher ray depth and returning fully opaque beyond the limit.

so I doubt there's a current workaround for this but am subscribed to this thread with my ever hopeful attitude in place...

[Hannes]

I suppose it's gone when you turn shadows off in the glass. But you still need a vague shadow (at least on the ground), and that's a problem indeed.

Nope, it's still there.

Curious, can you make a test render with a white color background node Hannes?

Doesn't work either.

Are the curtain 'real', or part of a large texture on the walls? They have a very fine semi-transparency.

The curtains are "real". I used a regular Default shader with an image map shader as color function merged with a non-reflective glass shader. Basically it's your idea, Ulco  .

As for those squares have you tried with lots of GI samples?
Might be worth a try, but I'm just guessing here.


Edit: found it
       http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,19517.0.html

Funny. Atm I'm rendering a small camera move through the room. I already have created a sequence of GI cache files, and since TG is interpolating between several ones, it seems that the square patterns are mostly gone.

And the link you gave me explains the black glasses. What a pity...

[Kadri]

Hannes, not sure how it would look, but how about a cheat on the objects by deleting one side
(the glasses do look two sided) that we don't see directly (at least on the far side for example) ?