Diamond - Caustics

[panphoto]

Thanks Gordon,
I'll study this a little later but already I've learned a lot from what you've said. By the way, you might have noticed that the scene is set up as an animation to output as an avi. Unfortunately it crashes after the first rendered frame. Juanjo is currently working on a fix; "Problem is that currently plugin is not compatible with animation savers like AVI. You must save individual frames in any format. I think that this is a problem of Lightwave SDK with external render engines, but I am going to see if it is possible to fix it".

[gordonrobb]

Ah, I always save to images anyway. But PMC render times are a lot slower. You'll need some beefy GPUs to render an animation

[kavorka]

Thanks Gordon,
I'll study this a little later but already I've learned a lot from what you've said. By the way, you might have noticed that the scene is set up as an animation to output as an avi. Unfortunately it crashes after the first rendered frame. Juanjo is currently working on a fix; "Problem is that currently plugin is not compatible with animation savers like AVI. You must save individual frames in any format. I think that this is a problem of Lightwave SDK with external render engines, but I am going to see if it is possible to fix it".

You should always save as individual images, not as a video. So many problems can come up with saving directly to video.

[panphoto]

Thanks Gordon,
I'll study this a little later but already I've learned a lot from what you've said. By the way, you might have noticed that the scene is set up as an animation to output as an avi. Unfortunately it crashes after the first rendered frame. Juanjo is currently working on a fix; "Problem is that currently plugin is not compatible with animation savers like AVI. You must save individual frames in any format. I think that this is a problem of Lightwave SDK with external render engines, but I am going to see if it is possible to fix it".

You should always save as individual images, not as a video. So many problems can come up with saving directly to video.

Yes, thank you for reinforcing that message. Especially since my GPU isn't high-end, and it might take a full geological epoch to render even small sequences!

[gordonrobb]

Happy with the result I'm getting now. Just using a combination of HDRI background (for lighting and reflection), and more Octane lights to generate caustics.

Also looks better with a silver ring, rather than gold.

[panphoto]

That's lovely Gordon, I'm still studying your earlier mods to my files. I'd be very interested to see your files for this image if you'd be kind enough to share. You were right about the lengthy render times with the PMC camera - I'm having to rethink how far I can practically go with such an animation without a render farm! Have you seen this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuhHam3_uwY
I think he must be using the DirectLight also, there don't appear to be any caustics, it would be interesting to get your insights on this.

[gordonrobb]

My issue is that I am using someone else's model and wouldn't want to share it without his permission. Only different to yours is that I'm using an HDRI background, that is set ver low .1 strengh in image and .2 in Node. And 6 lights like you had. I just cloned your lights and made them all point at the ring, moving them slightly ahead of the ring.

Regading the youtube link I think that is just direct light, The thing that is makeing all the difference is the Dispersion. Set it to .044 or .055 and you'll see the difference it makes. when I was rending this, my obsesion was realism, which is why I wanted the caustics. Lightwave will do quite good diamond without octane. I wanted reall looking diamond.

[gordonrobb]

Also, you might try the Pathtracing Kernel. It is faster than PMC, but will still show caustics. Trying a small, rough animation just now. But it's going to take a good 3 hours for 100 frames of around 600x300