Sin Rays - Apocalypse Competition 2011

[kubo]

Well, it's been a blast this last built, I never thought SSS would be so much fun, that and me learning blender are to blame for this scene.
This are just some tests, right now the scene has over 5M polys, which sucks 950Mb of my gpu just with geometry. The scene is optimized for instances, so it'll have to wait to the next build to add the rest of the objects of the scene, for now you are seeing most of it, althou not in the right quantities ;P. My main characters are missing, but you get the feel.
This first samples are rendered in PT for about 1-4hr, in a single 570 doing barely .08 Ms/sec and it's topping my gpu vram at the moment so I cann't used both cause it would overload the display one. There is some minor color correction (working with exr is awesome) and hotpixel removal was at 1.
Materials are from cgtextures, and the "sin rays" material you can download from the resources forum with an example on how to use it.
You can see some progression from the first to the last one, while I was fixing geometry and texture errors, also for the last ones I had to lower the subdivide in some surface (that's why they look strange at times) cause I was getting too many polys.
Hope you like it.

[kubo]

a small update, I've added almost all the objects to the scene. It needs some tweaking, and I'm waiting for 2.6 to add the rest of the cathedral modules, because now I can only use 4 before it all goes boom ;P . Since it's a tricky interior shot, and geometry is topping my vram I'm getting 0.15 Ms/sec which is slow as hell (single 570), this took 8hr for 1500 samples (I was away, so probably solved with less samples). Also I got it up from 0.1 to 0.15 (which is a lot) by fixing the geometry, around the windows I was getting light leaks cause it wasn't properly joined, hence it was having trouble calculating some extra light intakes. Portals added extra .02, which was good too.
Hope you like it, meanwhile to shorten my wait for 2.6 I'll do some more test and tweaking, getting ready ;P

[p3taoctane]

Wow Kubo. This is bloody amazing. Its really amazing! I love the use the volumetric lights. You have combined so many cool effects that are pushing the Octane envelope.
Best of luck to you in the competition. Very very nice mate.

[kubo]

thanks mate, I think this is going to be a nice competition, 20 days to go, and many exciting things to come, so I expect a lot of surprises and awesome renders (couldn't be any other way with so many talented people around), and that's fun for all of us! see you at the apocalypse

[bepeg4d]

unbelievable mystic kubo
ciao beppe

[matej]

Nice & creepy

You could work a little more on the materials - for example the axe doesn't look much like metal.

But the big problem here is the noise. This shot shows the Octane's (current) duality - unbelievably fast with exterior / studio setting and very slow with interior closed setting. A 8 hours render is way too much and the render is still very noisy (practically a no-go, IMO). Even if you would wait another 8 hours, it probably wouldn't change drastically, since sampling quality drops exponentially. For 16 hours I would get much more nice & clear results in Yafaray for example (with DOF in postpro), on the CPU, with a smaller electricity bill & less chances that the computer bursts into flames... So, we probably need that bidirectional thing for interiors...

[kubo]

thanks Bepeg4d and Matej, yeap the materials need some more tweaking, I trying to fix first some minor geometry errors, I'll tweak the materials later, I won't have time till the weekend to play with it, just render some shots.
About the noise, pathtracing is not the better choice kernel for this type of scene, too many indirect and hidden lights. But right now PMC can't be used with SSS volumetric lights, as reported it crashes the gpu after some samples, so I'm expecting a better result with 2.6 (another reason to eagerly wait for it ;P)
This have been rendered with both 570, with a 0.25 to 0.3 Ms/sec for about 4 hours and 1200-1500 samples.
minor color correction, hotpixel at .15 and logo added.

[kubo]

Well, some minor fixes in geometry and textures, which show some other fixes to be made, lol. I've got to set the weight in the hair bones properly, but besides that I've done some poses tests too. Playing with exr to set colors as I please is quite fun, so this lasts test include a little bit of everything and above all I'm trying to get the scene ready for the incoming 2.6 and all the neat tricks it might bring us.
Hope you guys like it. Straight out of octane with some color correction.

[kubo]

minor tweaks, still have to work on the hair weights, and the eye has a weird reflection, but it's the light plane I'm afraid.

[p3taoctane]

Looking fine Kubo !!