Sorry, I dont use photometric. How much memory do you have?

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Please support us and post a [Link to www.digitalartsfront.com] on your website.

--Matt

ohh... u don't use it.... i see... well i've 1 GB ram in the pc.

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I think it probably is a memory thing, there's a fair bit of stuff in that kitchen from memory and therefore a lot of shadows and stuff to calculate. I did a bit of a google search and found this thread which has a few suggestions you might want to try:
[Link to forum.3dpinoy.com]

We really need a forum member who's an expert on this kind of stuff...

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

ok... steve thanx ... i'll check out the above link.....
yeah... we do need someone who knows all the ins and outs of this particular thing(Radiosity). well...in radiosity all the geometry should be physically correct and accurate...because it simulates the actual lighting.

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Well, practice, practice, practice and you can be our radiosity guy.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

haha......hmmm...will think abt it...but yeah, i'm practicing it for sure.

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I've never had much luck with radiosity, I guess it comes into play mainly for architectural accuracy, so you can tell a client it will take 6 halogen downlights to illuminate 10 square meters of space or something like that.
I really like using Photometric lights though, with web distribution and IES files you can get some really nice effects.

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ok... sorry tyson..i saw ur post just today. well...one question- after using photometric lights can i render it with v-ray or i have to use just scanline render?

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Most of them will, not sure about the mental ray ones though. Just remember to change the shadow type to vray shadow.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

ok..thanx steve...one more quest. as radiosity itself is a GI....using v-ray won't disturb the scene? i mean it won't overexpose the light? and is it necessary to use only v-ray shadows with v-ray or we can use others too?

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you don't have to use vray shadows but it won't look as good if you don't. Using vray shouldn't change the lighing to much, unless you use vray sun or sky or the vray camera. In which case you'll probably have to change the settings a bit.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

hmmm... i see... i too tried using vray shadows....and it really looked very good , produced good quality shadows. not used vray sun .. in fact i can't see the vray sun in my vers. why is it so?
r u talking abt the same vray sky which is there in GI or is it a separate light??

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If you're using vray you should appoach your lighting using vray aswell, vray irradiance map and light cache give great results. If you set up a scene with photometric lights they should all work with vray. Max standard shadow maps work aswell.
Setting your vray skylight (environment colour) to a brighter value and adding things like a white reflection card. ie: a white wall or something to bounce light off will increase
the illumination. there are other tricks too like caching the light with brighter materials then rendering using the cached maps. If you're using vray you might aswell get down with vray GI methods aswell. ten times better than light tracer and or radiosity and way simplier than mental ray GI and final gather etc...

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thanx tyson for the tips....as u say i used vray lights with vray as renderer...but on rendering the final output, some noisy dots were coming all over the image and the shadows too were coming very blurred and spreaded...plz suggest some advice for it... if u want i'll post an image of it. thanx.

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An image would be good for diagnosing the problem.

Several things come to mind though, such as

1. You may have "show samples" checked in your irradiance map settings.

2. If you are using vray lights or vray area shadows you need to turn up the samples to get smooth soft shadows maybe 20 or 25.

3. If you are using vray area shadows check that the size is right by creating a box roughly the size of the intended light source (the bigger the light area the softer the shadows) and then set your shadow size to match it.

4. Check your geometry doesnt have co-incedent faces (faces on top of each other)

5. If you are using quasi monte carlo for secondary bounces you may get some noise unless you increase the samples. the global noise threshold affects all the blurry effects in vray also but it may slow renders down alot if you change it.

Hope one of those fixes the problem.

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ok... i'm posting the image ...
well... i've not done any of those settings which u've written above.. instead i've changed some other settings as i was just trying v-ray...playing with the settings.
secondly i can't see the vray area shadows option. where is it? And i can see only three options for the secondary bounces namely - Brute force, photon map and light cache. i can't see 'quasi monte carlo'. i think there r many options missing in this ver. of v-ray. anyways... here is the image. should i tell u the settings which i've changed? plz tell me . thanx.

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I'm pretty sure Brute force is QMC. I read somewhere that they changed some of the algorithms but it's basically the same thing. The name change happened at version 1.5.

The image below shows where the vray shadows are.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

ok.... so it's the same... ya.. i know the vray shadows but where r the vray area shadows or is it one and the same thing?? thanx

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Yeah its a bit hard when you have a different version because things have changed a bit each time. Quasi monte carlo is the brute force method which gives accurate gi in all the cracks but can be noisy. the noise here looks like the shadows need more samples. Are you using a vray light? if so you need to increase the samples for that light. There is a way of globally increasing the samples of all blurry effects, such as glossy reflections area shadows etc, in 1.5 its under rQMC sampler in the render settings, theres a multiplier and a minimum subdivs setting which would effect things like area shadows, vray light shadows, glossy reflections and brute force GI subdivs. there should be something similar in your version. heres a picture anyway

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thanx tyson for it. i'll try changing the subdiv. settings and also try changing the samples. i'll tell u the settings which i changed. here they are - In the v-ray global switches i turned off the Default and hidden lights. changed the image sampler(Antialiasing) to Adaptive DMC, turned off the Antialiasing filter. turned on the v-ray environment(GI). in the v-ray colour mapping i changed the Gamma to 2.2. turned on the Indirect illumination, set the primary and secondary bounces to 0.8. In the v-ray irradiance map, Basic parameters, i changed the Hsph. subdiv. to 35 and turned on the show calc. And in the settings tab, v-ray DMC sampler, i changed the noise threshold to 0.02 and lastly in the v-ray system , Render region division, i changed the x value to 48 . so these all settings i had done just for trying.... well tyson can u send me ur v-ray vers. plz?

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It sounds like you've go the lastest version, I'd stick with that. Plus it's not really legal for Tyson to give you his copy.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

ok.. i also thought it's the latest version but it hasn't got many maps like vray fur, vray dirt,VRayOverrideMtl,VRayFastSSS, vraysky, vraycolor, Vraysunlight and many other things which i saw in the chaos group tutorials. I understand ur reasoning.. but i just want to see it how it works.. and as i'm learning, i'll use it only for home - use rather than any commercial purposes.
ok.. apart frm this.. what do u suggest for the above problem which i wrote? i've given the settings above which i changed.... and after tyson's recommendation i also increased the Min. samples and Global sub. but still i'm getting very noisy shadows..i mean the shadows r spreaded too much. Thanxx...

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If you think your shadows are spread too much decrease the falloff of your spotlight. I've added an example below showing different size falloffs and how it looks when it's rendered.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

but i'm using vray light.... i used two vray lights for a scene and there the shadows r too spreaded. what should be done for v-ray lights....doesn't it has shadow parameters?

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vray lights are area lights, their actual size will affect how blurry the shadows are not any settings within them. Vray lights can be tricky to use and they are always going to make your scene noisy unless they have alot of subdivs.
I generally use a large vray light as a backlight because they wrap around the object giving a good rim effect. they are great for getting good skin effects aswell but for simplicity I would stick to standard lights and use vray shadows with area turned on for soft shadowing. photometric lights are good aswell, as I said before when used with proper inverse square decay and web distribution, but they are tricky to set up also, you often need to crank up the multiplier to get any effect due to the real world decay. I've had some success using exposure control and photometric lights but to be honest its all kindoff complicated. you can get really nice results from standard max lights and GI settings.

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ok.. so standard lights hold best in ur opinion... fine. I made a dining hall and a room with vray lights which i'll post in the 3d WIPs section. plz check it out and give suggestions and leave ur comments.

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sorry that last post was very long winded and made little sense. I don't mean to sound like a know all, its just such a complex area its really hard to explain without being able to give a full on class or something. I should make a video tutorial I suppose.

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oh.. no no..... ur post gave me a brief idea abt all the three lights. yeah.. a video tut. must be very helpful... plz make it and post it. thanx.

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