2.29: radiosity render!

sten · Post by **sten** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 7:40 am

cool hanzo!

cool

z3r0_d · Post by **z3r0_d** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 8:18 am

I have a couple of files I was going to post (and renders from them)

quick tut:
same as a radiosity scene, except press the Radio button for each material you want to do radiosity calculations on, and press the radio button in the display buttons.

Oh, and the rendering radiosity calculation does not subdivide faces, so if you want more detailed shadows you need to subdivide your faces yourself.

(the settings as if you were going to do a radiosity calculation that appear after pressnig collect meshes apply to rendering too. The most necescary one is probably Max Iteratsions)

hanzo, you need to turn up the hemirez to smooth things out some. (Though I am annoyed it maxes at 1000, one of my files shows that)

(these files I am refrencing are on my linux partition, I may upload them in the morning)

_____________ edit ____________ (no I don't read my posts usually when I edit them)

I have two files I have played with blender's new radiosity with (both take a while longer than ton's examples to render) in

(this is a redirect page, just left-click)
http://www.geocities.com/z3r0_d/files/n ... iosity.zip
(297K)
(the files in there have what produced the below image and the image at http://www.geocities.com/z3r0_d/files/goodExample.png (157K) except by the traditional radiosity solver)

and an outdoor (mostly) scene (which demonstrates that the hemirez isn't high enough for this sort of thing) can be found at
(another redirect, left-click on it)
http://www.geocities.com/z3r0_d/files/blender_gi.png
(258K)

(these files were made in a cvs checkout made a few hours ago)

hannibar · Post by **hannibar** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 7:10 pm

why do all the meshes look so 'unclean'?

hanzo · Post by **hanzo** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 9:35 pm

z3r0_d

thanks dude fa dat mini tut.. I know how to do it from scratch now, with no problem..

PS: hehe nice renders man..

Landis · Post by **Landis** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 6:32 am

Nice work Ton! This has alot of potential for obvious reasons (animation mostly). Now, for the questions....

Basics
Do I still have to "Collect Meshes" and "Replace Meshes" in addition to enabling "Radio" in both the Material and Display buttons?

SubSurf
I am sure that this is what you guys meant about subdividing for better shadows but I tried this on subsurfed mesh and the render did not seem to utilize "subsurf" at all. As unfortunate as this is, it DOES make sense to me...I just wanted to make sure that you are already aware of this and that we are on the same page.

Raytracing?

It would be nice if I could ultimately achieve results inside of Blender itslef similar to that of which I am currently recieving through YAFRAY. Correct me if I am wrong but Blenders radiosity calculation is equivelant to YAFRAYS "Pathlight" in that it allows for color bleeding...so...all we are lacking now is raytracing right

(this is really more of a hint than a question).

Lighting
As far as I can rememeber by using radiosity Blender basically replaces the material of a given mesh with shaded information pertaining to the calculation or scene rather. Do I still need to light this scene with a standard Lamp just like before?

Texturing
Until Blender is capable of utilizing image texture color information from a mesh, would you say that the best course of action would probably be to either:

A) use dotblends "empty method" for texturing meshes to be used in a radiosity calculation.....

....and/or....

B) try and make the materials base color match the image texture to achieve reasonably "realistic" results?

Keep up the good work everyone. Take care and thanks ahead of time.

Cheers,
Landis

P.S. I think we should have something similar to an emoticon that simply says "Nice work Ton"....I am confident that it would be utilezed more than the smiley. Just an idea

.

z3r0_d · Post by **z3r0_d** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 7:00 am

Landis wrote:Basics
Do I still have to "Collect Meshes" and "Replace Meshes" in addition to enabling "Radio" in both the Material and Display buttons?

You currently have to press colect meshes to see some important radiosity settings (Max Iterations comes to mind), but you don't have to run the calcuation prior to rendering. Though, it can be a way to subdivide your mesh (delete new vertex colors afterword).

Landis wrote:SubSurf
I am sure that this is what you guys meant about subdividing for better shadows but I tried this on subsurfed mesh and the render did not seem to utilize "subsurf" at all. As unfortunate as this is, it DOES make sense to me...I just wanted to make sure that you are already aware of this and that we are on the same page.

Subdivision surfaces have never worked in the radiosity calculation. They are not subdivided before the calculation would be done, hence you see a non-subdivided surface. Would be a reasonable feature request: have blender create a sub-surf result before doing the radiosity calcuation.

Landis wrote:Raytracing?
It would be nice if I could ultimately achieve results inside of Blender itslef similar to that of which I am currently recieving through YAFRAY. Correct me if I am wrong but Blenders radiosity calculation is equivelant to YAFRAYS "Pathlight" in that it allows for color bleeding...so...all we are lacking now is raytracing right (this is really more of a hint than a question).

YafRay (from what I know) does a more accurate and slower GI calculation as well as it's raytracing fuctions. The power of blender's render is it's speed.

Though I wouldn't think of yafray export integration as unheard of, I don't see an implementation of them in my current tuhopuu 2 build nor bf-blender build. I had never tested them before not using raytracers.

Landis wrote:Lighting
As far as I can rememeber by using radiosity yo basically replace the materials of a given mesh with shaded information pertaining to the calculation itself. Do I still need to light this scene with a standard Lamp like before?

This does not do that at all. You just render and it works.

Landis wrote:Textures
Until Blender is capable of utilizing image texture color information from a mesh, would you say that the best course of action would probably be to either:

A) use dotblends "empty method" for texturing meshes to be used in a radiosity calculation.....

....and/or....

B) try and make the materials base color match the image texture to achieve reasonably "realistic" results?

Neither is necescary, though the radiosity result blends differently with the textures on an object (I am not speaking about precalculated radiosity) it seems. Try it.

Landis · Post by **Landis** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 7:20 am

z3r0_d wrote: Subdivision surfaces have never worked in the radiosity calculation. They are not subdivided before the calculation would be done, hence you see a non-subdivided surface. Would be a reasonable feature request: have blender create a sub-surf result before doing the radiosity calcuation.

Excellent. That is exaclty why this was acceptable to me. It would be extremely beneficial to implement such a feature just as you described it for obvious reasons. Please consider

.

z3r0_d wrote: The power of blender's render is it's speed.

Amen brother. Just wanted to "piggy back" on that

.

z3r0_d wrote:
Landis wrote:Lighting
As far as I can rememeber by using radiosity yo basically replace the materials of a given mesh with shaded information pertaining to the calculation itself. Do I still need to light this scene with a standard Lamp like before?
This does not do that at all. You just render and it works.

"You just render and it works"?

Really. So, if this is correct than I would have to assume that other than the situation where I assign emit values to a mesh that I intend on representing a light (much like the planes in the infamous "table and two chairs" scene), a radiosity calculation by default will light the scene as if I have used a lightdome, otherwise where in the hell is Blender "assuming" I want the "light" to come from?

Interesting. Are we talking about Global illumination or radiosity? These are two VERY different things.

And last but not least what is "precalculated radiosity"?

Thanks alot for the insight buddy. I am sure that others will find this beneficial as well

. Take care and keep up the good work.

Cheers,
Landis

hanzo · Post by **hanzo** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 7:45 am

hey Landis for the render below i used subsurf on the cubes and it looked fine, I did not use a dome, and there is no lights in the scene the resalts are very good, and fast..

I do think that a renderer would do this better, but blender is great if you don't have the time

Landis · Post by **Landis** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 7:48 am

Looks great hanzo!!!! That is very strane about the "subsurf" though

. Hmmmm.......

Also, if you are not using any lights than I assume that you are using a mesh as a light source (assigned an emit value).

Cheers,
Landis

Landis · Post by **Landis** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 8:01 am

Strange....I deleted the lights, assigned an emit value to a plane, and subsurf seems to be working now, however, my bump (Nor

) map does not seem to be working.

sten · Post by **sten** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 8:02 am

Landis wrote:Looks great hanzo!!!! That is very strane about the "subsurf" though . Hmmmm.......

Also, if you are not using any lights than I assume that you are using a mesh as a light source (assigned an emit value).

Cheers,
Landis

Hey Landis!

why haven't you been online

?

if you want a windows copy of this binary, head over to Elysiun and grab my copy of BF-Blender, same thread as Tuhophuu2 is posted...and go play with the new Radiosity thingie, meaning as you already know, it does radiosity in rendertime, not before

this is cool

but even better if YAFRAY was baked in or melted WITH Blender, maybe in future versions? Blender 3.* ?

Landis · Post by **Landis** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 8:15 am

My vacation is over

. I just got on because I couldnt sleep...if my wife catches me I am in for it. Anywas, I am actually using the Blender offered by you already

!!! Thanks buddy!

sten · Post by **sten** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 9:10 am

Landis wrote:My vacation is over . I just got on because I couldnt sleep...if my wife catches me I am in for it. Anywas, I am actually using the Blender offered by you already !!! Thanks buddy!

oh dear

well, I hope you have something to try out for your Airman,
I am waiting on a render

!

theeth · Post by **theeth** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 2:59 pm

Landis wrote:Strange....I deleted the lights, assigned an emit value to a plane, and subsurf seems to be working now, however, my bump (Nor ) map does not seem to be working.

just add a little light with No Diffuse.

Martin

z3r0_d · Post by **z3r0_d** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 3:31 pm

I Was wrong!
apparently subdivision surfaces not directly a problem with this method (says people on elysiun, I can't try it now), but only the small faces they create (known flaw in how blender does radiosity, faces that are too small get artifacts, even with maximum hemirez).

Theeth, why not no specular instead?

and you do need faces with an emit value to work without lamps (you seem to have figured that out)

but most of what I just put in this post has been said/implied within 3 posts before