Rendering Critique

[Night8917]

Hi George and all others.

I do agree with you that PovRay is a great Ray Trace engine; you can get a very good result from it.

I think the question is; is it a professional tool??

I think the answer is NO, I would think that hobbyists made 99% of the pictures in the Pov-Ray hall of fame and they have the time to make changes after changes to a Ray trace until the picture is perfect, a professional doesn’t have the time to do this.

If you can make 25 – 30, Ray traces with Artlantis during the same time as PovRay makes one, where do you have time to make adjustments to a picture? In Artlantis of course, and even if you make the picture 10 times bigger to get a better resolution it’s faster.

There are so many Rendering/Ray Trace engines out there today and 95% are MUCH faster than PovRay, the only advantage I see to PovRay is that it’s free.

I could show you Renderings/Ray Traces made in many other software’s that are picture quality, but like the Hall of fame 95% are made by the gurus for that software.

I’m sorry to say but in the world of today time is money.

[ank345]

Well, George, this image was rendered with chief that takes 25Hrs ++ , rendered at 960x574 ( can't really reamember ). and my artlantis image is 1024 X 768
i remember a digital photographer's advise, try to snap your photos under expose ( slightly darker then normal ) then it will preserve the quality of the photo to be adjusted in PS. You are the expert in ps....

[George Godwin]

Anders, - I agree that PovRay or any other renderer has to produce good results in reasonably good time. I find that Chief produces quite good renders with low quality settings but I too would like to see a faster, high quality render with versatile and reliably, predictable controls. By and large with a program like Photoshop, a decent render from Chief can be adjusted to look excellent. My point in this thread has been that most renders need adjustments unless one is a true expert at setting up the lighting and other adjustments in the rendering software such as the people using PovRay are able to do. For me Photoshop is quicker and much more versatile to finish an image so long as the render result is of good quality as a starting point.

Alan, - Photoshop can make up for a weak render in most cases and a darker render generally means that detail is not washed out (never to be recovered) due to overexposure from bright lights. Underexposed (darker) areas are generally easier to salvage and adjust to bring back the detail.

Nevertheless, I found that your render in Artlantis was very hard to work with in Photoshop due to the fact that the detail was not available in the darker, underexposed areas which it normally is in Chief renders. The dark, hardwood floor was a case in point. I could not bring it out in the Artlantis render whereas I could bring the floor back easily from any of the Chief renders. The Chief render that you did was much better to work with and Adam's larger image with more pixels (2700 x 1800) was the easiest to work with. The quality and detail was there and the highest quality of output with an endless range of possibilities was achieveable from this large render.

In summary, I would be able to achieve any quality, tone or subtle effect on any part of Adam's 42.6 mb render image due to its basic quality and image data and it would have been worth the time. A lot of 3D artists run one computer strictly for rendering and they would not do it if it was not worth the time and effort.

[ank345]

could it be the 'effects' that i have applied to the textures ( reflective, shiningness,spactacular and so on... ) that affect the adjsutment in PS.
I will try one with the actual settings ...what file do you prefer? BMP, png or jpg ?