Rendering Critique

[Larry Kumpost]

John's points are well-taken. The ideal is to get the best CA render possible and work from there as desired.

It does not take that much time to raytrace views once you get things set up. Here are some tips:

Unless you are doing a lighting study (not sure Chief is the best for that) or want to show special lighting the general rule is to keep it simple. Only turn on the lights you need, if any.

Copy materials you use to your "My Materials" folder and adjust the render settings to what you want/like. Some of the Chief initial (out-of -the-box) render settings are a bit...strange. Use the "Preview" window on the "Raytrace" tab of the "Define Material" DBX to review your changes as you go.

When you raytrace a view use the lowest setting for a preliminary run. Then if you need to make any adjustments to the render settings you will probably want to do another quick raytrace to check before you use higher settings.

The Raytrace Parameters are up to you but I find that the "Low Quality" setting for Radiosity and "Normal" for Anti-aliasing are all I need in most cases to work with clients. I tend to bump up the anti-aliasing more than the radiosity settings and then mostly just for larger images.

Plan your work so that you can raytrace during the off hours, especially if you use higher radiosity settings. At the higher settings it may need to run all night anyway. I work at home so this is easy and I can check the progress from time to time.