| Garry Curtis - RS3D Tutorials | ||||||
| Chrome and Global Illumination in Realsoft 3D V4.5 Tutorial Authored September/2004
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| Chrome Shader Advanced Panel | ||||||
| Chrome , or silver , should reflect the surrounding
scene in a very accurate , clean and noise-free manner , and it does via
simple vsl shader controls ; Reflection amount (usually 100%) , color
(usually black) and in the case where that chrome shader will be used in
a scene where Global Illumination is also used , Gi_Specularity
(usually 100%) . Enough talk , let's see.
OK , where to start ? How about a look at that chrome sphere after it's been rendered and run through Post to get a rough idea of what I'm yammering about ? | ||||||
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| Normal Smeared Chrome Sphere - 5 minute render | ||||||
| As you can see , what very little of the scene we
can observe looks OK , but this is a zoom-in of the sphere in Gi , and
so the actual scene lighting is not really of much consequence to us .
What we are actually very interested in , is the chrome's reflections .
How do they look to you ? Perhaps not that good.
As we can plainly see , zoomed in at this level , the post system appears to have blurred the reflected scene a bit too much , but unfortunately , if we did not blur it this much , we get this: | ||||||
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| Noisey Chrome | ||||||
| Noise ! Hmmm , now what ? Well , first of all , let's have a little look at what was going on before it hit post. | ||||||
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| Disabled Post System Render | ||||||
| This is the scene in all it's noisey glory just
after it was rendered , and just before it was automatically sent to
post-processing for noise-removal . Obviously , post had it's work cut
out for it.
Now , I know what you're thinking ; you're saying "hey , why not just increase the sampling and send post a less noisey render to filter . That way you can cut back on the amount of blur being added , and perhaps a more realistic representation of your scene will be the result ? " . Good thinking ! | ||||||
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| Randomness & Raycount Added - 20 minute render | ||||||
| Very nice 20 minute render , and this hasn't even had a blur applied in post to the sphere ! ... but how did we get here ? If we look at the VSL Gi shader's user interface , there aren't too many controls for adjusting secondary ray sampling , except Raycount2 , which in my opinion , is simply not fine enough to allow us to really dial-in the smoothness , and loose the noise. | ||||||
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| Gi Shader Interface | ||||||
| Enter David Coombes :
David , being the VSL Ray-Man that he is , had a look at the stock VSL Gi shader and found something very interesting , burried deep within . A "Randomness" control ! This control was laying there dormant until Dave poked a flashlight in it's direction and discovered that by changing the default 0.5 to something much smaller (0.01) RS would very happily sample us a much nicer , not so noisey render via much more concentrated Raycount2 sampling . David also rightfully advises us to turn off the Gi shader's 'Gi_Reflection' control either by disabling it's code , or by setting it to 0,0,0 . Here's the same image with Gi_Reflection still enabled . This 'white-noise' is there for a reason ; to add Gi specularity to the image via noise that will be smoothed and distributed in post. | ||||||
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| Render with Gi_reflection Enabled | ||||||
| We'll give post the day off and disable this control (if only the code was there to allow it to sample much higher also) . | ||||||
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| High Quality No Post Blur - 160 Minute Render (Overkill and just for Comparison) . | ||||||
| This image looks very clean and hasn't even been to post yet for smoothing (the floors and walls etc have, but not the sphere) . It took longer to render , but that's understandable since much more data had to be piplelined to get this kind of quality . In fact , we will skip the post blurring all together , or could add just a tiny amount to get a certain "look" that one might feel a chrome sphere should have. | ||||||
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| 2 x2 Post Blur_Specular Added to 31 Minute Render | ||||||
| Just a tiny bit of blur is added here , and there is a little "softening" of the reflections . The amount of sampling was cut back as well , since we knew this image was going to be blurred in post . Hmmm ... OK , let's have a look at how a non-Gi chrome shader might reflect the scene , as a way of taking the Gi out of the equation , just for evaluation purpose's. | ||||||
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| Non-Gi Chrome - 5 Minute Render | ||||||
| We can see this is non-Gi because of how the
ceiling is black due to a lack of secondary rays in this shader which
would normally do their best at trying to illuminate the ceiling in the
reflection , in order to look as closey as possible to the actual
ceiling in the render (we can't see it from this camera angle) .
Anyway , we can see that the reflections are very crisp and clean and completely noiseless , and so this is what we should be aiming for in the Gi_chrome as well , in my opinion . So how do we get there ? Well , for close-ups we should probably avoid post-processing altogether , but this means higher sampling and higher render times . As a trade-off , or for scene's where we aren't zoomed in so darn tight to chrome objects , a lower sampling , or even some small amounts of blur will do it , and will allow us to drop render times in the process. Time to get our hands dirty ! | ||||||
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| Zoomed-out to Reveal 'Cornell Box' | ||||||
| Above is another (personal) attempt at the Cornell
Box ; an industry standard , of sorts , a kind of measuring stick for
gauging a S/W's ability to portray a scene in a near-photographic manner
. Ordinarily we might not , necessarily , have to apply a high-quality
sampling to a zoomed out chrome object , but for the C-Box ... we do !
The above image has these "starting" settings : VSL Gi shader : Gi_Brightness Control Post filter :< | ||||||
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| Gi_Brightness Control Post Process Filter | ||||||
| OK , so now , in order to apply extra-high quality settings to our C-Box Chrome sphere , we must take a short trip into the mysterious bowels of the giant beast that is the VSL Gi shader (David , light the way). | ||||||
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| Gi Control Panel with 'Advanced' Checked | ||||||
| Click the Advanced Box on this shader and the GUI
controls disappear and in their place are the actual lines of VSL code .
Open all the compressed boxes by clicking on the + or plus signs to see
the complete shader coding . Anyway , find the line of code that is 22
lines down ;
"spec_illum+=Raytrace(Coordinates,dray,GI_specularity,Normal)" , and
select it . Now you will see a GUI control interface with 3 tabs ; Trace
Rays , General and IN/out . Low and behold , David's Randomness control
! Change the 0.5 to 0.0100 and the Raycount control from the very low
'3' to 100 .
And there you have it .
Make sure that your Post-Processing 'Gi_Blur_Specular' is removed from your list of 'Gi_effects' or all this work you just did will have been in vain. | ||||||
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| Now , you are probably noticing that the chrome shaders 'Reflection' control is not 1,1,1 (100%) , but there is a good reason for that setting . If we did set it to 1,1,1 it would overpower the secondary Gi sampling results , and reflect a scene that was more non-Gi than Gi , somewhat , so we have to tone it down a bit . I don't think this is a big problem as far as achieving realistic results go , as the secondary sampling and the Primary sampling that is the result of the chrome shaders 'Reflection' setting seem to work well together. | ||||||
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| If this statement doesn't make complete sense ,
just set the chromes reflection to 1.5,1.5,1.5 , and watch the sphere
being rendered . You will see the promary rays being traced onto the
sphere . This reflection will be added to the secondary tracing , and
the ratio of 'blend' will depend on what your chrome's reflection
setting is . A setting of 150% will mean too much primary and little
secondary , and a setting of 0 will mean the opposite . Change
'Reflection to 0,0,0 and render to see what I mean .
We can see some obvious flaws in this highly sampled chrome . The glass sphere is too bright . The top of the sphere is reflecting the wall behind it and appears to be too bright as well . Another drawback seems to be the escalation of render times once shadows are added . Try as we might , the ceiling is still a bit too dark . It should be hovering around RGB 95,95,95 - 100,100,100 , but it is sitting at around 80,80,80 , just not quite enough. Your next question might be : " but man , that non-Gi chrome is the mutt's nut's ! How do we get our Gi chrome to look that good , and still have a a Gi lit scene in the sphere's reflection ? " . Good question. Well , if you really need to have deadly looking noise-free chrome for close-up renders or photographic quality results , there is the Raycount2 control to turn to once the Randomness Raycount has been maxed out (at 100) . Start with Raycount2 set to 1 , then slowly increase until you obtain the quality you think is suitable , keeping in mind that you have a Post Process blurring tool to do some clever smoothing too. Raycount2 was previously limited and is back in the drivers seat with the increased Randomness sampling . Increasing Raycount2 will directly scale sampling and render times . If you use Raycount2 settings around 10 (and 100 randomness raycounts) R-times are high , but the chrome is pretty clean (though still slightly flawed). This VSL Gi shader has many burried controls and has ton's of room for even more elaborate coding , as far as I can see . I think we will just have to wait for V5 and what Realsoft inc has in store for us . In the meantime , we have David's sluething , as well as the combined knowledge of all those who have contributed along the way with their Gi findings . There may even be more discoveries to come in V4.5 . Special "Thanks" to Mark Heuymans for his precise observations and concise conclusions ! | ||||||
