'Banded' Photo Rendering

[Scott Bulmer]

I am at a loss for what causes (the attached) incomplete photo rendering made up of partial image bands, and am open to any suggestions. The PLN file is approximately 11 MB with the buildings as multi-story modules (5 stories total). The roof utilizes the Italian tile roof surfacer, however that layer is off for these renderings. The Open GL engine works as expected, but Lightworks does not fully render the image (even with low level settings). Light Sources is set to lamps (sun and sky objects that are turned on in the plan window), with shadow casting by lamp settings. Other smaller PLN project files photo render as expected.

[Scott Bulmer]

The result with the sun/sky objects on and reduced light sources as recommended. It's a darn shame, using the sun/sky objects in LW will render each building beautifully alone (much nicer than with the built-in sun), including roof surfacer tiles, but can't render all 3 buildings with roof surfacer on or off. I give up.

[Dwight]

Time to get a computer NOT named for a warrior princess. Sort of.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Really weird about the dual processors dueling. Glad to see the problem being narrowed down some, as it sounds like an issue for the rest of us to be aware of.

I know you're just trying to get through this technical mess so that you can work on the image, Scott. So, I'm jumping the gun on you by playing with your last image a little in Photoshop. After desaturating a little, the image didn't seem warm enough (is the sun color set to be yellowish?), so I applied a warming photo filter. Walls were so smooth, so added monochrome noise. (The glass being either blueish or overexposed is a function of the default glass material. You'd have to play with just a piece of the model to adjust the material settings to your satisfaction. In the attached, I just magic wanded the windows and filled with gray on layer mask to let some of the sky show through to lessen the white glare.)

I hope that we or GS can figure out what's up with the SkyObject and SunObject to cause your problems ... since these lights give a much better result, as you say. 😉

Karl

[Scott Bulmer]

As mentioned, Karl has produced a beautifully crafted post-processed image I’d (We’d) like to discuss more in the near future.

AFA our jousting Java princess/Dueling Banjos problem, it should be noted that with the roof surfacer layer off, we were able to render in LW without banding by using the marquee (still renders banded without marquee). Figure that one out.

Finally, I’ve given up on the roof surfacer and am trying to use Karl’s bump map texture approach. In materials settings, alpha channel effects I’ve selected variations of surface and bump mapping as well as attempting to apply an emboss filter in Photoshop simulating a textured/raised surface. Of the roof materials in the attached image, try to guess which is texture mapped, and which is not. I can’t tell, so I’m sure I’m doing something wrong. Would it be possible for a brief clarification?

[Dwight]

in the lightworks material definition, apply the texture map also as a height map - look in Displacement for this. There's some messing with the settings to get the depth right.

Post your experiments.

[Scott Bulmer]

Bingo! We'll run a series of tests to determine the best settings. Initial reaction; tiles have depth but appear inverted in attached file.
Muchas gracias for the direction.

[Dwight]

sorry. I meant bump map. that might reverse it.

[Scott Bulmer]

Dwight, what settings would you recommend? This map looks weird.
Thanks

[Djordje]

Scott,

You also bumped into the memory allocation wall. Try to render the same file on the Mac - it will work.

Greg of Graphisoft explained this. Either LW engine has a memory leak, or uses more than XP can allocate (2GB per application). As your image renders without the tile, I suppose that this is the case.

[Scott Bulmer]

Thank you all again for your valuable input, the result of which can be seen in two of our final renderings attached. This particular rendering style evolved as a result of the local planning commission’s desires for renderings not to look photo realistic. All work was produced in AC9 & Photoshop CS.

Finally, I am still unable to get multiple buildings of this scale to render with either Tiger or XP Pro with the roof surfacer on (enough with the horse beating). My advice; don’t try this at home.

Best regards.