Hi Karl,
Thanks for your reply, excellent feedback, as always!
No, I haven't tried any of the Maxwell shaders—not a lot to choose from. This was a model that I had done in Art 4.0 and played around with in 4.1.
Yeah, I read all the Blogs I could find and couldn't find much regarding HDRI backgrounds in Art/MR. I was/am using the HDRI illumination as you describe. I was getting some weird shadows when combining HDRI + Heliodon, especially under the vehicles—MR images seemed fine though.
I played with the "Background" slider and just couldn't get the sky background to reflect the "Partly cloudy Mid-day sky" HDRI background that I purchased—works/looks fine in the Art 4.1 renders of the image. Will keep trying.
I've got two MR renderings going on still, both are around 30+ hours with 15 hours left on the current Sampling Levels (Level 9). Will probably stop them soon because changes are so small and you'd have to be a "Pixal Peeper" to really detect the differences, especially for an exterior architectural rendering like these.
I'm really debating justifying the cost of the MR license when the new 4.1 engine and upgrades is doing such a good job straight out of the box.
Thanks again,
Tom
PS: Attached is a recent rendering done in v. 4.0, one of my favorites. Sold a City Council on the project and landed us a job—yeah!
Thomas A Dailey, CPBD, AIBD, Assoc. AIA
www.designdailey.com
ArchiCAD • 25+ years experience
AC …20, Sketchup Pro 2016, Artlantis Studio 6 Piranisi 6 PRO, VectorWorks, Adobe CC, 27" iMacs, G4 Cube, Mac OS 10.12.5, iPad Pro, Windows 7 Ultimate