Visualization
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Visibility though 2 layers of glass

Tendenz
Participant
Hi!

I have a problem that I cannot seem to solve. Whenever I have 2 glass surfaces next to each other, they turn black-ish in the rendering. This is quite annoying, as I do a lot of bathroom renderings.

In the attached image, I have Ray Threshold set to 0, Ray Depth to 30, and Reflection Depth to 30 as well. It looks fine when rendering in lower qualities, but as soon as I go to medium quality or higher, the blackness returns. See shower doors in attached image.

HOW can I solve this, before I turn mad? Thanks.
iMac OS X 11.6

2,3 GHz Intel Core i9, 16 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

ArchiCAD 25
3 REPLIES 3
Erwin Edel
Rockstar
When you say 'medium' quality, are you referring to the preset scenes? These will reset the values you've changed.

Another option could be that you are running out of memory on the higher settings, but I'm not 100% sure about this.

Personally I've gone from a quick render preset and tweaked settings until things looked good enough. I find the medium and final presets to take a rediculous amount of time. Maybe play with global illumination quality from the quick render that works to see how that goes.

A problem I ussually have with interior renders is getting the image bright enough without artifacts. For this I find that placing a general lightsource behind the camera to illuminate everything evenly helps to keep speed and quality both good.

Ambient Occlussion is ussually what makes things take very long. For this I found a good tutorial to do these in a separate render:

I turned on automatic translated subtitles to help understand the russian and by carefully comparing between the video and my AC20 interface managed to recreate the workflow.

Last tip: consider the size of your render. I generally render 195x135 mm at 300 dpi. This is fine for viewing on HD screens, smartphones and printing at 100% scaled to A4.
Erwin Edel, Project Lead, Leloup Architecten
www.leloup.nl

ArchiCAD 9-26NED FULL
Windows 10 Pro
Adobe Design Premium CS5
Tendenz
Participant
Erwin wrote:
When you say 'medium' quality, are you referring to the preset scenes? These will reset the values you've changed.

Another option could be that you are running out of memory on the higher settings, but I'm not 100% sure about this.

Personally I've gone from a quick render preset and tweaked settings until things looked good enough. I find the medium and final presets to take a rediculous amount of time. Maybe play with global illumination quality from the quick render that works to see how that goes.

A problem I ussually have with interior renders is getting the image bright enough without artifacts. For this I find that placing a general lightsource behind the camera to illuminate everything evenly helps to keep speed and quality both good.

Ambient Occlussion is ussually what makes things take very long. For this I found a good tutorial to do these in a separate render:

I turned on automatic translated subtitles to help understand the russian and by carefully comparing between the video and my AC20 interface managed to recreate the workflow.

Last tip: consider the size of your render. I generally render 195x135 mm at 300 dpi. This is fine for viewing on HD screens, smartphones and printing at 100% scaled to A4.
Thanks! I didn't think I change the quality after I did the changes, but I'll try again just to be sure!

Good tip about the general light source. Which intensity and light distance do you use?
iMac OS X 11.6

2,3 GHz Intel Core i9, 16 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

ArchiCAD 25
Erwin Edel
Rockstar
I use the general light (shaped like a sphere) and turn off decay over distance to just have it evenly lit the scene. Shadow casting depends on other light sources. I ussually have it about 1,5 m above the floor and behind the camera. I have it behind the camera since it can leave a small noticeable light reflection on surfaces if I put it in the middle of the scene.

I treat it like a flash or photo studio lighting basically.

For physical camera I use the following settings:
F-stop: f/4.0
camera exposure on
camera iso 400
shutterspeed: 1/125
white balance: daylight 6500 k

For GI:
Primary method: Irradiance Cache
Secondary method: Radiosity Maps

After a bit of Photoshop I can get interior renders as attached in relatively quick time (under 30 minutes including photoshop manipulation).
Erwin Edel, Project Lead, Leloup Architecten
www.leloup.nl

ArchiCAD 9-26NED FULL
Windows 10 Pro
Adobe Design Premium CS5