Virtualight

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fahembree
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Virtualight

Post by fahembree »

A while back (maybe even a year ago) I tried the Virtualite render optiOn for truespace and I switched the rendered from lightworks to virtualight and did not really noticed any differnce in the resulting renders, not knowing at the time that it really was not using virtualight because it wasn't installed. I didn't release at the time you had to install it, and I then
decided not to do any more with virtual light at the time. But recently I did some more reasearch on virtualight and downloaded the vituralight renderer for windows, and it came with some sample files to render. I had to set thewindows path to the program (it really did not have an install program). I also had to add a enviormental variable also. After rendering some of the sample files I must say I was impressed with some of the sample files/renders. I then decided to figure out how to install it for truespace to see if I could get the same result. I had download the virtualight patch
for ts761 but never loaded. I studied the instructions and I now have it working correctly. I have tried most of the other renders for TS (Yafray, Indigo, Vue, Kerkethea & ect) so I decided it was time experment with this one.

THe tea pots rendering is one of the smaple files that came with virtualight. The other 2 are my first tests. Obviously I need to do a lot more expermenting. I like the fact that you can use the truspace materials.

Has anyone had some real experience that can add some useful tips on using virtualight would be appriaceted.

:D
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Vase_Blue.jpg
DinigDeck_Chairs.jpg
HDRteapots_Sample.jpg
fahembree
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Re: Virtualight

Post by fahembree »

It seems I have run into a little problem and that is while rendering & setting materials virtualight ran out of memory as I saw a popup that said out of memory. Even though I restared TS I can no longer get the popup menu for virtualight where you select the different setting for virtualight. I deleted the default.ctx file, reloaded the ts761 patch, and as last thing I could think of and that was to copy my complete backup of TS from a portable drive, but still I can not get the popup menu anymore. Truespace still renders to virtualight, I just can't change the settings it is using anymore.
Anyway here are 2 rendering if the same scene. On in Virtualight and one in lighworks. :(
Attachments
Grass-01_Virtualight_scene.jpg
Grass-01_Lighworks_scene.jpg
BooxieMalone
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Re: Virtualight

Post by BooxieMalone »

1) You will find one answer "Property Panel" in the first post of TechForum "trueSpace FAQs".
http://united3dartists.com/forum/vi ... f=39&t=297" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Look for:
Rendering::
Q: How do I open the VirtuaLight (VL) Properties Panel? (Model Side)

2) There was another bug in tS761. You only could choose the renderer in Modelside from old "TS6 Files" menue. But that was solved by trueBlue's unofficial updates.

3) As far as I remember it's not a good idea to use the standalone VirtuaLight plus the patch you were talking about, that would be one step back. The integrated VL is the latest developement for trueSpace (multithreaded) and automatically installed with trueSpace (Refere to 2)). You should find the VirtuaLight.tsr in your installation folder, below the -tS folder. In comparison to that the standalone V1.4 is singlethreaded and not integrated - you can render to a separate window only.

HTH
-BM.
fahembree
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Re: Virtualight

Post by fahembree »

Thanks, you are right. I was going backwards. Thats Ok its not the first time I gone wrong direction.
I installed the TS761beta to a separate directory and then copied the TS/VirtuaLight sub directory
to my active truespace installation after I deleted the incorrect VirtuaLight directory.
Its actually not a tsx plugin but a subdirectory off of TS with subdirectorys for /bin, /Doc/ & Lib.
I had to delete the default.ctg and cfg file as well as make the registery edit changes.
I've got those hex numbers memorized now (5zero plus 280).
Its working now as an integrated application with in TS 761 beta and I can also get the popup menus
for the setting of virtualight.
:bananaguitar:

Now I just need to make some good renderings with it!
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bitkar
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Re: Virtualight

Post by bitkar »

i think virutalight (at least in ts) is not worth it. Its dead and cannot use multiple threads, so its slow, very slow. You can have similar renders with lightworks if you set the lights properly and use them wisely, all of the light types (IBL, area mainly). The result can look similar to a GI. Even caustics can be simulated in LW using fake caustic material (iam not sure, if that was a part of shadermagic materials, or just a extra tss). Or Fast GI material, which was pretty cool those old days I tried it, years ago. It was really fast and materials could emit light.
You should thing about it... other renderers are much better.

btw: i think that LW has a nicer HDRi results than vray.
Michal aka bitkar
tS freak since tS2 (1998) and forever (tS7.61 modeler)
fahembree
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Re: Virtualight

Post by fahembree »

I know you are right, but so far I'm pretty happy with the results for G.I. for an interior view. I've tried using mutli-lights
but don't seen to be knowleagble enought to place them properly. If I just use virtualight for G.I. it renders very fast. The real slow down is if I set anisleasing above 1, then it really gets slow. I have found a work around and that is to render to a much larger size image (2400) and then resize it with a paint program to a smaller size. I tried yafray and it seems a lot slower to me than virtualight (of course a lot depends on the output settings and materias & etc), also yafray materials are a little harder to work with. I'm sure I get tired of virtualight and then I will move on to working iwth multi-lights
Atatched below is a image from ts to v.l. and it only took 20 mintues to render.
Attachments
Piano-07AA.jpg
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bitkar
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Re: Virtualight

Post by bitkar »

what kind of PC do you have?? 20 minutes for 4walls a cieling and floor, piano on it and 4 cylinders is very slow. There is almost nothing to render in this scene, few polys only. I guess 5 000 polygons? I think I could render it using IBL, area and some infinite light in Lightworks in just 5 min. and vray with GI in just 2 with adaptive AA in this resolution.

check this img, its rendered in lw. Its only a testimage I made few years ago, so it has many flaws.
Attachments
pokoj2_1.jpg
Michal aka bitkar
tS freak since tS2 (1998) and forever (tS7.61 modeler)
fahembree
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Re: Virtualight

Post by fahembree »

Very nice scene & rendering.

The scene has 16,659 polygons and was rendered at 2400x1550 with aa=2.Oh well, it seemed pretty fast to me. The number of polygons doesn't seem to slow it down that much. I've tried adding more objects and with 114,000 plus it really did not make much difference in rendering speed. Its the AA that really kills the speed. One thing I liked about the prior patch-3 was
that it wrote out a virtualight scene.vs file that could be rendered outside of TS with the windows version of virtual. The AA in that version seemed to process faster to me and had about 30 different levels of AA settings.
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marcel
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Re: Virtualight

Post by marcel »

I think doing an image twice as large with AA = 1, then reduce it with a software, gives a better result than an image with AA = 2. The render time can remain in approximately the same for both methods. This is useful when the rendering is limited to a presentation on a screen. For printing or animation, it's different.
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SireDoime
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Re: Virtualight

Post by SireDoime »

bitkar wrote: The result can look similar to a GI.
I'm new to trueSpace. What's G.I.?
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