Night and Day

[Hagyto]

Well with the new lit lamp I threw out any other lightsource to let the lamp shine in all its glory.
However, cycles seems to be afraid of the night and shows it shivers by producing noise. A lot.
Well 50 samples are not that much i guess, but still.

50 sample , no caustics 10:22 min

A test with caustics (just for fun) did not went much better:

50 samples. all caustics 10:21 min

Well… if I need to use brute force, i do not hesitate to try. Six times the samples, reduced dimensions of the picture (I am not THAT mad ;))
300 samples all caustics 2h 42:55 min

A -bit- better, but not great

Conclusion: dont render “at night”

For comparision the day-version with one light more and light from the sky:
100 samples 27:06 min
(still pretty PRETTY long rendertime for such a small scene)

What did we learn? Blender is scared of the darkness…

[Hagyto]

Having more objects in a scene doesn’t seem to impact the rendertime terribly bad:

70 sample 17:45 min

[Steve1222]

Ah nice noticing this. I was wondering why my lamp scene seemed to suddenly become more grainy. Thought I might have done something to trigger it. I guess it was the sheer darkness.

Although spot lights seem to cause issues in low sample rates aswell it might seem.

Nice work with this ambient gold shimmering effect.

[Hagyto]

I didn’t use the spotlights at all, my guess is that cycles does not really play nicely with the “old” lights. But that is really only a guess.

With the new denoise function in the next Blender version, this problems may be solved anyway

Btw: As you can see, I am still stuck in this section, I am having way to much fun with the silly lamps

[Steve1222]

Lol ya unfortunatly it is more difficult to apply your knowledge to a useful task with the limited knowledge offered. At the same time these Ben Tristem courses serve more as introductions then extensive studies. As evident that it looks like we never return to animation which is a huge sham.
(he doesn’t even tell you you can move keyframes with the dope sheet!; let alone go into skinning)

Btw, Mike should mention it but your animations are almost useless for export unless you tie your lamp base to your stem bone, since the bone’s height will not be animated (as you will be animating the mesh instead of the bone). It also is very pointless but he doesnt actually rig the lamp til the end of the section, Which was as simple as telling the bones which verticie group they are assigned to.

They currently serve as dummy controls for a blender animation.

[Hagyto]

Well, the course is named “Learn 3d MODELING” after all . It already offers quite a bit more than that, I take that as the cherry on the top of the cream.

[Steve1222]

Lies! I will be the lifelike skinning hero!

[Hagyto]

I am noooot quite sure what to make out of that statement.

[Steve1222]

I want to do this to:

is all I’m saying

[Capricas_Kirito]

Try turning down your max bounce, That fixed a lot of the noise in my scene from section 7, also try reducing the amount of glossy/reflective surfaces in the scene.

[Hagyto]

Oh, i see. That timelapse is amazing.

When you’ve said “sinning hero” i instantly imagined a grinning madman, holding a bloody skinnless rabbit in one hand and a as bloody fur and skinning knife in the other hand.
Al that while wearing a superheros cape and thights.

Needles to say, i prefer your point of view on this

[Hagyto]

I will keep tweaking my settings, thanks for the pointer, Capricas_Kirito.

Meanwhile i discovered where all the lamps in this section are coming from:

The new question is: who or what is laying the eggs?
Too many mysteries, I am moving on to the next lesson now

[Steve1222]

lol, those are my demon rabbits hatching they should be tearing people and lamps alike through portals to hell eventually and breeding to make lamp babies down there to shock the new comers entering the gates of hell… Freaking lamps with little demon rabbit hands walking around.

[Hend]

You got nice lamps there and I love your dedication.

[Hagyto]

Thank you for your kind words, @Hend. I have plans to come back when i know a bit more, to enhance it

[Jarestrepogu]

Hi @Hagyto, are you still playin with the render settings to achive less noise?
Look at this video that I found recently:

Optimizing Render Settings for Faster Cycles Renders in Blender

After watching this I could get great results with reasonable amount of samples.
Here is the reference lamp I’m using:

And Look at my attempt to it, I think I am getting a good result:

Give that a try and show us what’s next with your lamp

[Hagyto]

Great finding! I’ve experimented with the clamping, and found it pretty useful for dampening the noise.
Clamp indirect seemed to have the most impact but it (both clamps) DOES alter the light appearance of the scene.
My choice of having a glass lampshade didn’t help exactly too , nor did the amateurish setup of the glass shader.

We’ll see the outcome of the reworked lamp/shader/rendersetup when i come back to finish the last picture with the new acquired knowledge of the later lessons

Thanks a lot for sharing!

(also: that’s a very nice lamp you’ve got there!)

[Francisco_Alonso]

Thank you for sharing this video. I had missed this one. Great work on that lamp!!

[JD_Raven]

looks amazing