@TARDIS Maker
I actually stumbled across this add-on not long ago and it is indeed very handy, adjusting the aspect ratio of the tiles to fit the render and switching automatically to your desired GPU- /CPU- settings depending on which option you chose for your render.
@Terrance8D
I’ll check it out, thanks. I found the tile-size of 512 to work best on my HD radeon 7870.
Now I have to confess that I went off topic there because for this project I have to stick to my trusty CPU for two reasons.
First, the new kernel is not 100% polished yet and most importantly lacks some features (like volumetrics) I need.
Another thing Is, that I didn’t bother dealing with the memory usage jet, making the GPU limitation Doris mentioned a problem. When I use my CPU I don’t care as long as blender’s memory usage doesn’t exceed 10GB (so I can do other things while rendering).
@BiggR
I have acknowledged your complaint and sincerely apologize for my rude attempt of achieving realism. This is really a disgusting habit to fool poor peasants into not knowing how to distinguish reality from fiction. Not to mention my mess of a node-tree dominating my work like a bad hand-writing. But I must assure you, these irresponsible actions do not originate from my humble intentions. As you suggested, I always start with a 3-node-setup, but then the node-tree simply grows out of control. I’d truly make a bad gardener. : (
I allowed myself to take your request for a tutorial as a compliment, since you make it seem like the sheer endless pool of tutorials on on every possible place on the internet turned out to be not sufficient for your needs, which is truly something to think about. ; )
Such a tutorial is in consideration and will depend on my disposable time and ability to try such a thing after this project is finished. Not everyone is a good teacher you know…
I’m glad you liked the images so far and I’ll try my best to keep them coming.
@doris
Good to see you on this thread again. I’m happy you appreciated not only the nodes, but also the materials. Regarding your (and the others) request for a readable node-tree, I’d of of course share some but first you’d have to tell my how I could capture one with my 1080p setup. Maybe you guys should approach the devs requesting a node-tree renderer. ; )
If your memory-problem is caused caused by textures and you use mostly gray-scale ones, you can combine three of them in the RGB channels of an image-texture and split the RGB channels in the node editor. I don’t remember where I found this trick but it actually helps.
@Photox
Thank you, interesting theory you got there. ; ) I don’t know much about Octane other than it being an unbiased ray-tracer just like cycles. Why shouldn’t cycles be able to render realistic images when it uses common physically correct(-ish) shader models?
I don’t know why I would turn to another ray-tracer because cycles is very well integrated in blender.
And now finally the project can continue. My current task is to make the headlights actually work. First I textured the Lens, which has no particular shape at all to make the light travel through it in a predictable way. My plan was to make the light work using a spotlight. I hope the dirt on the glass will cast some sick shadows, since texturing the spotlight is kind of a hassle.
Here is a tiny render of the glass.
As soon as I tried to make the spotlight and volumetrics work I realized, that the glass itself wasn’t the hardest part to get to work in cycles. I’ve spend a lot of time solving compatibility issues between my logic and blenders logic, turning and twisting my braincells in a painful way. The most annoying part was the “cast shadow” function of the spotlight. Either it is turned off, and the spotlight turns into an unstoppable beam of uhm… light-samples, or I turn it on and it doesn’t even get through the glass. As I already said, I want a headlight and not a laser-sword… -_-
This might be the strangest thing I’ve come across in cycles so far.
My plan for now is to play a bit with the shadow-rays in the light-path-node to make it work. I don’t get the reason why shadow-rays are a thing in cycles, where shadows use to be the plain absence of light-rays but whatever…^^
The positive thing is, that the spotlight probably won’t be refracted and I can give the glass a more interesting shape. : ) Once I got it working I’ll tweak the materials where I see fit and call the lamp done for now. After that, the progress should be a lot smoother, just dealing with the rest of the “normal” materials.
See you around. : )
