Car Wash Equipment Layout Feedback/Advice

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Fletch
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Re: Car Wash Equipment Layout Feedback/Advice

Post by Fletch » Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:10 pm

Here's a setting with 04 Medium, but AA set to 1.0 (anti-aliasing for spatial edges only), no caustics checking, no area light evaluation.
Attachments
Medium-Production-AA1.0.xml.zip
(1.46 KiB) Downloaded 386 times

ntxdave
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Re: Car Wash Equipment Layout Feedback/Advice

Post by ntxdave » Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:30 pm

Fletch wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 6:41 pm To speed up rendering, eliminate reflections where they are not needed, eliminate specular. Try the "Perfect Reflection" templates.
Avoid saturated colors - keep colors below 90% saturation or brightness. These increase errors/render time.
Be sure there are no light emitting materials.

Try Medium, not Medium+ to increase quality without too much time increase.
You can make a custom render setting of the Easy Medium that set the AA to 1.0 - which will cause AA to only render on the edges (not calculating AA inside of reflections - which would appear to not be needed in your scene here)
Please excuse my ignorance/educate me, what are saturated colors and what do you mean by "colors below 90% saturation or brightness?

When I tried Medium (not Medium.+) that was when my render time more than tripled. I looked at the document in your last post but I do not see the setting for AA at 1.0. I did a search to find "1.0" but it did not find anything. What am I missing? I also have to go back and look at the documentation you linked me to before to make sure I place your doc in the correct place.

BTW: I really appreciate your response and the support we get in this forum. :^:

ntxdave
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Re: Car Wash Equipment Layout Feedback/Advice

Post by ntxdave » Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:49 pm

OK - I did find the setting and it is just 1 not 1.0 - Stupid error on my part. :oops:

OMG - Using that render setting you sent, the model rendered in 6:34 :whoot: :D

Now I need to see if there is a way to remove some blue tinting I am seeing under some of the equipment. :) :D

With the type of stuff I am rendering, would there be any value to doing something like that with any of the higher settings? My gut feel is no!

Now I need to move on with my effort to store some SU materials and TWR in a template. Wish there was a way to do some that and be able to import it into existing models.

Fletch
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Re: Car Wash Equipment Layout Feedback/Advice

Post by Fletch » Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:12 am

ntxdave wrote: Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:49 pm ... if there is a way to remove some blue tinting I am seeing under some of the equipment.
Your colors are most likely over-saturated, like I mentioned in point number one.
The Brightness and Saturation numbers of your "Color" of your material are what determine how light bounces off of your object.
In real life the amount of light reflected back from the object can not be/will not be 100%, it's just not physically possible.

Select material in SketchUp - not with Twilight eye dropper
Open SketchUp's material editor for each material and look at colors using HSB color "Picker" mode.
If the "B" for Brightness is above 90%, lower it. If it below 10%, raise it.
If the "S" for Saturation is above 90% lower it. If it below 10%, raise it.

Of course for dark colors it's the reverse:
If for Black color you are below 10%, it's too low.
If dark blue, same thing. Bring Brightness above 10%. Here you can see it can be raised quite a bit - even near 20% without fear of leaving the range of real-life "black".
Attachments
HSB.gif
HSB.gif (73.79 KiB) Viewed 7593 times

ntxdave
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Re: Car Wash Equipment Layout Feedback/Advice

Post by ntxdave » Thu Mar 14, 2019 3:38 pm

Once again, thanks a bunch for the reply. I must be getting kind of dense but now I understand what you were telling me. Now I need to go off and look at one of my models and play with things to clean up and get closer to what I want to see. I also have to do some more experimenting with the lighting.

I think part of what I am seeing also is shadows on the ground even though I have shadows turned off. ???

I really appreciate your patience and willingness to help me learn. :rspkt:

pbacot
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Re: Car Wash Equipment Layout Feedback/Advice

Post by pbacot » Thu Mar 14, 2019 5:46 pm

I think the shadows are from the light of the environment. I don't think you get "shadows turned off" in Twilight, you only turn off the sun shadow. So light is coming from the "sky" in the environment settings, and making shadows. That's what I think anyway. :hat:

I thought the shadow below the text was interesting but it does make it harder to read.

Fletch
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Re: Car Wash Equipment Layout Feedback/Advice

Post by Fletch » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:20 pm

pbacot wrote: Thu Mar 14, 2019 5:46 pm I think the shadows are from the light of the environment. I don't think you get "shadows turned off" in Twilight, you only turn off the sun shadow. So light is coming from the "sky" in the environment settings, and making shadows. That's what I think anyway. :hat:

I thought the shadow below the text was interesting but it does make it harder to read.
This is correct. If you want to turn off shadows for the sky as well it may be possible looking into the render settings.

ntxdave
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Re: Car Wash Equipment Layout Feedback/Advice

Post by ntxdave » Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:49 pm

Fletch, I tried to use your advice to improve my render. I think it definitely moved forward. The attached image was resized so that it would upload.

Now to give you some feedback:
  • The setting file you sent me works great. This render only took 2:00 minutes. The full size one that I will be using for our documentation only takes about 10 minutes (or less)
  • I did adjust the B & S on some materials (in particular ones that are used a lot) but on a couple of them, when I tried to adjust the saturation, it changed the color to a point that I did not like so I left them alone. Again, with the materials I use a lot in the models, the brightness was less than 90. I will check this frequently in the future.
  • I stuck with the same hdr sun but I rotated it around some and I think it had a very positive effect on the image. Think what I was seeing before (commenting on) was not really shadows but rather was instances where the equipment in the model is blocking the sun from hitting the "floor" I created to help control the overall lighting.
  • I have created both SketchUp and LayOut templates so that I do not have to start from scratch every time I create a new model and render :^:
  • I was going to include a PDF to show how this image gets used in the documentation that is shared with customers/potential customers.
Sample 150ft Render_Share.png
Sample 150ft Render_Share.png (758.91 KiB) Viewed 7576 times

Again, I cannot thank you enough for what you have taught me in this exercise. As always I am open to comments/advice (from Twilight and othrs). :whoot:

Fletch
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Re: Car Wash Equipment Layout Feedback/Advice

Post by Fletch » Fri Mar 15, 2019 8:03 am

Good graphic!
Glad we could help.
I would think about increasing photon mapping because you can see some random bright flash lighting happening in the blue brushes, but if it's not a problem, then don't worry about it.
My only critique is that the pink/light red car is distracting to my eye.

ntxdave
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Re: Car Wash Equipment Layout Feedback/Advice

Post by ntxdave » Fri Mar 15, 2019 5:01 pm

OK Fletch...…...I used some more of your advise.
  • I agree that the red car caught your eye and distracted you a little when the main emphasis should be the equipment. So, I went back to the silver car but changed the template to car paint with white reflection. Looks better IMO but considering whether to eliminate the car completely.
  • Changed the hdr from softlight1 to softlight and also changed the sun strength and the brightness just a little. Again, a little better IMO
  • Lightened up the color of the brushes so they would show up better and not be so darn dark
  • And the big one was changing the number of samples to 10 thus the photon mapping now does not give those annoying light spots.
Sample 150ft Render_sample10_.jpg
Sample 150ft Render_sample10_.jpg (508.67 KiB) Viewed 7566 times
Hope this one looks better...............

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