10189 Taj Mahal Render

[Renderbricks]

Hi LEGO addicts,

here's another stress test for MODO. Unfortunately the BLENDER importer isn't supporting instances what would help a lot to boost the performance of models like this. The import of such a model into BLENDER takes a few hours. The process in MODO needs some patience. The rendering in 3840 x 2160 with decent settings takes around 1,5 hours on a 12 core DELL Precision T5610. The overall white material needs some adujstments because with my usual setup it was too bright in this case. I will do some more renders of this phantastic set. But I have the impression that there's something wrong with the colors.

Click picture for 4K.

Edited March 16, 2015 by virtualrepublic

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Is it only me or does it look much worse the all your previous MODO renders that were simply unbeatable by anyone and anything I ever saw before? Why? What did you do differently that it worsened like this?

I don't know what exactly but something looks not right, it looks really "virtual"...or maybe it's the color and too high brightness as you are saying?

just the side note to MODO: I was so impressed by your MODO renders - as well as all others who saw you SW superrealistic render (or I would say even overrealistic, meant even better then in reality ) - and the times you write it takes (almost like an lightning compared to POVray) that I even managed to downloaded that huge trial version of it from Foundry's website just to realize that elsewhere you said it actually is quite long and not easy, "painful" process getting those LEGO virtual models into MODO, and I'm even not saying one needs to tweak it a lot once there (just like when I found Blender renderings some time before and thought "that could be it!"...but wasn't) etc., so I rather sticked to POVRay which on the other hand forced me to actually sit down for a quite long time (days) writing down my own POVRay script that contains everything I was looking for and a bit more (BTW at this time I am preparing tutorial for that script that later I will post here)

[Renderbricks]

It's not only you. I am not satisfied but it's exactly the same setup. It's the white plastic material what behaves different than a darker material what allows more contrast. White is very limited due to the range between white and grey. Reflections behave completey different compared to a darker material where a white reflection gives a more polished and brilliant look. White will burn out very fast and looks flat then. Also the subsurface scattering is working much better on colored materials. That's the simple reason why it looks so different compared to the other models. Maybe I need to tweak some values a bit and get a better result.

Edited March 16, 2015 by virtualrepublic

[Nachapon Lego]

Still unbeatable and almost perfect as usual.

May need: color adjust / focal blur / brick gaps / brick bevels

Edited March 16, 2015 by bbqqq

[Renderbricks]

Awesome. Seems that I am blinded by routine.

[___]

@bbqqq: this verision of render is better, more realistic

May need: color adjust / focal blur / brick gaps / brick bevels

Seems OK as it is as for the brick gaps/ brick bevels

[Nachapon Lego]

@bbqqq: this verision of render is better, more realistic

Seems OK as it is as for the brick gaps/ brick bevels

Thanks, they are same render made by virtualrepublic, just + color adjust & fake focal blur (image editing).

Horizontal brick gaps of Lego can be 0 mm, but vertical brick gaps should be 0 - 0.2 mm. Simply proof this using real bricks.

Brick bevels should reflect light sometime.

Brick gaps / Bevels / position & rotation variety - Photo / Render compare:

Edited March 17, 2015 by bbqqq

[Renderbricks]

To get gaps you need to shrink the models a bit by a push operator. But this will end up in geometry issues in MODO because the studs are not connected with the models by vertices. The result is a gap between the studs and the brick. And then you would need to vary the position and rotation within the gap size randomly. But not every brick will be offset or rotated. Especially the bigger ones of the towers. I guess this task would need a script. Actually the bricks from LDRAW have no gaps and the bevels are faked by a shader using normals. Setting the rounded corner value to high will cause bad results. Generating bevels will not really work, mess up the geometry and scale up the scene size to an unusable level.

Edited March 17, 2015 by virtualrepublic

[___]

Thanks, they are same render made by virtualrepublic, just + color adjust & fake focal blur (image editing).

Do I understand you right that you are now also using MODO? Or do you meant it that way that you just took his rendered image and make some Photoshoping? Probably not, you had to rerender it cos I do not know how in the world would Photoshop make those gaps on all bricks etc.

So,,that said: did you rendered it in...Povray? Blender? Or...? And if its Povray, can you tell what parameter it is that enables you adjust the gap just in one direction (vertical or horizontal)? Cos I know how to make it just for all bricks evenly...

+ also how/what parameter makes those "bricks position variances"? that looks WOW

Edited March 17, 2015 by bublible

[Renderbricks]

Do I understand you right that you are now also using MODO? Or do you meant it that way that you just took his rendered image and make some Photoshoping? Probably not, you had to rerender it cos I do not know how in the world would Photoshop make those gaps on all bricks etc.

So,,that said: did you rendered it in...Povray? Blender? Or...? And if its Povray, can you tell what parameter it is that enables you adjust the gap just in one direction (vertical or horizontal)? Cos I know how to make it just for all bricks evenly...

+ also how/what parameter makes those "bricks position variances"? that looks WOW

He color corrected my render and added a defocus effect with a mask. The left side shows a real photo as a reference. This stlye is hard to archive because of the LDRAW geometry. As far as I know POV-Ray is using its own LGEO library with beveled bricks and the option to shrink the bricks for gaps. Shrinking the LDRAW geometry in MODO will give a wrong result because the studs are not connected with the main brick.

[___]

The left side shows a real photo as a reference.

Aha, got it! That's what got me wrong thinking it is actually his rendered image

As far as I know POV-Ray is using its own LGEO library with beveled bricks and the option to shrink the bricks for gaps.

Well, as I do my stuff in LDD I ammusing Hrontos' LDD-to-Povray for the conversion and the only value there is for "making a gap/brick seams" is ldd_bevel_size that I actually edited to value 1.2, so if there is some other option how to adjust just in one direcion, like just horizontal gaps,,I would like to know...

And also bbqqq was talking about "brick postion variances", the thing I successfuly achieved before in Blender, but don't know of such parameter for PovRay/LDD-to-Povray

Edited March 17, 2015 by bublible

[Scrubs]

Hello,

After seeing this post, I thought it would be a good exercise to see what I could do with Mecabricks and Blender. So here is my 4K (same resolution as virtualrepublic) version of the LEGO® Taj Mahal.

I exported the model using the Collada exporter with the options LEGO® Logos and Group by Geometry which is correctly supported by Blender. it took a couple of seconds to get the .dae file from Mecabricks and only a few more to be imported in Blender. After 15/20 min to swap the materials with my Cycles nodes and tweak the scene, I launched the rendering. I took 2:30 on my iMac Quad-core i5@3.5GHz (no GPU rendering).

I used a custom shader to fake round edges (0.3mm) and a depth of field - focus is made on the main wall in the middle.

LEGO® Taj Mahal by mecabricks, on Flickr

Edited March 18, 2015 by Scrubs