Attempting photorealistic rendering

[vmln8r]

I wanted some nice renders for my Lego Scrabble project (shameless plug), but was unsatisfied with LDD:

…and not very good with POV-Ray:

Since my project only uses a few unique parts, I decided to model them individually in 3Ds Max, and render them in KeyShot (which has a simple interface and renders in real-time). I had hoped to use the LDraw part libraries as a base for refinements, but 3Ds Max had trouble opening some parts (I used LDView to export .3ds files). Nevertheless, I used the LDraw parts to provide part dimensions, and then modelled them from scratch:

This was then loaded into KeyShot (and yeah, I'm not paying for it till I know how to use it ):

This seems comparable to the best I was able to achieve using POV-Ray. Next, the standard ‘hard shiny plastic’ was assigned to the elements:

Note the 1x6 tile, which looks noticeably worse than the others (I forgot to round the edges). I then assembled the entire boardgame and repeated the render:

So far so good, I think. The next steps are to improve the materials/lighting, then to apply ‘labels’ to the letter tiles.

Anyway, I’d be interested to hear everyone’s thoughts on this. What I’m doing isn’t ideal. I’d love to simply use LDraw parts, apply some basic refinements to their edges, and make a super slick render in KeyShot. If anyone could tell me how to do this, I’d be extremely grateful.

[Calabar]

Probably you can obtain best results using Powray.

Did you read the guide of C3POwen and following comments?

[vmln8r]

Probably you can obtain best results using Powray.

Did you read the guide of C3POwen and following comments?

C3P0wen’s guide was used for the POV-Ray render. And I should have mentioned this, but I’d like to stick with 3Ds Max and KeyShot, since I’ll be needing them for the classes I’m taking anyway.

[Calabar]

C3P0wen’s guide was used for the POV-Ray render.

Yes, certainly.

I had understood you wanted to use other rendering software because the quality of the render made with powray was not enough good. So, as I saw you powray rendering and thought it is possible to obtain a much better result, I suggested you to read the C3POwen guide.

If you need to use other software for other reasons, I can't help you. Perhaps some other user can.

[whitew0lf]

Did you try using radiosity in POV-Ray? It increases the quality of the rendering. If you like you could send me your model or POV-ray file and I make you a render with settings I use.

[vmln8r]

Thanks for your kind offer, however I'd hate to waste your time. Besides, I'd like to know how to do this myself. When I've got some time, I plan to try a newer LDView build which apparently may fix some of the bugs in the export to .3ds.

Edited April 27, 2012 by VMLN8R

[Calabar]

Thanks for your kind offer, however I'd hate to waste your time. Besides, I'd like to know how to do this myself.

I think he simply wanted to show you the result you can obtain with powray, so that, if the quality is enough good, you could decide to stay with this software instead than try other (often not free) software.

[kaitain]

Hi,

You could always try using the Kerkythea renderer.

Here's one of my brick built MOCs rebuilt in LDD, exported to MLCad to fill in the missing bricks then exported as obj files for rendering in Kerkythea.

There's still some work to do sorting out the colours, but its a WIP that got put on the shelf a couple of years back. I might resurrect it in the future.

Kaitain