Lighting Directional Arrows below ground?

blue6string

I just notice that one of my best renders quality wise and time wise was one of my initial renders when I was just fooling around blindly. So I loaded the scene, to check my render settings. and I was shocked to find. My shading rate at 1. RayTrace at 4 Pix sample at 16. All of these thing's i have recently increased greatly, while not achieving the same quaility

One of the things that may have meaning is that when I looked for the 3 direction arrows for the angle and distance of my diffuse lighting.... I found that they were under the ground! The same was true of the Specular arrows!!

Im using a uberenvironment light setting/product to load in the sky and lighting. Should I be leaving these arrows and dome ball like thingy in the ground?

It does seem like it to makes a difference (raising lights out of the ground) but now I'm wondering if I have been flooding my scenes with too much light then, trying to fruitlessly gain back detail by yanking up the settings.

Richard Haseltine

With distant lights only the direction matters, not the position. Note that with Shading rate lower is better quality.

SpottedKitty

The only lights where it matters about the position of the light widget are spot and point lights. Distant lights don't have a source, only a direction, so it doesn't matter where in the scene the widgets are; and environment lights don't even have that, they just fill the scene.

Quick note: also, upping the Ray Trace value a lot is only useful if you have a lot of reflections and refractions in your scene. If you haven't, the only effect is to make your render time go through the roof and head for the upper atmosphere. The Ray Trace value should be the lowest that will let you see all your reflections etc. I usually leave it at 2 unless I have a mirror or window in the scene.

blue6string

Ok wow!, I'm just trying to figure out the inconsistencies. I was aware of the shading rate.. I was going from 1 to .02 to try to improve results with no avail. And very true about the ray tracing.. Thanks for all the help folks.

Jaderail

It is Shading Rate that needs to go lower. The default is fine for test renders, but I run at .2 for most renders. That WILL increase render times.
And the Max Ray Trace is only used for reflections as Spotted points out. Most times the default is fine unless your rendering glass or other items with depth of reflection and refraction in them. Like Mirrors, glass statues and the like. Then its a matter of how many surfaces and reflections will be needed. A two sided glass mug, that's inside outside seen through, will need at least a Ray Trace of 4 just for the 4 times the light will bend in the shown glass. I would run just that at 6.

EDIT Cross post. Ignore the Double info here.

mjc1016

Jaderail said:

Like Mirrors, glass statues and the like. Then its a matter of how many surfaces and reflections will be needed. A two sided glass mug, that's inside outside seen through, will need at least a Ray Trace of 4 just for the 4 times the light will bend in the shown glass. I would run just that at 6.

EDIT Cross post. Ignore the Double info here.

Reflections AND refractions...so,using that mug, if it's got liquid in it, go up 2 more...

Jaderail

mjc1016 said:

Jaderail said:

Like Mirrors, glass statues and the like. Then its a matter of how many surfaces and reflections will be needed. A two sided glass mug, that's inside outside seen through, will need at least a Ray Trace of 4 just for the 4 times the light will bend in the shown glass. I would run just that at 6.

EDIT Cross post. Ignore the Double info here.

Reflections AND refractions...so,using that mug, if it's got liquid in it, go up 2 more...YEP forgot that one. Too much beer in me, HIC'