The Replacement

[Rhynedahll]

Part of a character study.

The snake hairs are a WIP.

[joepal]

Cute idea

As a few comments, I don't understand what's on the floor in front of the statue (which is beautiful by the way).

As a second comment, I think this is one of the scenes where you would really benefit from rendering in cycles rather than BI. The major down sides of cycles appear when you need either sub surface scattering or particle hairs, while the upsides appear where you have limited space scene with indirect lighting.

[Rhynedahll]

Cute idea

As a few comments, I don't understand what's on the floor in front of the statue (which is beautiful by the way).

As a second comment, I think this is one of the scenes where you would really benefit from rendering in cycles rather than BI. The major down sides of cycles appear when you need either sub surface scattering or particle hairs, while the upsides appear where you have limited space scene with indirect lighting.

The stuff on the floor is clothing, a simple skirt and blouse.

I had already decided to attempt the scene in Cycles, but Cycles materials are a foreign tongue to me, so it will be an uphill battle.

[Rhynedahll]

First more or less working Cycles version:

[joepal]

Nice.

A few tips...

I think you could remove the overhead light (not the spotlight, the light added close to the roof), as well as any light added from the direction of the camera, and instead increase the lighting from the windows quite a lot. Then in render mode, set "render preset" to "full lighting" (I don't remember exactly the name, I don't have blender on this computer... It's the highest settings where light bounces until it's spent).

This will make the rendering (quite a lot) slower, but will generate more natural light bounces.

You might have to tweak the glossy levels to fit the new light settings though.

[Rhynedahll]

Nice.

A few tips...

I think you could remove the overhead light (not the spotlight, the light added close to the roof), as well as any light added from the direction of the camera, and instead increase the lighting from the windows quite a lot. Then in render mode, set "render preset" to "full lighting" (I don't remember exactly the name, I don't have blender on this computer... It's the highest settings where light bounces until it's spent).

This will make the rendering (quite a lot) slower, but will generate more natural light bounces.

You might have to tweak the glossy levels to fit the new light settings though.

Thanks! I'll give it a shot.

[Rhynedahll]

Here's another version with lighting changes.

This one has LGI and No Caustics. It took 7 1/2 hours to render. I have a version with FGI and caustics rendering, but it probably won't be finished until next week.

[joepal]

Yeah, I usually let them render overnight.

Also, a graphics card with CUDA does wonders for cycles render times.

[Rhynedahll]

Yeah, I usually let them render overnight.

Also, a graphics card with CUDA does wonders for cycles render times.

The 7 1/2 hours is with Cuda on an Nvidia 660 GTX.

I've previously rendered half of the image at the higher settings and that took 10+ hours.

The full image would take 20+ hours to render with my card.

[joepal]

Yeah, I usually let them render overnight.

Also, a graphics card with CUDA does wonders for cycles render times.

The 7 1/2 hours is with Cuda on an Nvidia 660 GTX.

I've previously rendered half of the image at the higher settings and that took 10+ hours.

The full image would take 20+ hours to render with my card.

Yup. Sounds about right. This is largely the same setup as I have, and images with large resolutions have been known to take some 48 hours to finish rendering for 40000 passes. This is the minor downside of cycles.

However, when putting images from blender internal side by side with cycles renders, I can't stomach going back to BI.