photo vs. model

[Doug.S]

I'm doing a remodel job and constructed the TFP model and took a camera photo of the real scene (before any construction) to compare the two to show client how reasonably realistic 3D TFP can be.

To reduce time I took a couple shortcuts and only did raytrace (not advanced) renders...so render time even at high quality 1024x768 took only a couple minutes.

See image below for a comparison..reduction in image quality of original photo .jpg makes the image a bit smudgy...but I made sure each image was same size/quality/ppi/pixels for "equal" comparison at small image size....photo took a big quality hit as original was a 4MB .jpg file from an 8 megapixel point/shoot camera.

[Robert W - "robban"]

Hi Doug
This look real good! I only wonder how it will look full render??

[Doug.S]

WOW, thanks for the suggestion....just for grins I did a full advanced render too of exactly the same setup except to change output from 1024x768 to 640x480 because I wanted to reduce the render time and set h/w accel. "off" (design and rt renders OK but adv. renders get stuck with h/w acc. "on")...results below...and here is the WOW part...

As expected there were some improved reflections and shadows and realism....but not too drastic from the raytrace render above...EXCEPT the shadows seem to be at a different time or angle as they are not the same as before??. Look at chimney and deck and roof.

Thinking I could have accidentally changed something....I did nothing else next except with same renderview control window still open, I clicked to render again but only raytrace...and to my surprise, the shadows look like those done as above....SO rt vs. adv. renders set the sunlight differently? (unless h/w accel. on vs. off is the cause???...but I think NOT as this test2rt render was also with h/w accel. "off", same as the adv. render)

Now that I look at them together....I see the adv. render is "wrong" in that it treated the a/c as adding a big shadow onto the deck...can't be at that sun angle unless sun somehow shown thru the windows onto the a/c unit!! ...or that is the corner of the roof eaves, but the shadow edge is rounded quite a bit.  And it lands also on the vertical white colum holding up the pergola.    hmm wonder what is wrong?? any ideas?  Also note the tree by camera renders differently....not just how much is blurred but also how much blocks the view.

Also for ref:  (screen redraw set to every 200)
this smaller adv. render took 900 sec. to get to 146/1500 but then went much faster so 1500/1500 was at 1032 sec or about 17.2 minutes.  Raytrace of same was only 184 secs or 3 minutes.

Images below are as they came from render...no re-size to smaller so I did not introduce any image changes.

Anyone else experience shadow differences that are sun location changes?  between rt and adv. rendering?

BIG lesson learned here.....choose what final render mode when you start because a switch to adv. from rt may yield some surprising results!!!!!  (I knew that for textures and reflection settings and lights....but not for shadows and trees).

[Allan Chesney]

Doug,

First, the render does look much better in Advanced, more realistic and very close to the real photo.  Looks great.

You are right with the sun angle.  I had suspected this in the past that there was a difference but it had not really been an issue for me so I had not done any tests at the time.  I have now - and as you can see by the images below (a simple column from overhead) the angle on Advances has changed, as has the length of the shadow.  I wonder which is right? (more testing sometime!)  Does not do much for ones confidence in the Global Settings!

I think in your model the shadow is from the roof and the apparent rounding is actually the thickness of the roof, so I would say the shadows are correct for that angle.

The tree render test was interesting - the tree itself looks almost identical but look at the shadows!!  I had noticed before that Basic gives a very narrow shadow if the sun is off the the side but Advanced obviously corrects this and gives a proper shadow.  The Advanced shadow is probably too dark - would look better on Slightly Overcast but at least we know how to get proper shadows from the photoboard trees!   My test is not as closeup as yours so it look like up close there is a difference in the tree renders too.  I noticed on your images that the rafters protrude through the tree on Basic but on Advanced the tree is distinctly in front of the rafters. 

My second tree test is close up and there IS a difference now - it comes closer in Advanced as the image distictly shows.  Going by your rafters it appears that it almost moves the tree closer! The Basic image is as it was on screen, which no doubt yours was too, so Basic is more correct in that sense.

Interesting exercise all round.

Allan

[LaughingChipmunk]

Hi, I've looked at your pics a couple times, just hadn't gotten around to commenting them.  I hardly know anything arcitectual-related, but I'm highly impressed how how close to perfect you got the drawing of that house to the actual photo!!  I wouldn't mind doing that with my own house someday!  Very cool!