Kerkythea Tips and Questions
 

So Krases asked is we could make an "official" Kerkythea thread and I thought it was a good idea too! That way we can keep the Sketchup Thread about Sketchup models and not renderings.

ATTENTION! If you have any tips on how to make better renders please post them in this thread. I'll come along eventually and add your tips to this first post so that people don't have to search every page of this thread.

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dont have any rendering advise but something lokks weird about the kitchen floor around the island....but nice open plan space

amazing render aleks, very clean, also the textures are nice!, im sure it took so long to render that, what settings are you using?

Umm... yeahh... I don't know. I don't have enough experience with Kerk. And yeah, the kitchen tiles look crappy. I can't find decent tiles that don't shine too much, or are too bright, or are too big or small. And when I edit the texture it looks worse than before.

Anyways, here's a reincarnation of the World Tower I had designed for my fantasy Mexico City model. The base is wayyy different but the basic shape is the similar. It's 2,000 feet tall, the smallest sphere in 60 ft in diameter and is placed 1,500 ft above street level. The base spheres are 75 feet tall and have a diameter or 100 ft. The middle sphere [also the biggest] is 200 ft in diameter and is 1,100 ft above street level.



I know, kind of a crappy rendering, but it was quick. I hope I can add much much details to this tower.

I want to:
a) detail the base and add columns, people, trees, sidewalks, etc...
b) detail the biggest sphere and add windows, an outdoor walkway, floors, etc...
c) detail the tallest sphere with windows. Add windows to the column between the biggest sphere and the smallest one. Add smaller antenna's to the antenna, railing, service latter's, etc...
d) create better renderings, including some night ones. Add lighting on windows, spotlights, elevators, etc...

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:previous: you should put it in ssp-r city ,cos the city seems to be in recession.................................:yes:

Anyways, I've been experimenting with my world tower. I used several materials to create the glass and metal of the globes.

1) I made every material. I just edited the colors. I feel like the globe is too reflective and doesn't look like real glass or metal.


2) I really like the way the tallest sphere looks but the larger spheres look bad. Better than the first one though. I used a plastic material and changed the color.


3) I used colored-aluminum textures for this one. I kinda like the way the biggest sphere looks but it's not reflective enough. The tallest sphere is okay. The base spheres are okay too.


Okay, I'm not all the way done. But I was just playing around. Once I make floors for the biggest sphere, I'll make renderings where people will see a difference. I can't decide whether I want the base spheres to be just glass or if they will actually have floors in them. Maybe each can have an atrium or something. But there would be no point of an atrium in the base spheres since there's already atrium's between the legs of the tower.

Anyone got any tips?

EDIT: Look at the small person on the bottom left corner. This tower is 2,000 ft tall. Imagine what the Burj Dubai would look like next to a person! Holy gees!

I want to make the base-spheres glass more transparent and less plastic looking! But I'm not a good material editor. And I think I'm gonna do something different with the base spheres, I don't think they're smooth enough.

And one more question...

In Kerkythea 2008, when you add a pointlight or spotlight, it turns the sun off. How do I turn it back on (without removing all my lights)?

Sorry for all the questions...

Haven't ran into that problem, so I unfortunately can't help. :shrug:

all you should have to do is right click on the sun in the left column. It should have and 'x' over the light bulb. Right click>drop down menu>enable.

if this doesn't work then you have to create a new sun. For that it's Settings>' sun and sky'>adjust it to the time you want>click next>adjust intensity/insert hemispherical sky if you want>apply or okay whatever it is, I dont remember

Sorry if I'm beginning to sound like Colombo ("One more thing", etc., etc.) but how would I get different colored lights?

I'm doing a bridge and need red signal lights*. I'm almost certain this is possible...

*I tried putting a semi translucent covering over normal lights but it didn't really work...

Do you guys think it would be a good idea that maybe we start a separate Kerkythea questions/tips thread?

Blender has such a huge learning curve though. I barely know what I am doing.

I am going to try again later and see what I can come up with. I could probably get a truly curved surface going.

Edit: A little better. The brass tap in the back kinda failed to come out right, but thats only because I am not very good with lighting yet.

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/testtub2.jpg

I have come to realize that setting up a good scene takes about as much time as making the actual models. The lamps were modified from ones I got in the warehouse and the table is also from the warehouse. I was too lazy to put down a real floor so its all just sort of floating in space.

The tub is supposed to be brass but came out a bit shimmery.

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/r...r/tubtest4.jpg

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:previous: ive havent done any interiors but that
bath looks like gold glitter,why dont you try an
orange colour and add some reflection in keky..

I could try that sometime. This is brass though, not bronze so it is supposed to look somewhat goldish and not too bronze colored.

I need to find a good porcelain texture. I could probably just do a white color and mess around with the material options in Kerky. I haven't tried that yet.

EDIT: Old post from Sketchup thread!

Well I made a rendering for this house I'm working on. I'm pretty happy with it so far. I still have to work on the stairs which won't be too hard. What always bores me is the kitchen and bathrooms because they take the longest and you can never make them look the way you want them to.

Anyways, what do you guys think?



I still have to work on those side tables. They don't want to render right! The couches I'm okay with. The leather could be less slippery looking and more rougher. The floors are okay and I really like them. I have to work on the tv stand texture, and the chairs.

And here's another rendering which I'm less happy with but I feel like it came out okay.I hate that I can't get good looking tiles and I don't know how to make textures so I have to work with the kerky ones. I really like the way the cabinets look. I still have to add windows and doors and blah blah blah.



Any rendering pro's have any advice and tips?

So I started a new house, yet again. I'm almost done with this one though! And I'm pretty happy with it so I don't think I'll stop working on it! Anyways, I made a render of the library and I'm pretty proud of it. I'll make a separate thread for the house later when I have everything finished.

I still need to add more lights and a roof but I'm cookin up another render right now. It's a bathroom render and it's the first one I've done with lights that I actually like.

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:previous: wow the floor looks real mr.alex...

but heres my kerk question.....merging models..i have a problem.

say i make a grid with some towers and when imerge another grid
it goes directly on top of the first one ,some when i move the second
grid it leaves bits behind....so i have a problem with selecting and
moving a merged model....Therefore i have been moving the first
grid to the side before i merge in the second but theres no way i know
how far to move....or should i make a large grid and merge individual
models.............................who knows,,,,,,mo?? anyone

^^^The prep work for that is done only in SU because using the navigational tools in Kerk is just too painful for words.

You need to have a 'central indicator' which could be a line connected to each model/scene, This allows you to import 2 scenes at a time and use the line to align them without having to move the camera. Remove the trailing scene and export to Kerk > repeat the process with all models/scenes-Just don't move the camera view !!. This way they will appear in Kerk with the exact same configuration with no need to adjust any part of the physicals of the model.

I'll see what else i can answer :D

This may explain better but it's not exactly what i do,

-Each scene has a line on it which is preset to line up with the central indicator.
Import Scene #1 and align with central indicator.
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c297/choppdat/m2.jpg
Activate Sun/Globals,disable lines etc. > Export to Kerk.
Erase scene #1. Enable lines, Disable Sun/Globals. Purge unused*

...import and align scene 2
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c297/choppdat/m3.jpg
Activate Sun/Globals,disable lines etc. > Export to Kerk.
Erase scene #2. Enable lines, Disable Sun/Globals. Purge unused*

...import and align scene #3
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c297/choppdat/m4.jpg
Activate Sun/Globals,disable lines etc. > Export to Kerk.




In Kerk they will appear like this (with your Sun/Globals settings)
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c297/choppdat/m5.jpg

* BEFORE YOU IMPORT A NEW SCENE YOU HAVE TO GET RID OF ALL TRACES OF THE PREVIOUS SCENE , Window > Model > Statistics then click 'Purge Unused'

...or you can figure out your own way to import and align the separate scenes without having to move the camera. :cool:

So I started a rendering the other day. Well, yesterday! At like 3 or 4 PM. This morning it was only to 83% antialiasing and I got tired of waiting so I just cancelled it. Why did it take so long? Renderings usually take like 2-4 hours max and this one took over 24! Wtf?!? And these white dots came up all over shiny surfaces!

Original


Edited


Also, what's up with Kerky? I read they were making a new rendering system called Thea and that they were gonna charge for it... wtf?

I have no idea. What is the filesize of that model? If its huge, then that might explain it a little bit.

Sounds like they are just dropping the "Kerky" in the name lol.

Aleks try using 'Metropolis light transport' for your render setting and give it around 100 passes :tup:

I hope you saved the scene ! It's looking pretty hot but i don't know if i like the orange in the middle.
I like how the kitchen is tiny yet has 2 areas - an open server type section + concealed area behind that center piece also helps make use of all the spaces around it.

Were do you guys get your textures from?

I am looking at CGtextures, but when I tried to register they had a kinda crazy registration policy.

Apparently you cannot even put there material in a scrapbook. lol

Oh I forgot about that! Duh! [Please explain how and what you mean because I am totally lost]!

That's a very complex scene, Aleks, which is why it took so long.

As the scene complexity increases renders take longer because there are more surfaces to calculate.

Also I assume you are using Ray Tracing or Photon Map or another single pass rendering method. Because this method only sends out a finite number of "photons" or "rays" and there are so many surfaces, mathematically, chances are that one of those hundreds of thousands of surfaces will be missed by the relatively few paths, resulting in missed spots in the render, manifested as white dots.

This is why a multi-pass rendering method (metropolis light transport, preset 20 or 21, I think) is so important. It essentially keeps passing over the same image, and by those mathematical odds (again) by 100 passes all of the surfaces would have been hit and the white spots will be filled in.

And that's it. :yes:

tl;dr: Use MLT. :haha:

Damn Duffster! Thanks. And how do you do that? I can't tell whether your last sentence was the way of switching MLT on or what. I'm kinda retarded at this stuff.

When you press "Start Render" and all of the options come up (Raytracing, etc.) scroll down to #20. One you try, you'll see. The rendering methods are numbered.

Weirddd! I did that the other day but I wasn't sure why it looked all grainy so I stopped the rendering and just started another scene.

But now it says it's out of 10,000. How do I make less passes?

EDIT: Wait, to set the passes all I do is set the Photons to 100?

:previous: i know when i do that method the image
goes to picasa3 (pic album/editor)and it keeps updating
after every pass and i quit keky so the image stays
in picasa with however many pass's i have before
i quit....plus when its in picasa you can do basic
tweaks to the image and its free....

all you have to do is hit the "stop render immediately" button whenever you feel it is clear enough

Aleks! Don't change the number I photons! Like treras said, just stop it when you feel the image is rendered sufficently.

Is there some way one can blow up the preview image to see that it is rendering well?

:previous: before or after you click this icon ?

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...2222222222.jpg

I didn't realize I could click it during the rendering process. :haha:

Kerk is like that :D

So I got a question.

The company I work for does a heck of a lot of sketchup and 3ds max. Typically we dump our sketchup models into max and have our expert renderer make them look nice.....but only for the final work. since this guy is overloaded and I'm terrible at max renderings I've started using kerkythea to render stuff in development.

I really only have one question at this moment......glass, how do you all get it right. I've downloaded the glass libraries on their site, but they don't look as nice rendered as what I see in some of the threads here. What are the steps you take to get it right? My last project came out okay, but nothing like the glass I see here on ssp.

I could've sworn I posted a comment on this already, Hayward. (If I did and it got removed would a mod please tell me why?)

But my best recommendation would be to ask on Kerkythea.net. The actual developers of the software will answer your questions.

Just tell the the exact appearance you want and they will be able to tell you (the instructions may be complicated, but that's the price of beauty :P )

Have fun. :yes:

I think most people just apply the dyelectic(sp) glass from the standard kerk materials.

To get a realistic slightly warped glass i reckon you'd have to use a bitmap like the one below. I want to make some decent ones to test.

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c297/choppdat/24.jpg

Finally managed to do something with glass. That is silver around the frames, but due to the scene I made, it didn't show up silvery.

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/r...irstrender.png

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/r...condrender.png

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/r...hirdrender.png

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/r...urthredner.png

Does anyone know how to make glass less reflective and more translucent?

In the material editor of KT you can change the value of reflection to adjust reflectivity (lighter colours are more reflective) and use the refraction value to adjust how much light passes through (again lighter allows more light to pass through). I also believe playing with the index of refraction has an effect on both but I haven't used it much yet. I tend to select the dielectric glass option rather than matt/phong and adjust the settings to suit from there. You can also use the diffuse value to add colour to the glass.

There's some glass libraries on the KT website under downloads which may be worth installing. You can then adjust the settings to get the final look you want.

I finally got it figured out. Thanks.

I lied. I am still having problems. It is way too reflective and I want to make it less reflective but everything I try doesn't work. You can see I have some objects inside the box, but you can only barely make them out.

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/r...raper/crap.png

If you're using a colour in the reflection option in the material editor trying using a darker colour. Could you post a screenshot of your material editor window so I can see what you have so far?

Or you could make a layered material with a thin glass and a dielectric one, but weight the thin glass far more than the dielectric one, so you still have the reflection, but it is less noticeable and the overall material is more clear.

I just realised I must have been half asleep when I replied before. I should have said use a LIGHTER colour in the REFRACTION option to allow more light to pass through.

Mo, when you export the models and combine them in kerk would you say that the lag is minimal or is there no lag at all?