Proxies not in reflections

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  • I have an exterior scene with a lot of glass and I noticed that tree proxies in the background are not being reflected. Some are gone entirely and some have been simplified. How can you get accurate glass reflections for a scenario like this?

    • Official Post

    I have an exterior scene with a lot of glass and I noticed that tree proxies in the background are not being reflected. Some are gone entirely and some have been simplified. How can you get accurate glass reflections for a scenario like this?

    Can you please send in a screenshot of this behavior and make sure that the "Rendering Quality" is set to Ultra?


    This may very well be a normal behavior to reduce performance cost in general. Please also make sure that you're running our latest release!

  • Can you please send in a screenshot of this behavior and make sure that the "Rendering Quality" is set to Ultra?


    This may very well be a normal behavior to reduce performance cost in general. Please also make sure that you're running our latest release!

    Rendering is set to Ultra and I am on the latest beta version. I guess whats happening, probably by design, is that because the proxies are in the foreground, that are not rendering and appearing in the reflection. It does seem a little buggy how they appear and disappear, possibly something to do with camera distance?


    • Official Post

    This appears to be working as intended. Trees are rather high poly, so in order to maintain performance they're removed first when the distance to the camera is increased. However please beware that for rendered images and video there's twice the amount of polygons allowed in reflections, so those might yield better results in that case. Also in case of videos reflections are blended to avoid any visible popping of disappearing geometry.

  • Understood and this makes sense. I assume this only is the case with proxies, so if you wanted a bunch of trees to be reflected, we should just use models or an image in the backdrop, correct?

    • Official Post

    No, this affects all geometry independant of where it originates - the main factors are geometric complexity, size and distance to camera. So large low poly geometry will be visible much longer than small and highly detailed geometry.

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    No, this affects all geometry independant of where it originates - the main factors are geometric complexity, size and distance to camera.

    If this is already the case (which is good IMHO...) then please please give us the option to use 10 times or 20 times as many polygons for animation and rendering! I really do not care if my animation is rendered in 2 minutes or 8 minutes as long as I have better reflections -> this is still blazing fast compared to what we are used to with traditional render engines. Make it an option ! Like "Render quality multiplier" let the user decide how much "optimization" he wants when rendering.


    best


    Andreas

  • Like "Render quality multiplier" let the user decide how much "optimization" he wants when rendering.

    I like the idea of a render quality multiplier. For example I have seen to often noisy blurry metals at the show case images and I ask me, how some user can sell images like this. Pushing the quality above the VR RT quality is essential for still images and animations.

  • I like the idea of a render quality multiplier. For example I have seen to often noisy blurry metals at the show case images and I ask me, how some user can sell images like this. Pushing the quality above the VR RT quality is essential for still images and animations.

    The quality and reflection geometry amount is already higher when you export a video or an image.

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    The quality and reflection geometry amount is already higher when you export a video or an image

    yes, we are absolutely aware of this


    and in principle that is exactly what we want but we want the option to have more reflections for rendering / animation - I fully understand the idea of having a realtime system with fast respond time -> that is great for editing , test rendering and VR...


    ...but for our final renderings we need to be able to switch to a high quality mode !


    As far as I understand it e.g. the lack of reflections is caused by the optimization algorithms you use to keep a high response rate, probably something like the objects distance , polycount, material properties will disqualify it/them from being calculated. If you and Clemens are stating that Enscape is already modifying the parameters and thresholds used for the calculation when doing renderings/animations, then we are basically just asking for more range here. Give the user the possibility to decide how much optimization/speed vs. quality/reflections he would like to use for rendering. If you think this is to difficult / dangerous for beginners make it a command line option ...


    Andreas

  • I second all of this as well. This project in particular was all about the glass and all about the site around it being reflecting. I regretted not using a ray-tracing engine to render what I needed but I was already knee-deep in Enscape on this and then I felt the glass fell short in the renders so I had to Photoshop a bunch of reflections in.

  • The problem was and I think it is, that even on simply light weight scenes not all geometry is show in mirrors, also if the user own a card with 11GB or more. So, I save two seconds and my memory keeps empty, but my client isn't happy. It's the reason because most I found no usage for Enscape, but I see a great potential at this Engine and so I'm waiting for the day, if the quality reached 100% - less my client's doesn't accept. My client pay me per hour, seconds doesn't matter. ;)

  • I strongly agree with Andreas about this topic. Enscape is fantastic and it's clear to everybody that it aims to the average user efficiency, where "average user" means all the cases we want a fast feedback on a rather simple project. Frequently, that rather simple project turns into a very complex one, during the next phases, so it's important to include all the objects in the final renders. I think that we can stick to the current settings for the live preview (which make the live preview very fast) but we shoukd be able to include everything we want when we launch the final calculation.

  • The "problem" is that Enscape is a live preview program that has a side-effect of being able to generate really cool stills. When you ask for a still image, it basically ups the resolution of the 'monitor' to a print quality and takes a screen-shot. (*)

    If you want extra ray-tracing bounces for reflections or other stuff for still images, you are either asking for an additional processing layer on-top of the existing program or upping the quality of the existing program. So far the focus has been on the second option, because it helps everyone. The other option is a lot of work and becomes a second program wrapped within the first.


    (* I'm only a user making wild leaps of logic - I may be completely wrong)

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    If you want extra ray-tracing bounces for reflections or other stuff for still images, you are .... If you want extra ray-tracing bounces for reflections or other stuff for still images, you are either asking for an additional processing layer on-top of the existing program ....

    with all due respect , this is not correct IMHO.. I think we are already discussing things a little more specific here, please read the posts a little more thoroughly. Clemens already stated that enscape is in fact already calculating twice as much reflections when rendering vs. live view.

    This means that the engine can do it.


    No pun intended though...


    Andreas

    • Official Post

    with all due respect , this is not correct IMHO.. I think we are already discussing things a little more specific here, please read the posts a little more thoroughly. Clemens already stated that enscape is in fact already calculating twice as much reflections when rendering vs. live view.

    This means that the engine can do it.

    To some extend yes (when talking about content beeing visible and not other features), but there're still hardware dependant limits and those are not as easy to control as a user. And please beware that as Gadget already mentioned - still image and video rendering are just some features among others and depending on your focus as a user might or might not play such an important role when using Enscape. That beeing said you still can expect further quality improvements in that regard in future versions, however the basic concept of Enscape beeing a very accessible (real-time) rendering tool for everyone is not planned to change.

  • Hi Clemens,


    thank you for your feedback here it is really appreciated.


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    ...but there're still hardware dependent limits and those are not as easy to control as a user.

    OK, I understand this but, does this not mean we are basically talking speed here ?

    Let´s take an example I have a scene with reflections I render it on a system with a slower video card A and a system with a faster video card B.


    I would assume that video card A would in theory be able to render the same scene with the same amount of reflection details / amount as video card B, it just might take longer...


    The way things are right now feels like you are basically limit the processing time to archive fast response / rendering time. While I am 100% aware that this is critical for realtime environments and editing (you already have the quality slider , I cannot understand the limitation concerning rendering which is IMHO what 90% of us are still doing with the SW.



    Is video card memory also also a limiting factor?


    best


    Andreas


    P.S. : Don't get me wrong, despite me nagging here, I really think enscape is fantastic even though it still has some basic topics to be fixed, I have experience in both Lumion an Twinmotion, so in all modesty I really think I know what I am talking about. Integration within the CAD SW is awesome and so much superior to external solutions even with hotlink functionality... keep up the great work !


    PPS: We just finished our first commercial work ( 1:30 minute animation) done entirely with enscape (after 1 year of owning it ;) ). It turned out really OK, the client was happy...

  • +1


    I completely want performance to stay real-time, and am very impressed with the quality we get in real-time....so I don't want to mess with that.


    However, having a setting available for 'power users' to crank up some quality setting for captures/renders would be very welcomed. I was just having the same 'missing reflections' problem last week similar to what Matt was having. I could actually see the ground plane meeting the horizon reflected in the house's glass...(modern house.....LOTS of window). Would have been great to go in check a 'Extended Reflections' check box, then increase sliders for geometric complexity, size and distance to camera, until the preview looks good enough to render. :thumbup:

    • Official Post

    OK, I understand this but, does this not mean we are basically talking speed here ?

    Speed is one factor, memory another. Whereas speed is a twofold issue: The actual runtime cost of tracing more geometry during rendering (and this is also largely dependant on the kind geometry, so this doesn't scale linearly, but also the required preparation. So it's not a simple equation of taking 2x the geometry and receiving 2x rendering time. Memory is even more critical - if the resources don't fit into your memory, there's not that much you can do.


    I absolutely understand the urge to get more control of these kinds of things as a "power user" and trust me, we've discussed those options internally for many times as well. We do want you guys to be able to achieve optimal results, but at the same time we want Enscape to stay accessible and straightforward to use in a stable way. We're confident to achieve both of these, getting better and closer with every release. I don't want to exclude the possibility of having more options in that regard in the future, but most likely the focus will remain on further optimizing our "1-click" approach e.g. by leveraging more of the available capabilities based on your gpu, which will benefit all user demographics.

  • I think this will be my last post on this topic, I think pretty much everything has been layed out from my side ...

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    So it's not a simple equation of taking 2x the geometry and receiving 2x rendering time.

    yes I know, but even then we have enough room here, If this (enhanced reflection quality ) would be an option, you will just turn it on when you need it... so if I have a problem with my animation because some reflections are messed up, would I care that my export of a 20 second animation would take 15 minutes instead of 3 minutes ? Off course not ! the animation export is still superfast and way beyond everything you would archive with a traditional engine ! Heck, even 30 minutes is no problem if you get rid of your problem IMHO.


    Video memory is probably (?) related to the resolution of the reflection maps enscape would use, right? But this will be determined by your video card anyway so enscape probably detects it automatically or if that is not the case , which I doubt, a "poweruser" can just key in the right value... no big deal.



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    ...but at the same time we want Enscape to stay accessible and straightforward to use in a stable way...

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    ...but most likely the focus will remain on further optimizing our "1-click" approach...


    No problem, make a new tab "only advanced users" or no tab at all... I would be happy with just a command line option that would basically be invisible for the "normal" user...