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In the Elevator
By cwichura
30 Favourites22 Comments4K Views
DS4P -> Reality/LuxRender to 7500S/p
The elevator in my building has mirrors on three sides, as well as the ceiling (which also has cut-outs for the recessed lighting in the elevator). The remaining side with the door and control panel is metal. Standing in it, I got to wondering how well LuxRender would reproduce the "infinite reflections" optical effect. As I don't know any of the 3D modelling tools, I built the elevator in DAZ Studio using plane and cube primitives, along with a hefty dose of using the polygon group editor to separate out some of the surfaces. Hence why there are no beveled edges and the control panel is so crappy looking. But the dimensions match the real-world elevator. The rest of the elevator is pretty simplistic in design, so the primitives did a reasonable job of reproducing it. In the real elevator, the paneling below the trim holding the mirrors is a ceramic tile that I didn't have an appropriate texture to mimic with. So I ended up using the herringbone procedural texture from the LuxRender Materials Database, as it gave a nice look.
To get the repeating mirror reflections, I had to crank up the eyedepth and lightdepth. Even at the max of 64 that Reality's UI allows, you can clearly see when the depth limit is reached, as the reflections stop and the rest of the mirrors became completely black. I ended up with using a depth of 128 and even at that level, there was still a small section in the mirrors that was still a black void. So I moved the girl in the pink dress around a little to hide that black convergence point in the opposite mirror. (There were always two girls, as I wanted the image to appear as if it was from the point of view of one figure looking at the other. To this extent, the camera is actually parented to the head of the girl in the pink dress, and was adjusted via the head/neck pose controls, rather than directly moving the camera itself.)
There is still a LOT of noise in the mirrors; the non-mirror surfaces cleared up pretty well by my usual benchmark of about 2000S/p. Judging by the shrinkage of the PNG's file size each hour (as noise goes away, PNG files compress better and thus get smaller), it would probably have required 10x as many samples before the noise in the mirrors became acceptable. And with my crappy elevator control panel holding the image back already, I don't think it's worth rendering for three weeks straight.
Both figures are Genesis. The girl in yellow is using Thorne and Sarsa's Princess morph and skin. The girl in pink is using ARTCollaborations' Alisha morph and skin.
The elevator in my building has mirrors on three sides, as well as the ceiling (which also has cut-outs for the recessed lighting in the elevator). The remaining side with the door and control panel is metal. Standing in it, I got to wondering how well LuxRender would reproduce the "infinite reflections" optical effect. As I don't know any of the 3D modelling tools, I built the elevator in DAZ Studio using plane and cube primitives, along with a hefty dose of using the polygon group editor to separate out some of the surfaces. Hence why there are no beveled edges and the control panel is so crappy looking. But the dimensions match the real-world elevator. The rest of the elevator is pretty simplistic in design, so the primitives did a reasonable job of reproducing it. In the real elevator, the paneling below the trim holding the mirrors is a ceramic tile that I didn't have an appropriate texture to mimic with. So I ended up using the herringbone procedural texture from the LuxRender Materials Database, as it gave a nice look.
To get the repeating mirror reflections, I had to crank up the eyedepth and lightdepth. Even at the max of 64 that Reality's UI allows, you can clearly see when the depth limit is reached, as the reflections stop and the rest of the mirrors became completely black. I ended up with using a depth of 128 and even at that level, there was still a small section in the mirrors that was still a black void. So I moved the girl in the pink dress around a little to hide that black convergence point in the opposite mirror. (There were always two girls, as I wanted the image to appear as if it was from the point of view of one figure looking at the other. To this extent, the camera is actually parented to the head of the girl in the pink dress, and was adjusted via the head/neck pose controls, rather than directly moving the camera itself.)
There is still a LOT of noise in the mirrors; the non-mirror surfaces cleared up pretty well by my usual benchmark of about 2000S/p. Judging by the shrinkage of the PNG's file size each hour (as noise goes away, PNG files compress better and thus get smaller), it would probably have required 10x as many samples before the noise in the mirrors became acceptable. And with my crappy elevator control panel holding the image back already, I don't think it's worth rendering for three weeks straight.
Both figures are Genesis. The girl in yellow is using Thorne and Sarsa's Princess morph and skin. The girl in pink is using ARTCollaborations' Alisha morph and skin.
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© 2012 - 2021 cwichura
Comments22
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Hi!
Very nice and complete work!!! Shows a lot of dedication
I have a question: i have tried to use reflective planes in DAZ, simple ones, but i end with this: [link]
As yu see, appart from the dark surface, the image relected have "serrated" edges, pixelated. I dont know how to avoid this.
Wuold you please give me some advice? Thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuu.
Very nice and complete work!!! Shows a lot of dedication

I have a question: i have tried to use reflective planes in DAZ, simple ones, but i end with this: [link]
As yu see, appart from the dark surface, the image relected have "serrated" edges, pixelated. I dont know how to avoid this.
Wuold you please give me some advice? Thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

Are you doing this render in DAZ itself, or exporting to LuxRender like I did here? I'm not very familiar with rendering in Studio, as I export all my scenes to LuxRender for rendering, including this one. So I'm not sure I can offer much assistance, as it sounds like you are using DAZ itself for your render. With Lux, one thing that affects the mirror surface is light, or more specifically, the lack thereof. You might see if experimenting with the light locations and intensity helps the mirror effect in your render. I also don't know if this is something that adjusting the render settings in DAZ would help (shading rate and the like).

Hi cwichura,
This is an excellent idea and execution. Thanks for explaining your process in depth too.
I guess it is quite 'realistic' to have a person blocking the infinite tunnel since in real life one can never see it.
A question; you said you used the procedural texture from luxrender database; how do you do that in DAZ/Reality?
This is an excellent idea and execution. Thanks for explaining your process in depth too.
I guess it is quite 'realistic' to have a person blocking the infinite tunnel since in real life one can never see it.
A question; you said you used the procedural texture from luxrender database; how do you do that in DAZ/Reality?

To make use of procedural textures from the LuxRender database, you have to edit the .lxo and .lxs files generated by Reality in a text editor; you cannot load them from within Reality itself.
In the .lxs file, you will see a section at the bottom that has WorldBegin/Include/Include/WorldEnd. You need to add an additional Include to this block, referencing the .lxm file you downloaded. It must occur before the Include for the .lxo generated by Reality.
In the .lxo file, you have to search for the shape you want to apply the material to. It will have a "MaterialName <Reality's Generated Material Name>" stanza. You need to edit the name to reference the name found in the .lxm file you downloaded.
In the .lxs file, you will see a section at the bottom that has WorldBegin/Include/Include/WorldEnd. You need to add an additional Include to this block, referencing the .lxm file you downloaded. It must occur before the Include for the .lxo generated by Reality.
In the .lxo file, you have to search for the shape you want to apply the material to. It will have a "MaterialName <Reality's Generated Material Name>" stanza. You need to edit the name to reference the name found in the .lxm file you downloaded.

Excellent. The reflections are very interesting. I didn't get to read your full description of this piece yet, but I can only imagine the render time involved. Not a big fan of this kind of character style, but the clothes and materials all look very good. Even the hair on the main character looks great.
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