Have no idea what this is going to look like, but I am thinking of curvy shapes...
Making a start with things I know will have to be there...
First a test design for a table:
Did the final modeling today...still have to place a few 'pistols', but I paused that, because I started to make stupid mistakes due to lack of concentration (also known as 'getting tired'):
Did another test render (100 Samples, 2160 * 3840 pixels, about 3 hours), with compositor denoising:
I cannot get enthusiastic about it..there is a lot of glass and it just becomes 'dull', 'dead eyes-look' (it can handle one single glass, but those rows of glasses...). And the SSS is also mostly gone, although not as 'splodgey' as before, but that is probably due to higher Sample count and better resolution...
I will make the last tweaks tomorrow and then start rendering with as high Sample count as I can afford. Will try Cycles-X for this, but I don't expect to get much speed-up from it, because I can't use my GPU (too old) and my CPU only has 4 cores....
Have you considered using a renderfarm for the final high sample count renders? I've started doing that for my final renders (I have an old GPU too), and it saves so much time and means I don't risk blender crashing half way through!
tomb2005 I actually have considered that (even have some points left at Sheepit), but as long as my computer can still get the job done, I'll stock to it. I have to experiment a lot to get the best settings, so it's also a learning experience.
Just started rendering, hope I didn't leave any 'mistakes', that only show when the render is (almost) finished...that happens quite often, to be honest...Hopefully I can get 3 images rendered, but that should be possible, there is still some time left.
Blender crashing during a render has not yet happened to me (maybe I shouldn't have said that...). I'll keep my fingers crossed.
this really looks like the atmospheric bar of the future! nice! i'll cross my fingers as well for it not to crash!
This is my final main render:
After 27 hours of rendering the image was still quite noisy (reached about 850 Samples, using the Cycles-X branch), so I denoised it in the Compositor. I think the result is okay. Am rendering two more shots at the same time (I like a bit of risk and the main image is already there, so...) at a lower resolution (1920*1080), but with 2048 Samples. Will need denoising as well. And there seems to be no real advantage in rendering both at the same time: the first has an estimated render time of less than 4 hours and the second of about 40 hours...
Finished the other renders. Will post them in the Gallery.
But due to the render times, I just checked and in Blender 3.0 the main image (3840*2160, with even 1024 Samples) has an estimated render time of less than 8 hours! Cycles-X loses on my computer! Would have been able to fix the little mistakes and render all 3 images at high resolution...