clown

Hello,

I am playing around with reflections, indirect lighting, and area lights, and im a little confused by how the samples stack up. Ive tried using the help pages, and playing around with the settings doing test renders, but my 3ghz core 2 duo can only render so fast (aka NOT very fast lol).

I understand the lighting and reflection samples themselves, its when you add in stuff like pixel samples and min ray samples that I start to get confused. The pixel samples I think I understand, its mostly the min ray samples I don't get. So, basically I was wondering how the samples combine with each other.

From what I understand, min ray samples is either literally the minimum number of original samples or it is a multiplier for the original samples, and then the pixel samples then take that result and resample it by the pixel sample value.

for example
say area light samples was set to 2, pixel samples 3x3, and min ray samples is 4.
my current understanding is that the total samples for that light is either

(IF - original samples < min ray samples, set samples to min ray samples, ELSE - use original sampling) x (pixel samples)
(if 2 < 4, samples = 4, else 2) x (3 x 3)
4 x 9 = 36 Total Samples

OR

(samples) x (min ray samples) x (pixel samples)
(2) x (4) x (3 x 3) = 72 Total Samples

So yeah, which way does it use to calculate it? Or am I waaaaay out in left field here and completely misunderstanding how this works?

Also, another question I have, is in regards to reflection quality, and reflection angle. In houdini 10, these settings were controlled by area samples and cone angle. I was wondering how the new parameters compare to the old ones.

how does the default value of 1 area sample compare to 0.1 reflection quality
how does say a reflection angle of 5 compare to a cone angle of 5? are they equivalent?

In houdini 10, the v_gilight defaulted to a sampling value of like 256 or something, yet in houdini 11, the default value on the GI light shelf tool is 1. How does the old default of 256 compare to the new default of 1. Based on the quality I've observed I assume the sampling for the gi light works the same as before, and the default value was just changed to speed up previewing?

And finally, is the section of the help file for the new materials/shading system still partially incomplete? A lot of parameters seem to be missing from some of the pages, and when I hover my mouse over parameters on the Mantra surface and hit f1 to bring up the help, I get some error:

“Parm is not a registered Protocol”
followed by a big error message saying something about this error code "0x804b0012 ". (I can post the whole error if you want)

The help hotkey works fine if I use it on parameters for something like a camera or a SOP node though

Well this post is getting pretty big, so ill stop asking questions for now :wink:

Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks

clicking the down arrow beside command and picking Verbose in Console fixed it for me.

I recently formatted my hard drive, and reinstalled vista 64

I am having trouble getting houdini installed

Version 11.0.504 and 11.0.542

When I install it, it gets to the part where it asks if I want an apprentice or a paid license. When I click next, the window crashes with an error saying hkey isn't responding.

I have tried the following to fix it.

-Install the keys manually - when I load license administrator, it has an error saying it cannot read the license file at c:\windows/keys/ (yes with the backwards slashes). All the menu items to install keys are grayed out, and when I click on any available menu item, hkey crashes.

-Run installer without selecting apprentice - When I do this and load the administrator, it doesnt complain about not being able to read the key file, however when I go to c:\windows\, there is no “keys” folder at all. All licence administrator menu items still crash hkey.

- Install in safe mode - houdini's services cannot run in safe mode

- Tried running hkey as admin - no change

- tried disabling Vists UAC and all features of my internet security suite - no change

Im not really sure what the problem is, ive never had trouble installing onto vista 64 before.

I kind of want to try safe mode again, i know there is a way to allow non standard services to run in safe mode, but im not sure how u would do that for the houdini services.

I cant really think of anything else that would be causing the problem.

Any help would be appreciated