help with area lights and shading noise

[duderender]

Have a look at my image.
http://members.shaw.ca/duderender/objects_test3_lw.jpg

Have a look at my LW image with no AA
http://members.shaw.ca/duderender/objects_test3_lw_noaa.jpg

Have a look at another done in 3ds max.
http://members.shaw.ca/duderender/objects_test3.jpg

The goal is to try and achieve similar looks to both renders. I am not trying to create exact duplicates I am trying to duplicate the look i can achieve in max which .was done with no AA, GI, radiosity/caustics. A metal shader was used in max.

In the lightwave image, I've used Medium AA but the max picture didn't use AA. Do I require the image to be AA'd to clean up the noise I get from using area lights? Also, my image still looks a bit like plastic objects, suggestion to make it look more metalish using only basic surface settings (no textures or bumps). I did us a fast fresnel shader and turned the Shading Noise Reduction option on.

Ideas?

[stephen2002]

What kind of lights are used in the max render? I'm guessing they are shadow mapped spots, not ray-traced lights. Try using the shadow mapping on spot lights and turn up the "fuzziness" value to get the soft shadows.

[UnCommonGrafx]

It would seem that putting a white background in there might help.

What are your settings?

Personally, I think you are going about it... wrong. Don't try to do what they are doing -- try to re-create the pic with whatever tools you have.
Having said that, I would suggest you look at overcaster. You can do GI looks really nicely with these utes.

How long did their pic take to render and at what resolution? Sometimes people 'supersize' their renders then reduce them - this does an AA effect after the fact. I say this 'cuz their pic looks bigger than yours. :p Or did you do the pic?

Comparing the same pieces of the rendering engine don't always equate. To that end, try to match the picture, not copy the settings.

[duderender]

::stephen
The render was done in max using area light with Final Render Stage 1. Not sure about the raytracing, pretty sure though.

::uncommon,

I am trying to match the picture, and the image sizes are identical.
I was attempting to learn about area lights and not using radiosity/GI. I haven't heard of overcaster, I will check it out.

The max version was rendered in about 1 minute (using a dual p4), and my version is about 3 minutes with no AA (using a p3-700), with AA it's about 17minutes.

The AA setting is medium (low reduces render by about 10min) and the raytrace recursion is 16.

Have a look at the scene if you'd like.
Click here (http://members.shaw.ca/duderender/mtyler_test.lws) for the scene file, and click here (http://members.shaw.ca/duderender/tyler_test.lwo) for the object file.

[duderender]

here's what I've got now. The area light needs more experimenting, but sizing the light does change its attributes (flawed or not).

The dim lit is with a default area light (not sized), and the brighter one has the larger sized area light.

http://members.shaw.ca/duderender/smooth_large_dim.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/duderender/smooth_large.jpg