Still life: shot glass

[igor popovic]

Lookin good, but the overall lighting looks odd, by the shadows it looks like an overcast kinda day, but then its a bit bright for that...i love the HDRI, i wish i could do that stuff! oh yea, some of those marbles seem tooooo small, they just take away from the otherwise great image!

[slaughters]

HDRI/Image based lighting is great for ambient or background lighting, but it tends to make things look too difuse by itself. You probably want to throw in a another light source if you want more specularity to show up in the glass pieces.

[Sandpiper]

Thanks for the suggestions fellas.

Igor: Looking at those tiny "BB's", I see what you mean by "tooooo small". I may just delete them all together...

Slaughters: Maybe if I "blow out" the white areas in the HDRI image, then I would get more specular showing up in the objects, but it may brighten the scene even more. I'm not too sure what I will do there, but good critique.

Is the lighting overall, just not interesting enough? Or is there just something "not right" about it? This is my first test with HDRI so I may very well be doing something wrong with the hdr image itself...

[Stimpy]

the lighting is ok, considering you cant go far wrong with image based lighting most of the time. maybe its a tiny bit too yellow though.

i think the composition is kind of wrong, thats what is bothering me.

it seems to be rather flat for some reason, as if you chose a really low FOV on your camera. and maybe you should consider centering the glass in your picture as well, since its the main focus of the piece.

[blasphemy3_d]

I agree with slaughters.

[Sandpiper]

Stimpy: I definitely see what you are saying. My camera is kinda jacked up. It almost looks isometric in a way. I'll have to make it more dynamic for sure, maybe lowering it a bit and getting more depth and perspective on it would help, eh?

I'll post a new version by tonight or tomorrow and you guys let me know what you think. You've really helped me out so far!:applause:

[erikals]

Does the light-beams in the glass bend correct? It kind of looks wrong I think, like the glass was made by marble at the top. Yes?

Nice texturing,

Erik

[Sandpiper]

Erik: I think that is just an illusion caused by the refraction of the material. Nothing I can really control on that besides the index of refraction which is set to 1.55 or so, typical of glass. I could jack with that setting to get the look I want, but then it wouldn't be as "accurate" I suppose. Maybe my weird camera angle might be screwing it up. Good question...

I'm working on an update which shows the glass on it's side and the marbles are poured out on the table. The camera is at a lower angle and the FOV is at 35mm instead of 85mm. I'm working on getting the best background for the shot. Stay tuned...

p.s. I only have a chance to work on this every other day at night for a couple of hours, so bear with me....

[bcole23]

I agree. Image is very flat and glass looks really 'thick'. The IOR may be correct for glass, so maybe your glass is too thick. It just doesn't seem to refract correctly.

[Sandpiper]

Ok. Here's what I got. Kind of a drastic change, but I think it works better. It looks to me like the glass is actually refracting correctly...

[An Erased One]

The wood Texture looks strange in the front, very blurry... Is there a DOF?
The Glas and the marbles look sweet, though! :applause:

[Sandpiper]

Thanks. Yeah, I think that's the reflection of the hdr image which has a bit of a blur to it. No DOF....yet. I only have a 550 mhz to work on this, so even just testing the DOF is intensive stuff.

[bcole23]

I think it looks much better. I know how you feel with the slow comp. My last one was a celeron 300, yeacchh. Dual amd mp 2200+'s now.. hehe.

[Sandpiper]

I hate you...nah, I'm kidding. I can't wait till that wonderful day where I can have The System o' my Dreams.

[riltis]

I really like the change of view. It really throws you into the scene. The wood on the chair does look like it is picking up a reflection (being that fuzzy hdr image). Maybe it would look better with less of a reflection and more of a sheen.

:thumbsup: Looking awesome.

[NBlm7]

Looks really good. I like your compostion and the second one is really cool and it does kind of suck you in. Where did you come up with the idea?

[Sandpiper]

I received a nice shot glass as a gift for being a groomsman in my friend's wedding recently. I was looking around the house for a nice subject for a still life project, chose the glass and there ya go!

Getting a decent background was a bit of a thinker because I wanted it to somehow make sense rather than it just sitting on some plane with some "background".

My lesson learned on this lil' project: You can have a good subject, but if the lighting and camera view are no good, then it's just gonna be "wrong".

[bcole23]

My friend, you have stumbled upon the basics of art. We 3d people tend to get so caught up in technical things that we forget the basics of composition, negative space, color, and motion. (yes, static pictures have motion).

ki wo tsukette.

[Green Grass]

I love the hdr stuff! Good subject matter and camera setup....:airguitar

[stephen2002]

The 2nd one is good. Be carful with that sphere on the lower left corner though, with the camera that close it dosn't look round anymore. Overall it looks nice.

[Flash FROG]

Hello, I was looking at your first picture and it looks awesome, but I belive the top of the thick glass part at the bottom should be curved more and not so flat. Just a sugestion though, it still lookes really cool.

[Maya Ayanami]

Nice.

in the first one it looks as if one of the small balls is penetrateing the glass and the flat part of the table and the rounded edge looks like it is 2 peices. you did much better in compositing your scene in the second one. but the park bench(it is in a park right) has to much reflectivity tune it down. and you can see the seam in the env. map in the first 3 balls and makes it look totally cg and degrades the the overall quality of the render. to fix that problem you should put on some dof with the aperature around 1.2 and have the focus distance should be right in front of the glass so the glass and the balls right next to the glass in sharp focus while the balls nearest to the camera will be very blurry.

and did you say you were useing brazil. if you are then when you do your render with dof make sure you turn up initial rate up a bit maybe to 8-10 or else you render is going to be really grainy(at least I thing it is the initial rate). however this setting will make your render times skyroket so just start a render before you go to bed and it might be done in the morning(that is what I do with big things).

[Sandpiper]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone! Unfortunately I can't make any changes to this scene because I lost the file on a faulty hard drive that went out on me. GRRRR! I do have the file where it looked like the first image, but it took a lot of work to get it where it is in the second, so I'm sure it will take some serious self-convincing to do it over as I've got other projects on my plate now like this one: lil' chickwalker (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30372&perpage=15&pagenumber=1)

This shot glass project was my first shot at hdr and I now know some better tricks to get it to look better which actually include a lot of the ones you guys mentioned. Thanks again!

[Error404]

I would take out the spheres, they are WAY over done with HDRI images, and usualy serve as "test" models for reflection purposes.

I like the 2nd render tho, it looks alot better IMO.

[Sandpiper]

well, since this was my first attempt at hdr, meaning this was a test of sorts, then I thought the spheres were justified. :thumbsup:

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