Scene: Shack at night

[vertex]

Its looking good , but the light on the roof is wrong for the moon to be where it is the roof facing us wood be for the most part thrown into shadow, the same comment goes to light thrown on to the blades of grass facing the camera.


Vertex

[MrPunkin]

while I agree for the most part, I wanted to get the odd lighting that night gives where everything is wrapped in a gentler light than daytime. Around here it seems the light from the moon acts in odd ways. I didnt want to toss everything into shadow and wanted to keep a semi-even feeling throughout the image, except for the dark dark shadows like the complete opposite side of the building and the ground under the grass.

[MrPunkin]

well, heres what i have come up with after talking with my pals at maxforums. They said the lighting didnt show "night" so I re did the coloring a little to get this. I like it better, more moody.

http://home.attbi.com/~mrpunkin/Shack_final_moody_net.jpg

[the3DBEAST]

I might sound stupid here, but HOW did you do that grass! its awesome!

[MrPunkin]

no, not stupid at all... I spent most of the last 2 weeks trying to figure out the grass. I finally went the easy route and it worked best. I made 1 4 sided pyramid. then turned it 45 degrees and flattened so it was skinny with two edges at the ends. I made about 5 height segments (all in max btw) and then bent it a little and textured it. Max has a "scatter" function. I just scattered it 65,000 times across my ground plane. The scatter function also allows deformation, so I turned on 360degree rotation on the Z axis, along with about 45 degree rotation on the x and y axis to allow it to bend/droop a little. I also allowed 100% range in scaling.

The scatter function takes use of your segmenting if you use "vertex chaos" so I used a very small amount of that to allow the strands to each be different in shape.

Basically its just fiddling with the scatter params until you get what you like. Its really easy, built in to max, and looks great. Not to mention takes less time to render than a hair plugin.

[DaliFan]

I love it but I am a sucker for this type of picture ;)

[the3DBEAST]

Props man. I love it. I am a maya user though. So, i guessi would have to find a work around. AWESOME WORK!

[MrPunkin]

Well, if your a maya user you have maya fur dont you? I hear thats a pretty amazing hair program. Im sure you could use that to get probably a better effect than what I have.

Thanks for the compliments!

[rusdom]

Nice work Mr. Punkin (weird name... almost as weird as rusdom... what the heck is a rusdom?). I like it a lot. I think the lighting looks nice how it is. I mean if you went totally real with it, nothing facing the camera would be visible because it'd all be in shadow, except for what's being hit by the hanging light. I mean, look at movies here, a lot of time peoples faces are lit from many different angles, to get just the right effect, it's not like if theres going to be a scene where two people are talking across the table from eachother and the only light sources are coming from above (like ceiling lights) they're going to just use that light, and let the characters faces cast weird shadows. if that's the effect they want they'll do that, but unsually they'll go ahead and add more lights to fill in shadows and such and create just the right mood. It's the same thing with this picture, it's not about where the lights coming from, it's more about the mood. Also, think about this, at night the main source of light is the moon, which itself is not creating any light whatsoever, it is only reflecting light. Because of that the light that is cast is different than sunlight. I like this picture a lot, good work Mr. Punkin

[piajartist]

moon looks cartoony

[MrPunkin]

Thats the point, the whole scene is supposed to look fantasy-ish. The shack is cartoony too, its got bent walls and such.

[Leo73]

Great image you created. I always like seeing stylized more than realistic. Can you post a wireframe of it by chance?

[MrPunkin]

Sure thing. Im at school right now and have Character and Object design before I can go home... but I will post out a wire as soon as I get home.

[Lithie]

Excellent work on the shed n grass. Of course the whole scene is very good. :thumbsup:

I really liked the grass. Can't u make a quick tutorial or maybe post a pic or two about the techniq ? i read what u wrote but i didn't really get the hang of it ?

I also would like to see the wireframe plz so post it soon will ya

[MrPunkin]

Well, rendered out a wire, didnt work too well. I decided to just use a screenshot. The grass is only showing 1% so that while I was working it wouldnt be overwhelming to look at.



http://home.attbi.com/~mrpunkin/shack_wire.jpg

Heres the parameters for my scatter. Basically, make ANYTHING you think that looks like a blade of grass, but low poly or high poly enough that you need, I would suggest at least 5 height segments so that you can have them bend. If this still doesnt make sense heres a good tutorial (http://www.suurland.com/tut_grass/tutorial_grass_r3.htm). Im going to write up a full tutorial of my easy process, but it will take me a while so dont count on it this weekend.


http://home.attbi.com/~mrpunkin/scatter_params.jpg

[MrPunkin]

sorry, posted this REALLY late last night and dont know if you saw it. This is also a bump.

[zisland]

ware do you go to skool at man? Im still in high skool and so im learning out of a book right now (3D Studio Max R3 in 24 hours) and im planning on going to skool for CG wen im older.

[MrPunkin]

I go to the Art Institute of Portland, OR. (AiPD). It is part of the Art Institutes International. Our website is http://aipd.aii.edu

Its a great school, I love it so far!

[rusdom]

Yeah it really is a great school, I go there too.... and that's how I know Mr Punkin. So you're making a full tutorial huh Mr Punkin??? Very cool :buttrock: :applause: :thumbsup: :) I'll have to check that out when you get it all finished (I've have trouble with grass)

[MrPunkin]

haha, yeah, its not gonna be exciting, but it will give the basics of how to make scatter grass in max. Its been done before, but a lot of the tutorials are a LOT more complicated than my way of doing it.

[rusdom]

where are the images?

[MrPunkin]

Hey, whoa, talk about back from the dead huh? Well, fixed the image link incase anyone cares.... latest image is on the front page again of this thread.

Feel free to crit if you want.

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