On-Going Challenges

[pmegele]

hy,
i tried to take on Jeremy's suggestions and i think it helped to make the image more atmospheric. Theplums still suck, but never mind.
http://www.pmegele.de/lighting_challenges/fruit_bowl_v02.jpg

[mehma]

This is my first attempt at any of the challenges......used maya and rendered using mental ray. I composited the main layer, zdepth and the occlusion in After Effects

[jeremybirn]

Leotril - Nice colors and composition! Some of the signs, particularly the red areas around the enter sign and red light, look very blown-out instead of being bright with a natural glow around them. The little light bulbs around the marquee suffer a similar problem, they don't seem to be providing soft illumination on the surfaces near them. Try to make it darker under the truck, especially around where the tires touch the ground, and what you see through the gaps in the front wheel.

punytjoshi - Good start. You could use more shadowing, especially where one object touches another such as where a gift leans against the wall, make sure there is a nice shadow there. The glow from the fireplace seems to wrap around the outside of the fireplace, try to seat it more at the light source. The glow from a source usually shouldn't look brighter than the source itself, so the light on the fireplace shouldn't be brighter than the glowing embers of the logs. The level of fill light on the wall to the right of the fire place looks very high, but you could use alittle more of that fill on the dresser and the dark sides of the gifts.

pete1974 - That's looking good! Maybe the apple is going a little hot and could use more focused reflections. You could frame-up the shot to imporve the composition. Or maybe to add some interest and contrast, you could add a cookie on the key light, casting a pattern as if the window frame and its cross-sections were casting a shadow across the scene. The dark side could still go a little darker, and the fruits and plate might reflect eachother.

mehma - Nice image! Maybe you could replace the specular highlights on top of the banana, on top of the rear fruits, and on the top edge of the apple and corner of the pear - get rid of those highlights and replace them with some rim light? A little bit of reflectivity would help the scene, especially getting the plate to reflect the orange and grapes, and the apple to reflect the fruit around it. I don't see shadows from the apple or pear onto other fruit, maybe your main shadows are hidden because of the key light angle?

-jeremy

[mehma]

Hey Jeremy.....thanks for the feedback. The highlights on the apple, pear and banana were actually coming from a rim light, i will change this so that it looks more like a rim rather than a prominent highlight. The shadows....well the light is screen right....but maybe i can move that around too such that we see the pear and apple shadow. hopefully will post something by the end of the day today.......thanks again!!

[mehma]

so I have made some changes to my Fruity image...:)
removed highlights on the apple, pear and the plums and have put rim lights on them, I have also changed the angle of my Key Light such that the apple and pear shadows are more prominent. Made the apple reflective and I also changed the overall angle a bit so that the reflections on the plate show up (but very slightly).....Let me know what you think.....

[raylistic]

I am just wondering, if anyone has issues laying out the UV for the train challenge? I am using maya and the poly flow in the train is just crazy. I know someone out there has done the UV thing? Care to share how you did it? If i cant get the UV layout properly, it will be difficult to texture i think.

[punytjoshi]

{{{{{{punytjoshi - Good start. You could use more shadowing, especially where one object touches another such as where a gift leans against the wall, make sure there is a nice shadow there. The glow from the fireplace seems to wrap around the outside of the fireplace, try to seat it more at the light source. The glow from a source usually shouldn't look brighter than the source itself, so the light on the fireplace shouldn't be brighter than the glowing embers of the logs. The level of fill light on the wall to the right of the fire place looks very high, but you could use alittle more of that fill on the dresser and the dark sides of the gifts.}}}}}}


thank You geremy for those comments As alwaays very informative and useful. Well, about my that christmas work I think the burn for the fire I created may be is dusturbing but I wanted strong light come from fire but coming out and falling of too fast I tried all Decays with the point light(ie,cubic,quadric,linear) but nothing is giving me that effect . Thae one you see in that posted work is best I could get. I will be looking for some guidance regarding that from you and every one on this forum.


I would also like to explain what I wanted to achieve in this image was showing warm colored forground (depicting festival) and cool back ground so pls comment on my composition as well.....

[jasvant]

hi everyone,here is my new try.i used 3ds max scanline.For caustics i used projection map in light.Post Production done with photoshop.CsC are Welcome.:hmm:

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii257/jassi782477/finalunderwater2.jpg

[jeremybirn]

mehma - Nice. The rim is a better, it could still be a bit broader and softer. The whole scene looks underexposed to me, as if it's mostly using only the lower half of the available tones. I don't really see the reflectivity working yet, maybe it's the shaders, maybe you need more of an environment around the scene to appear in reflections.

raylistic - If I were doing the train, I'd try skipping the UV business and doing a lot of projections. Maybe that's just me, I kindof hate UVs...

punytjoshi - Quadratic decay is most realistic, make sure there are good shadows too. Switching to a volume light gives you a custom gradient with distance from the center to edge of the volume if you want to tweak something and make a choice that isn't there. The colors are nice overall, although the light from the window looks bright and green compared to the view through the window.

jasvant - Nice job! I like the overall look. It seems as if we could use some shadows or occlusion around the edge of where things come into contact, such as where the rock in the foreground touches the sand, right now they don't look connected. The are under the dock could get a little darker, and it would be great to see more overall variation, like a brighter spot in the water surface then getting darker in other areas, or more depth-fading through the water into a darker greener tone.

-jeremy

[michal-w]

Hello Everybody,

This is my interpretation of the eye scene. Just thought that the black & white version will stand out a bit more. Not sure if the overall look isn't too soft though.
C&C is welcome!
Software used: 3ds Max, Maxwell Render, ZBrush for texturing, Photoshop for desaturation and a bit of post.

Many thanks,

Mike
:beer:

http://i345.photobucket.com/albums/p363/michal-w/eye1.jpg

[jeremybirn]

michal-w -

Welcome! Nice job on the eye! I think the tear-duct area is very important, but it looks like that part of the image is blurred. Study some reference photos of that corner of the eye. Around the edges, it seems as if the eye lashes sometimes line-up correctly, other times the lashes seem to be cutting inside of the eyelid. It would be great to see more of a highlight or reflection along the bottom edge of the eye, that's a detail from real-life that isn't always present in 3D.

-jeremy

[mehma]

Hey Jeremy....here's my fruit bowl corrected.....I got the rim lights a little softer and also increased the reflectivity of the apple. The angle is such that the grapes and orange don't really show up in the reflections of the plate but i added a room environment so that is reflected off the plate. Another thing I did was increase the exposure and since I did not want to change the lighting I did this in post......let me know what you think

High res version at http://mehmasachdeva.com/resources/fruitBowl_Color_Comp_02.jpg

[TLobes]

Hey all,

I can't believe how amazing the quality is of the pieces that comes out of these challenges. It's interesting to see how people interpret each one in their own way. There is so much I need to learn and I'm glad there is a place to do so and get crits. Jeremy, thanks a ton for these challenges.

Here is my version of the hallway scene. I was going for a painterly feel, or maybe I just hope that now ;). I tried to do everything procedurally without prerendered texture maps (except for the brick & painting diffuse maps and decal dirtmaps). The scene is lit by a directional light outside, a couple of fill lights, and a ton of object-centric key lights. Rendered in mr w/ raytracing, no fg/gi. The decals on the walls were placed using a 3D texture placement camera inside layered texture nodes. The brush stroke feel of some of the surfaces were made by the mi_bump_flakes node. The sky and light haze were added in PS.

http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee311/TLobes/hallway_challenge.jpg

[jeremybirn]

mehma - Great job! I don't know if you're still looking for more feedback or if you're done. I like the reflectivity in some of the surfaces, but it would be even better if there were more of an off-screen environment to reflect, just an env map of a room or a studio or even just an off-screen window could help. I think it could go darker underneath the plate, but not quite as dark at points of contact between fruit and the plate. A grape cuts through the plate on the left. You might frame the composition a little tighter around the bowl.

TLobes - Good start! I think the walls look too uniformly bright. Along the back wall, I don't get the sense that the area under the stair landing is any darker than the top part under the windows, that landing would be blocking most of the light. Perhaps there's light coming from too many directions, and you don't need as much coming from behind the camera, probably you need more work with shadows as well if you want it dark, spooky, and contrasty.

-jeremy

[mehma]

hey jeremy.....well I thought I was done...:( but I guess you can always tweak your work more.....I have added a room using a dome for the reflectivity but blurred it....i don't know for some reaon it did not look quite correct ( I will send you the image with the room reflections). I will get back to the fruit bowl and tweak the image a little more for sure......in the meantime I also started work on the Kitchen scene. My tools were the same Maya and After Effects. For this image I used caustics with final gather. I like the output so far....but am not sure if this fits the script......the feedback is great and really helps so thanks jeremy!!

High Resolution Image @ http://mehmasachdeva.com/resources/Kitchen_01.jpg

[msouza]

Hello there shading lovers. :)

Hi Jeremy. It's very nice to have someone with a very good eye giving sugestions on pictures on a serious topic like that. Everybody learns more and more.

I don't have time to study or test things cause i have to work all the time. So, i have to learn with the jobs. lol (not the best way, it's the brute force way...)

But i will try to participate more on this topic. I like the scenes a lot, and i will try some. I am downloading the eye scene and will be posting soon. :)

Thanks for sharing experience. :)

[kanooshka]

Hi Everyone, Great work being posted! I'm posting my latest image now, but don't worry I'll comment on everyone's later tonight.

I completely started over with my lighting setup in the fruit scene. I'm now using all dmap shadows (Except for the sun) or lights with no shadows at all with occlusion. I also hand painted all the fruit textures this time. Excuse the big image I'm not sure how to scale an image down without getting scaling artifacts. This was also my first venture of compositing with Digital Fusion so I hope it came out well!

http://www.dockay.com/CGTalk/LightingChallenges/01_fruit/fruit_composite_03.jpg

[kanooshka]

Time for some well deserved critiques for my fellow lighters.

Michal-w: Good start! A couple suggestions for you if you don't mind. The main thing I would like to see worked on is the reflection. I think something a little more interesting for a shape, curves, slashes etc. to create a less centered area of attention. I'd also like to see more variation in the color of the white of the eye, maybe starting with more of a darker gray color. I look forward to an update!

mehma (Fruit): Great progress! I love the way the cloth looks, it has a great flowing glow to it. The one thing I would really love to see would be to have some violet light being cast from the cloth onto the plate and fruit, at least with some kicks on the fruit. Hope my suggestion helps!

TLobes: Good start! I love the highlights glinting off of the chair. I'd love to see the same kind of highlights on other objects i.e. the wooden posts and corners of some of the walls. I'd also like to see the objects under the table in more shadow. If you look at the leg of the chair near the phone you can notice that it touches in the shadow but the chair does not any change in lighting from the directional light's shadow. here's only one more thing I'd like to see adjusted. If there were some more contrast with less fill lights I would love to see how it could change the mood of the image. Look forward to your next post!

Mehma(Kitchen): Great scene! I love the shader on the wine bottle, looks fantastic. Just a couple suggestions. First off, with the way the blur and composition is set up my eye feels a little crowded. My eye gets drawn to the wine bottle/chair first which is placed in the bottom corner of the image which seems to trap my eye there. I'd like to see a change in that. Lightingwise you have great ambience so far. I see an interesting artifact or reflection on the back of the chair, it seems to be a small black circle, I'm not exactly what it is. I'd also like to see a little bit of fill light on the back of the chair where the shadow is being cast. I would imagine it would be about as bright as the far wall. Cheers!

[pedroconti]

Hi all, this is my scene using 3d max, mental ray and after effects!
C&C are most wellcome!
tks!
http://i34.tinypic.com/1621ppe.jpg

[mehma]

Jeremy - mehma - Great job! I don't know if you're still looking for more feedback or if you're done. I like the reflectivity in some of the surfaces, but it would be even better if there were more of an off-screen environment to reflect, just an env map of a room or a studio or even just an off-screen window could help. I think it could go darker underneath the plate, but not quite as dark at points of contact between fruit and the plate. A grape cuts through the plate on the left. You might frame the composition a little tighter around the bowl.
Dan - mehma (Fruit): Great progress! I love the way the cloth looks, it has a great flowing glow to it. The one thing I would really love to see would be to have some violet light being cast from the cloth onto the plate and fruit, at least with some kicks on the fruit. Hope my suggestion helps!

Jeremy and Dan.....thank you very much for the comments and critiques....and though I thought I was done I did manage to tweak it a little more......and incorporate the comments....I am still a fresher when it comes to mental ray....but I think I am getting the hang of it. Dan the violet spill on the plate was a great idea.....definitely adds to the image, thanks!!

High Res Version http://www.mehmasachdeva.com/resources/FruitBowl_HR_04.jpg

[visua]

My first take on the god 'ol fruitbowl, maya/mental ray:

http://www.nicz.net/fruitbowl.jpg

[visua]

Update, the orange lost some shading I'll fix that later on:

http://www.nicz.net/fruitcomp.jpg

[silvia]

So I finally upgraded my home PC to something a bit spiffy, and thought I could test it by redoing the "Under the Walkboard" challenge, which had kicked my butt. So here is the new result, I hope you guys like it!

http://silviapalara.com/portfolio/new.jpg

[jeremybirn]

Silvia - Great job on the coral, that looks stunning! The caustic-type pattern on the bottom looks nice. I can't tell what the blockiness is on the left side of the ground, maybe a really low-res shadow artifact? Nice detail on the fish. I think it needs more of a sense of depth, maybe more murk with distance could fade in, maybe a more shallow DOF, maybe more particles in the way - anything to keep it from looking like the world's clearest swimming pool. The water surface above us looks strange, in the places where it should be reflecting what's below it, it seems to reflect a white color brighter than what's below. If you can't get the reflection on the area outside snell's window, then at least try making it go darker in the other areas?

visua - Good start! The reflections look strange, not just from the grain but from the way the bananas reflect onto the surface under the plate, right through the plate, and the way some fruits have reflections in the plate but I don't see a reflection of the orange. Other than completing and de-bugging it, it looks like a really solid start.

mehma - That looks great! The shaders are looking good. You could use more texture on the bananas and the apple leaf, and some reflections on the plate (such as orange reflecting under the orange.) The lighting is getting a little bit confusing in the directionality. If the light's supposed to be coming from the right, you might reduce the rims on the left side, boost the light from the right a little, and reduce the fill from the left a little. The bottom of the orange could use a little more bounce light though.
(On the kitchen, it looks mostly very dark, except for a funny reflection of the trash can on the wall? Maybe try lighting with the main light sources to get the direction and color down, before you start with any GI or FG?)

pedroconti - Looking good! I think the edges are a little dark and gloomy, a more magical warm glow from the fire, contrasting with the blue, might help make the room look more warm and inviting. Maybe you could get more reflections in the window glass? The fire itself looks great. The edge of the fireplace has some triangles in it, and probably doesn't need so intense a blue fill or so much bounce from the red stocking on the right.

kanooshka - Nice look overall. The area around the cherries looks too dark and contrasty, maybe I expect bounce light and reflections around there, as with other dark areas of the fruits. The tangency between the apple leaf and the fruit behind it is a problem. Maybe a softer shadow and more fill light could help the cloth look more translucenct?

-jeremy

[MinaRagaie]

@Silvia the abberation on the edges of the caustic pattern is really neat :thumbsup:
how did you get that working??
the image lakes some atmosphere and some surfaces looks too clean (the boat)
some of the fish could use more deformation that digitally perfect model looks kindda stiff.

[silvia]

Thank you for the awsome feedback guys! The caustics pattern isn't real caustics at all, it is a caustics texture mapped to the color channel of a directional light. The water reflections have been giving me a lot of trouble, I will have to render in layers, and see which one is messing things up. Thanks again, that helps a lot!

[visua]

visua - Good start! The reflections look strange, not just from the grain but from the way the bananas reflect onto the surface under the plate, right through the plate, and the way some fruits have reflections in the plate but I don't see a reflection of the orange. Other than completing and de-bugging it, it looks like a really solid start.


Thanx for bringing the reflection-issue to my attention Jeremy coz I haven't
actually noticed it myself but now I can clearly see that someting's off ;)

And go figure the "visible in reflections" and "vis in refractions" flag were turned
off on like half the fruit, the plate and even the drape. Now things are going
to look even better! :D

[jojo1975]

Ciao Silvia !!! happy to see you again.
the render is wonderful. the water seems very "tropical" the displacement is impressive which render did you use ? Try to worl on the texture of the boat and try to give some "deep" or background since for now it seems a clean pool water (it's really impressive since now keep going)
Giorgio

[Wegg]

http://www.eggington.net/%7Ewegg/4Plate/Plate_F.png

Here is my attempt. I forced myself to not use any image maps and there is only 1 light. Its all textured and lit with the built in shaders and GI in messiah:studio. <my baby>
I didn't see anyone attempt a Kiwi Fruit so I thought I'd give that a shot. :arteest: Turned out ok I think. I don't like my Orange. Odd to have the bumps built into the model like that. Makes it real tricky.

Thanks for creating these challenges. Its great to see the same models rendered out of all these different packages and interpreted by so many talented artists.

Might try some of the harder ones next.

[jeremybirn]

Wegg -

Great job! Sorry about the way the orange is modeled. I love the fur on the kiwi-like fruit in the back. The lighting is good, but I think a few areas (between the cherries, under the orange...) are going too black, I'd expect more fill light on reflective surfaces right over that white plate. The fabric background I think you could do more with if you had lighting that really picked up on the wrinkles and shaded and defined them. The apple could probably use a litte less bump, and it would help the pear and grapes if they didn't match colors so perfectly. The top of the banana tip ends very abruply and almost looks as if it's cutting through the apple.

-jeremy

[Wegg]

http://www.eggington.net/%7Ewegg/4Plate/Plate_K.png

Thank you for the feedback Jeremy.

Worked on it some more. Made another attempt on the Orange and I think it looks better now. I bumped up the GI a touch to get more bounce in under those cherries. Just a nudge. I didn't really mess with the background too much. Other feedback I got was that the whole thing seemed flat so what I tried to do was use a spotlight to bring more focus on the fruit and less on the background. Toned down the bump on the apple. Made the pear a different color. I put a displacement on the very tip of the banana to make it feel more organic.

Did lots of other little tweaks based on feedback I got from other people. I think it is looking better. . . but its one of those things you could probably spend forever obsessing over. :-)

[silvia]

I liked the orange better the way it was before, but that's just me...

[bugzor]

nah, the new orange is better, nice render wegg

[kanooshka]

Wegg: Great image I love it! The one critique I have for it is about your specularity. If you compare the brightness of the specular highlights on the fruit the orange, apple and pear are very similar. But when you look at the grapes they have much darker highlights and on grapes I would expect to see some more reflection. Keep it up!

[Forgott3n]

Hey all. With the exception of a minor attempt at the FSM, this is my fist time taking a challenge seriously.

Armed with a little bit of knowledge (and luck) I'm working on the haunted hallway. Right now this is a very early lighting, and the texturing will soon follow. It features 3 "key" spotlights as a soft yellow with linear decay at an intensity of 4.0 each. One back light with a heavy blue at 0.15 facing behind the camera. Windows have a material with full ambiance, incandescence, and colour for FG (defaults).

http://i36.tinypic.com/30u2tud.jpg

I wish to become a lot better at lighting and texturing, so I love great (even harsh) criticism!

Shout out to Jeremy Birn for the book.


Oh and whats the proper workflow for final gather? I know there is a way to render it once and save it but I'm unfamiliar on how to do it.

[TenjinVisual]

This time I'm aiming for the SSS shaders in mental ray. The light rig is set up with some different color temperatures. Next step is to start with the materials and textures...

http://www.tenjin.se/hj/080807fruit.jpg
(http://www.tenjin.se/hj/080807fruit.jpg)

[kanooshka]

Forgott3n: Welcome! I'm pretty sure freezing final gather only works if you're lighting/texturing is going to stay the same. Though the final gather points come from the camera they hold color data as well. Therefore, I believe early in the process freezing final gather isn't really an option. I would first not use final gather at all and get my key lighting exactly the way I wanted it before moving on to final gather. If you would like faster final gather renders try turning down your point density and/or quality for your test renders.

TenjinVisual: Looks good so far, looking forward to some more progress.

I have a question myself for whomever would be able to answer it. I'm working on the kitchen scene in Maya right now and I have it pretty much the way I'd like it except for the fact that I would like to darken under the table. I tried using a negative light but I'm not exactly sure what type of light to use. I tried an area light but that did not seem to work just right. Maybe a volume light?

[MinaRagaie]

I have a question myself for whomever would be able to answer it. I'm working on the kitchen scene in Maya right now and I have it pretty much the way I'd like it except for the fact that I would like to darken under the table. I tried using a negative light but I'm not exactly sure what type of light to use. I tried an area light but that did not seem to work just right. Maybe a volume light?
a volume light emitting ambient only (no diffuse no specular)
if you're not getting the falloff you need you might wanna try using an array of volume lights (which can also be useful for adding varyation :) )
as a side note: negative lights darkens the illumination hitting a surface evenly.. they don't allow you to specify wich light source to darken. you'll end up desaturating colors!!
just try to use them "lightly"... if you don't get what you want... check you're shadows and light fall off again... maybe some shadows need to be sharper.. or some lights need to falloff faster.
Hope that helps... classmate :)

-Mina

[Wegg]

http://www.eggington.net/%7Ewegg/4Plate/Plate_M_B.png

This is very addicting. Every suggestion I get just adds more and more layers of things I can fiddle with to improve the image. Thank you again for this Challenge and all your great feedback.

[kanooshka]

I couldn't wait to get to the next challenge so I finally found the time! This here is the Four Scripts Challenge. I chose to use script #1
(http://www.dockay.com/CGTalk/LightingChallenges/02_Scripts/Four_Scripts_01.jpg) MEG glides through the house, precisely following Hank’s
directions to the washroom. She passes through A WELL-APPOINTED
KITCHEN. MEG pauses to glance at A BOTTLE OF VINTAGE MERLOT
sitting unopened on the table. She smiles in anticipation and
continues through the moonlit expanse.
For this scene I did not use FG or GI but I did use Caustics. For lights I used all spots except for the moon which is a directional light. All shadows are dmap shadows except for the moon which is raytraced. For fog I used Mental Ray's parti-volume shader. Rendering time was about 2:16:00 for a 2048x1536 render with blurred reflections, a caustic pass and soft shadows from the moon. If anyone would like a further breakdown just ask =) Critiques are welcomed!

High Res 2048x1536 (http://www.dockay.com/CGTalk/LightingChallenges/02_Scripts/Four_Scripts_01.jpg)

http://www.dockay.com/CGTalk/LightingChallenges/02_Scripts/Four_Scripts_01_scaled.jpg (http://www.dockay.com/CGTalk/LightingChallenges/02_Scripts/Four_Scripts_01.jpg)

[Leotril]

Hi.. thanks for the suggestions heres a new one originally render at 1k downsize a bit.. render about 2 hours with GI+ FG and some lights.. only 2 secondary passes occlussion and incadescence.. final comp and glow in AE , color corrections in PS.. im all up for C&C for my next update ;)

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/neon%20update/AEexport1-1final2_768.jpg

[TenjinVisual]

Some more tweaks

http://www.tenjin.se/hj/080811fruitBowl.jpg

[kanooshka]

@Leotril I love the colors and glow around the lights. I also really like the reflection on the hood of the car. Great job with that! I'm not too sure about your new composition. As it is right now I would expect your subject to be the truck, but you have the parking sign right in front of it. I'd also like to see some darks. Currently I see you have a gray tone overlayed over everything. I think this could be easily accomplished by working with the levels with the image you already have. Keep it up!

@TenjinVisual I'm liking your progress, I'm a big fan of your apple shader/texture. I'm a little curious what that red under the bowl is. It looks like a caustic reflection, but the bowl doesn't look like it is recieving enough light to cast them. I'd also like to see some more of that blue light illuminating the fruit and cloth more, the blue in the upper corner is a little distracting. I also like the texture you used on the cloth, it gives it some real texture. Looking forward to more progress.

PS:

@ Mina Thanks for the tip! I forgot to mention that in my last post =) I tried many different setups with volume lights and I don't know if I was going about it all wrong but no matter what I tried I couldn't really get the effect I wanted. What I ended up doing was making a separate occlusion pass with just the table,chairs and floor and I used an occlusion shader with a much larger search distance and this seemed to work in this occasion. The help was much appreciated :thumbsup:

[Leotril]

@kanooshka .. thank for ur comments .. ur right about the scene needing more dark areas also the composition could be better for sure, about the gray on surfaces probably more lights here and there could improve on that ill check the level settings in PS to see if that helps aint got many passes but i se what i can do..

I like how ur Four Scripts scene is coming alone.. teh caustics are not that clear to mee try to work on those and the wood material could use some tweaking it looks a bit too procedural.. i like ur lighting .

Cheers

[kanooshka]

@Leotril Thanks for the comment, much appreciated. I'm glad to help out :D

Here's a fur test for the next challenge #03 Hairy Hare. I notice the fur looks a little more like straw than fur and I think that is because it needs more translucency to it. Again, spotlights only, DMap shadows, no FG/GI. For now, I'm going to go back and fix the suggestions I was given about the fruit bowl.

http://www.dockay.com/CGTalk/LightingChallenges/03_hairy_hare/Fur_test01.jpg

[silvia]

I think it needs specular more than translucency.

[Wegg]

Tenjin: I love your plate! Killer caustics and refraction etc. It will be fun to see you bring this all together. Keep it up.

[kanooshka]

I have an update for the fruit bowl rendering right now I'll be posting that later tonight until then some more fur testing!

Thanks for the suggestion silvia. I did end up tightening the specularity. I also added some ambient lighting in the center to fake some translucency.

http://www.dockay.com/CGTalk/LightingChallenges/03_hairy_hare/Fur_Test_02.jpg

[kanooshka]

Hope I'm not spamming, I'll try to tone it down a bit. Here's an update for the fruit bowl. I changed the fill light from in the room. I also changed the cloth shader, the anisotropic specularity and diffuse roughness made a big difference. I'm curious if anyone knows of a Oren Nayar shader for maya 2008 64 bit?

I also added a new layer which I sort if thought up on my own, it's a sort of GI/bloom pass. I used volume lights around all of my fruit casting ambient light, thanks to Jeremy, and then I took a basic composite of the scene, adjusted the levels then blurred and used this as a mask on my GI/Bloom pass. It creates a very interesting effect. Once again, this was composited with Fusion.

Hope you like it!

http://dockay.com/CGTalk/LightingChallenges/01_fruit/Fruit_composite_04.jpg

[silvia]

I re-framed the image (once again!) because I didn't think the last composition was very interesting. I think this one works a bit better. I tried to add some depth to it. Thank you for your comments.

http://silviapalara.com/portfolio/newer.jpg

[Wegg]

kanooshka: The fruit is looking awesome. The grapes and apple especially. I think your cloth is looking a little too much like a thick leather at the moment though. :-/ Bit distracting. Its fun seeing these evolve. Great stuff.

silvia: Looks awesome. I can't wait to find time to try this one myself. The one thing that strikes me as odd is the old tire. It seems as though it is not being lit in the same way as the othe objects in the scene. With all the light being refracted and bounced around under there I would think/assume that nothing could ever get that black. Especially when you consider how corroded and "old" the lit side of the tire is.

[kanooshka]

@Wegg: Thanks for the comment Wegg! I definately agree with you. I've really been struggling with cloth and I don't really know why. I really need to get myself to sit down and study how cloth behaves. I've looked at some images but clearly not enough.

@silvia: This piece is looking fantastic! The fish and rocks are awesome and I really like the bottom of the boat except the reflections on the bottom of the boat are very distracting and maybe a bit too strong. Maybe some reflection blur would fix this. I also agree with Wegg about the tire in the bottom, I'd expect the shadowed side to be about as bright as the shadow sides of the rocks. Great work so far!

[frayo]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/frayo/2761687820/http://lh3.ggpht.com/frayo0/SKOUG7TcJuI/AAAAAAAAABQ/sXaWqaB2pfU/frayo_fb_semi-final_01.jpghttp://lh3.ggpht.com/frayo0/SKOUG7TcJuI/AAAAAAAAABQ/sXaWqaB2pfU/frayo_fb_semi-final_01.jpghttp://frayo.startlogic.com/cg/wip/frayo_fb_semi-final_01.jpgHi guys.

So this is my first real post here in the forum.

I see a lot of great works here. But mostly, it was Wegg's images in this thread that inspired me to join in the challenge. I've been working on this for 2 days now...and I swear, I thought I was done! Surprise surprise! After sleeping it over (rendering) I'm not entirely happy with it.

http://www.red-filament.com/cg/wip/frayo_fb_semi-final_01.jpg

http://www.red-filament.com/cg/wip/frayo_fb_semi-final_01.jpg

Is it the lighting?
The grapes material has diffinitely something to do with it....
I'd be glad to hear your cc's and suggestions. I'm aiming at photorealism...there must be a number of things I can do to improve this image.

I've changed some geometry here and there. Done in 3ds Max using PS and Vray and some color correction in PS.

Thanks

[silvia]

Ok I think I should be pretty much done here. Thank you for the great suggestions everybody!http://silviapalara.com/portfolio/newest.jpg

[Z.O.V]

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/6811/testrender02composqp2.jpg

It's rendered by mentalray with sun&sky/miaMaterials.

Except the empty sky, is there any room to improve this image from this angle?

I don't like the tiny little rocks. First they are so small that you can't make good texture. Second they fill the image so much that I can't just assign a lambert shader and hope they will look good. Finally they render slooooow. They almost take 60%(even more) of the render time.

Any suggestions on rendering tiny but clumped objects?

[Wegg]

frayo: Nice. Your cloth has that velvety feel to it that makes me want to reach out and touch. The Kiwi's look good. The apple looks a touch "plastic". Maybe a slight bump and noise in the spec? The banas and pear look really good but could do with a touch more bruising and color variation maybe. Its addicting isn't it! :) I had to force myself to stop.

silvia: I think the intense black in the bucket and the reflection on the underside of the boat are the two biggest distractions for me. But its a very nice image.

Z.O.V: I'd love to take your pic and mess with it in post. Change the color curves to really make that sunlight feel BRIGHT and warm. Right now it feels like a slightly overcast day but I can see that the sky is blue and clear. With the rocks. . . could you apply a noisy displacement to them to break up their profile? They look like little sugar cubes right now. Probably kill your render time even more though. :-/

[kanooshka]

@Silvia:Definately much better! the tire and the bucket still pop out a lot to me. Are you using a zdepth pass? If so you might have to work with the distances so not too much is pure white or black so you have just a little bit of variation in distances. Either way, great work! =)

@Z.O.V.: I'm not sure how the scene is setup by I know that in MR the more separate objects in the scene the longer it takes to work with BSP before rendertime. Try taking all the rocks and combining into one object if they aren't already. I really like the texturing. I'd like to see a strong light source from somewhere, right now everything is fairly evenly lit making it look a little flat. Could you turn off final gather and just post a render of the sunlight so we can see how that looks?

[silvia]

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/6811/testrender02composqp2.jpg

It's rendered by mentalray with sun&sky/miaMaterials.

Except the empty sky, is there any room to improve this image from this angle?

I don't like the tiny little rocks. First they are so small that you can't make good texture. Second they fill the image so much that I can't just assign a lambert shader and hope they will look good. Finally they render slooooow. They almost take 60%(even more) of the render time.

Any suggestions on rendering tiny but clumped objects?

I don't think the empty sky is a problem because the picture is already quite busy. One suggestion I would give you is to lower the camera just a bit, so that it is lookig up to the train (which you would do if you were actually standing on the tracks taking a picture of a train) because right now it gives me a bit of "toy train" feeling. The wood of the tracks isn't weathered enough in my opinion, it should be more discolored, less veined. For the pebbles, did you actually model them one by one by hand? :surprised I suggest using a good displacement map instead, and maybe some modeled pebble here and there to give it randomness. Also the ground texture looks a little off, is it supposed to be sand?

[TenjinVisual]

The tweaking continues :)
http://www.tenjin.se/hj/080814fruit.jpg

[kanooshka]

Finally, after sitting down and really studying some fabric I created some that I like. :thumbsup:

http://www.dockay.com/CGTalk/LightingChallenges/01_fruit/Fruit_composite_05.jpg

[frayo]

kanooshka: nice looking cloth. how did you achieve this?

wegg: thanks for the compliment and more importantly thanky ou for the observations and the suggestions. you are right about the apple and the pear and the banana. sometimes when you stare at and work long enough on one thing, the brain just stops seeing what's really there. instead, it only sees what you want to see.

Z.O.V.: this is a nice image. i think your scene could use some atmosphere (fog). the ground is too bright for my taste.

[kanooshka]

Thanks for the compliment Frayo. For the shader I used a diffuse roughness of 1 with a diffuse color driven by the normal angle. When the angle is facing towards the camera I used a dark red and when it's away a pink. I then applied a fractal as a bump map and a very subtle glossy reflection with a slight anisotropic effect.

[olle]

Im trying to learn mentalray. Practice on some fruit :)

http://animate.se/download/file.php?id=20826

[frayo]

http://www.red-filament.com/cg/wip/frayo_fb_final.jpg

http://www.red-filament.com/cg/wip/frayo_fb_final.jpg

that's it guys. i have to call this done. 17 hrs to render a 1024x786 image in a dual 2.0ghz Opteron is just too much time waiting....with only so subtle changes! anyway, i am now happy with the grape material though, so i'll settle. i need to proceed with other things.:p

i've been using vray in 3ds max for 3 years now and i really love the renderer.....but waiting sooooooo long just to see a change in the material when you change a setting is just too much. max needs a (fast) interactive renderer, just like what they have in XSi.

oh well....

http://frayo.startlogic.com/cg/wip/frayo_fb_final.jpg

[Wegg]

frayo: 17 hours!?! Wow.

Your image does look nice but that is a VERY long time to wait for a render. My messiah:studio render only takes 20 or so minutes. . . but I have 8 cores so that does make a bid difference.

It is looking very nice though. Well done.

leffa: That red cloth just about blew me off my chair. Didn't think my Monitor could get that bright. :-) Might want to think about toning that down so that we can concentrate on the fruit. I really like your Orange. I struggled with that. You nailed it. The rest of the fruit are not quite as strong. I can't quite put my finger on why though. The Banana is pretty good but the others just lack refinement.

kanooshka: Much better on the cloth. I love how the bananas are bouncing light around on that apple. Cool stuff.

TenjinVisual: I love the canvase and the cool red transparent place with its crazy caustics. The rest is getting there. Keep going fellow fruit addict. :arteest:

[frayo]

Wegg: yes. it's crazy! i guess i just wanted to see how it would look like to if i'd use the maximum setting for the GI solution. and would you believe....? i said i was done, right. i actually took another shot at it (using vray's physical camera) It does affect how colors are produced, although, mainly i was after the lense distortion ang DOF...but was not happy with the result.yes, i'm an addict!

leffa: i like your orange too!

kanooshka: i tried your approach with the cloth. i couldn't make it happen. what renderer are you using?

[mirmel]

Hi everybody!:)

Here's my attempt at the fruit bowl scene!
I used maya and rendered using mentalRay,
I shaded grapes using the sss shader of mr (never used before :-),
Light set: a keyLight, an areaLight put behind the window, and some fillLights setting around the scene.
What do you think about it!
I'd like to refine it and I need feedback: critics and comments are wellcame
thankyou!
m
ps:
kanooshka: great work!..and your fabric shader..I'd like to study it :)
silvia: very impressive!

http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/8573/fruit1zt6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[K. Scott Gant]

Here is just a test render of the kitchen scene. No textures, just getting the GI lighting right. But boy, what a pain the OBJ data was in Modo.

Just rendered in Modo with a physical sun set to about 5:00 PM and GI turned on.


http://img.skitch.com/20080818-1immdxmrxkqyns2qay77rusct8.jpg

[kanooshka]

Since I got a lot of feedback about my cloth I figured I could post some screencaps with an explanation. But first I'd like to critique some people's work.

@leffa: Your orange is fantastic, you captured that fruit wonderfully! I do feel that each fruit looks a little inconsitant from each other. The orange highlights have more of a gray color as opposed to the bright hilights of the apple when I would expect to see them similar. I also would like to see some more lighting variation in the cloth.

@frayo: Wow..17 hours! There must be some settings you can turn down that would at least let you get test renders done faster. Maybe turn antialising down, or trace depth maybe even turning your resolution down. I really like the grapes and your cloth is pretty good. Maybe a bump map on the cloth? There's also a very bright highlight on the plate, I'm not sure what that's from.

@Wegg: Thanks! =D

@Mirmel: Thanks!! Great start to the scene. I really like the left side of the image. I'd really like to see some darker values on the plate and underneath the cherry, grapes and orange. Maybe an occlusion pass? I'd also suggest turning the scatter radius down on the grapes and giving it a much deeper red color. As for the orange I'd like to see a darker terminator side to create some more volume to the shape. Look forward to an update!

@K. Scott Gant: Good start to the scene I look forward to some more progress. Maybe you'd like to create a shadow that is less parallell with the table. My eye seems to get pulled straight accross the picture.

On to the cloth explanation....
http://dockay.com/CGTalk/LightingChallenges/01_fruit/Velvet_tut_02.jpg

This here is my shader network for the cloth shader. I used a mia_material because maya software does not have a diffuse shader with a diffuse roughness parameter but if you use other software an Oren Nayar shader will do the trick. Into the bump I plugged in a fractal with a very high frequency to give the feel of small particles of lint and to give variation to the light.

http://dockay.com/CGTalk/LightingChallenges/01_fruit/Velvet_tut_01.jpg

Into the diffuse color slot I inserted this ramp which is driven by a surface sampler. As the cloth folds away from the camera the shader becomes more pink. I plugged a fractal into the alpha Gain of the ramp to give variation to the color as you can see in my shading network. To give the feel of light being absorbed and dispersed into the cloth increased the roughness of the diffuse to 1. You can also see there is a slight specularity with very suddle glossy reflections as well as a manually adjusted fresnel effect.

Hope this is helpful to everyone!

[visua]

Some small progress, I will give the plums and the orange some more lovin and of course tweak the uv's of the second banana so they don't match:

http://www.nicz.net/fruitcomp2.jpg

[patrickrowan]

Hey guys this is my first post. Its a work in progress. I still have to tweak the shaders and maps. Well everything still needs to be tweaked. I really wanted to play around with the hues and values of sunsets and strong saturated bounce light. So this is what i have came up with so far.
Its all in camera,classic 3 point light rig, no GI, no raytracing except on bowl (and AO). rendered using max,mentalray.
Any suggestions ,comments on its direction would be great.
Cheers.

[ScallyFox]

Nice fruits here, guys:thumbsup:

frayo, great shading!!

Here is my try on candle scene:

http://keep4u.ru/imgs/b/080819/7c/7c44b25c5527c4ea84.jpg

C&C are welcome:)

[mirmel]

kanooshka: thanks for your observations and comments! I'll try to do better ...by the way I take a look at your velvet explanation(thank you :applause:), I'll exploit it!:D
scallyFox: beautiful work!Nice looking wax candles!

bye
m:)

[FelixThePuerto]

Hey guys, Im pretty new to the cg challenges and just wanted to ask you guys what is the easiest way of knowing when the next challenge begins, and the end date as well. I want to join the next one but Im a little lost on how to find out about all the details.

Thanks

[Doerge]

Hello all!
I rarely post but, I couldn't resist when these challenges came up again..

Still WIP. Everything is done with procedural textures from Maya. I tried to render to 32bit but I was a bit too fast when converting to 8bit in PS.. doesn't really look good : /
Unfortunately my scene crashed after I rendered out this one so I'll have to redo some of it, including apple- and banana-shader :(

Things on my to-do list:
Wrong spec's showing up in things like cherrys, apple and orange... doesn't ticking off that "emit specular" option on lights work with MR in Maya 8.5?
A combination of fill-light and reflection of the pear kills the apples shape... will have to deal with that.
New green grapes shader. Doesn't look good : /
Brown shader for thingies that comes out of fruit (I dont know the correct word for it...) is too.... lambertian and flat... probably a bump-map and some coloradjustment will do it.
Plums in background: Still 1st version shader.. needs a lot of work!
Higher approximations on cloth :P

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n225/pimp_spoon/fruit2.jpg

Oh and Jeremy... your second edition of your book ROCKS! I bought it last week and it's very usefull, even though I have only read to the 3rd chapter. So thank you for writing it! :)

[kanooshka]

@Doerge: Welcome and good start! Are you using mental ray materials? I've found that if using mental ray materials the specularity will appear even if you tick emit specular off. You may have to do a pass with no reflectivity on your materials and then a pass with reflectivity and only the lights you want to have specularity.

[Doerge]

yeah I am... using only mia actually.. hmm.. crappy if theres no built-in work around :S

But I thought about your solution too and that might be the way I'm gonna go :thumbsup:

[TenjinVisual]

Ok, it's updated. Not 100% but I don't have more time to play with it. More to learn in the 3d world ;)
http://www.tenjin.se/hj/080819fruitBowl.jpg

[mirmel]

Hi!
Here's an update and I think that I like it (..maybe the final?)
the cloth is inspired by kanooshka's shader (but I used a simple blinn shader), I used only procedural textures overall
I'm waiting for comments :) thanks
bye!
m

http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/8303/fruit2jx8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Phantom-vfx]

hi everyone , here is my entry for the fruitbowl:
http://phantom-vfx.com/gallery/Stills/fruitbowl.jpgMaya,MR some tweaks in Fusion

kanooshka: thanks for the Cloth explanation , looks nice, Ill try for sure !

mirmel : nice render , I like the mood of you scene.

c&c welcome, please

[AleRuiz]

Yeah... this is my first challenge... Here's my render...

http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/1286/compofinalkw2.th.jpg (http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/1286/compofinalkw2.jpg)

Critics and comments are welcome... i will modify them as soon as possible ;)
Textures made in photoshop using some real photos. For the lights, two area lights and one general skylight. Lots of SSS materials and glossy reflections. Post is only a very subtle Ambient Oclussion pass. I´ve started at 6pm and came out with this pic at 2am :p

[jeremybirn]

I feel bad that I haven't posted here in a while. I had no idea in starting this on-going challenge thread that it would be all fruitbowls, forever. Here's some feedback on the posts from this page:

AleRuiz - Welcome! The textures look great overall. All my comments are very minor. I think the bananas don't need so much bump on the brown spots, and could use texture on the top surfaces. The apple looks great but has a lot of diagonal lines starting on the lower front. The apple leaf could use a little impression of translucency, but the left cherry stems are going too bright and could be toned down a little. Grapes are looking very nice, the far left one is cutting through the plate a little. In terms of visual interest, I'm wondering if something could be done to make the piece more eye-catching, maybe there could be a little more color variety between the key and the fill? Maybe there could be real reflections of the off-screen space around the set, at least a more defined window reflection on the key side? Maybe some of the light could create rims on some of the fruit, or cast more defined shadows? You have a solid, smooth, well-rendered scene already, but I just wonder if something couldn't make it more unique?

Phantom-vfx - Welcome! Good start on the fruit bowl. It looks very uniformly bright. Maybe you could choose one key light direction, and put most of the light from that direction. Make sure the key isn't right near the camera, and tone down or delete other lights. Some more shadows and reflections would help define the scene as well.

mirmel - Nice work! The cloth looks good in the mid-ground. In the foreground is has moire patterns. The key light shadow seems strange, especially around the cherries it looks like it turns into a big soft shape around both cherries instead of really being focused at the base of each cherry where it should concentrate. On the plate, I see a tiny hint of a reflection of a banana, but no reflection of the orange or other things that look even brighter. The outside edge of the plate is a dark band running all the way around, it could use a little kick of light, especially on the right. The fill light levels on the fruits could be balanced out a bit, you have a lot of fill or bounce on the left side of the orange and grapes and apple, but much less or none on the back fruits and pear. Especially on the orange, make sure the bounce light doesn't flatten it out too much and is shifted around so it isn't too frontal. You might try to get a little more impression of translucency on the apple leaf. The upper right where we see the edge of the cloth looks awkward to me, maybe the camera or framing could be tweaked to hide that, and a little more light could draw out details on the fabric wrinkles further into the composition?

TenjinVisual - Nice work! I'd like to see a new composition focusing more on the fruit. The reflection of the glass onto the cloth looks strange, the cloth doesn't look reflective anywhere else. If that red on the cloth was supposed to look like light filtering through the glass then make sure it gets darker in that area like a shadow, not lighter. Most of the fruit looks very flatly and frontally lit, see if you can swing the key around and get more shaping and more variety in the tones.

Doerge - Good start. Most of the fruit looks over-exposed and frontally lit, see if you can swing the key light around and get more shaping and more variety in the tones, so there's a bright side and a dark side to all the forms, with a transition in between.

-jeremy

[AleRuiz]

Thanks Jeremy, nice comments... i´ll be posting a new image very soon... about the geometry through geometry... it´s the original scene... the cherry´s go through the plate too... i´ve noticed that but thats the original scene... that´s why i dint touch it...
I´ll correct that and try other light settings...

[marcusmartinez]

hey guys,
I'm currently on vacation and I'm trying to do some of the former challenges... I started with the haunted hallway, since it seemed the easiest one, and it was also very appealing to me kind of...

the texturing work is all from pictures that I took in tokyo last weekend.

ok I'm gonna start with the next one now... which is.... I think the fruit bowl :D

hope you like it

[AleRuiz]

WOW Nice Render!... textures are really cool. Maybe there's not enough light coming from the light on top, the lighting is almost unnoticeable... but the rest... unbelievable.
By the way... Which renderer and software did you use?

[marcusmartinez]

ups, sorry, I should have written more about how I created this image.

I used maya and mental ray. I rendered out a beautypass and AO comped it in photoshop. then I also used the lens correction filter in photoshop to introduce a bit of distortion into the image, since it was rendered with a wide angle lens. I hope that is not against the rules of the lighting challenges...the light was all done with spotlights and one directional light for the sun. maya lightfog with solid fractal mapped in color. I used about 25 lights and did a lot with barn doors to accurately place the lights. all the lights use dmap shadows except for the sun.

AleRuiz: yes you are right, but then the image gets too bright for my taste. I really like it that way. maybe I should give the light more tint.

[jeremybirn]

Hey guys, Im pretty new to the cg challenges and just wanted to ask you guys what is the easiest way of knowing when the next challenge begins, and the end date as well. I want to join the next one but Im a little lost on how to find out about all the details.

Subscribe to the News thread:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=185&t=634553

You can even request e-mail updates, if you have your e-mail address set in your account here.

I think the next one will start on Friday, and it's going to be great.

-jeremy

[jeremybirn]

ScallyFox -

Nice job on the candles! I think the DOF effect looks a little strange: two of the candle flames are in perfect focus, but little else is.The background screen doesn't look very blurry compared to some things that are closer. Overall it might tone down that effect. The smoke should cover or distort what's seen through it. Right now I look through the smoke over the incense, and I see a version of the plate and even the stripe at the edge more clearly through the smoke than outside the smoke. It would be nice to get pools of light from each candle flame radiating out from each candle, so that the table was unevenly lit with brighter areas near the candle flames.


motoyuki -

Nice start! Good textures help a lot!

Let's talk a little about the brightness in the scene: the rear area is nice and bright, as you'd expect with all of that direct daylight streaming through the windows. Maybe the area around the rear window could be as blown-out as the area around the lightbulb now appears, with more glow or diffusion from the window? The area under the stair landing doesn't look much darker than the area above the stair landing, though, so I'm not getting the impression that all of the light is shadowed correctly. If you're using occlusion instead of shadows on some of your lights, then you'll need to take some of that light off the area under the stairs.

Moving into the center area, away from the window, the lightbulb looks surprisingly bright compared to the direct sunlight, and yet I don't see any light coming from it into the scene. Its light will be distinct from the daylight because it'll be warmer and it'll cut off in a shadow of the lampshade a few feet from the ceiling, not lighting above the height of the shade. You need that light from the bulb, but you don't need much other fill light, especially not much fill light coming from behind the camera. The upper part of the set and the side of the archway facing us could get a lot darker, and it would add to the haunted feeling.

Maybe if the surfaces had a little more specularity to them, you could work in little glints and rims and reflections of the window light streaking into the midground and foreground and breaking-up the floor a bit, and that way you could cut down on the amount of fill outside the window areas but still get a nice read to the scene?

-jeremy

[marcusmartinez]

hi.
Thank you jeremy for your critique. it was very helpful, I think the image is now more dramatic and haunting. it has more contrast and depth. I couldn't really manage to get the reflections the way I liked them, so I painted a reflection map and let it appear only where I thought the reflections were not conflicting with either the texture or the light...
I like it better now :applause:

[mirmel]

Hi!
Thank you very much Jeremy!
Your comments made better and my fruits!
and so here's the result..
In general I changed the camera position and I added a rim light to point out all objects, also I balanced fill light out.
Thanks!

ps:
motoyuki: beautiful work! very impressive.


http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/7102/fruit3th7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[jacqu]

hi, this is my new version. use maya software render and mr ao pass

http://features.cgsociety.org/gallerycrits/47482/47482_1219658485_large.jpg

[marcusmartinez]

hehe,
i like that picture. it's funny. I'm not an expert, but I think the very dark area around the plant need some loving. there would surely be some bounce light. also compositionwise it's not very nice that the pumpkin get cut in two by the shadow.

[psycosven]

here's a first stab at an old project.. #6 the candle one.. C&C always appreciated!

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/candles3.jpg

[psycosven]

Hey Mirmel, the render looks great!! only one thing about it that seems to bug me. The bottom left corner of the image, under the plate. I feel like it should be darker. Just feels like the plate floats, like there is not a defined shadow holding it to the cloth it is sitting on. Other than looks alright!

Hey Youjun! I agree with Motoyuki. The render you have looks nice, but there is no true abscense of light/color in a day light scene. I dunno if you have done much with GI renders, but using one in addition to the render you already have could possibly be a solution to the really dark splotches. And, with so little black space in the rest of the picture my eyes are immediatly drawn to the plant and pumpkin and I have to fight to keep them away from those spots.

I took classes, and did well.. but I have no real work experience to officially validate my opinions, so I post these as just mostly worthless opinions!

[jeremybirn]

psycosven - Good start on the candles. The composition would be improved if the two tallest candles weren't lined up like that. See if you can make the flames brighter. You'll need much softer shadows more realistic decay to get rid of the hard-edged circles around each candle base and get softer pools of light from the candles instead. See if you can reduce the amount of overall fill light, and get more illumination coming from the flames themselves.



youjun - Great! Nice textures, great start on everything. I think you could do more with color, and get the fill light into a different color than the sunlight, maybe some warmer tones for a feeling of autumn. A little more fill light around the base of the plant could make the plant look translucent. Warmer fill inside the pumpkin also could help with the impression of translucency. The texture of a stone wall on the right side of the frame looks as if the color map was photographed of a stone wall in direct sun, and it looks less natural in the shade.




mirmel - Great work, it's starting to look very painterly. It would be great to see the cloth under the plate get darker for a solid sense of contact, and a bit more warm light bringing out detail in the background cloth. A few things still look a little less believable: the orange has a rim running onto the lower left. On the bananas, it's hard to tell how many of the dark spots are black texture, and which dark spots are shadows, they have the same tone. A lot of the fruit and maybe the plate seem like they could use some reflectivity. Some of the grapes look hallow, as if they were translucent but only had an outer skin with light shinging straight through.



motoyuki - Better and better! You could go further with toning down the area under the stairs -- make that look dark any mysterious. I still don't see the illumination from the lightbulb clearly hitting the walls around it, it seems to get drowned out because it is so dim and green. The glow around the window looks too aparent where it overlaps with the staircase, and should be more cool blue like the window not yellow. The specularity is helping the walls, I'd like to see the highlights narrower, not so spread out, so they don't light so much of the walls.




-jeremy

[marcusmartinez]

hi everyone. as I said, I did the fruit bowl... so it's now time to present my fruitbowl, version 1.
Im not quite happy with the cloth and the reflections on the plate aren't any good. but I like the comped picture and the light. and I must say it was really funny to create the banana texture as described in jeremy's book... it was a mess!!! but I did it...

I used maya and mental ray (sss for the grapes, but I'm not really happy with them either)
I rendered out a lighting mpr + AO + depth and then comped the image in shake. that's why i put up the beauty pass as well.

It would be nice to get some comments on that, cause I don't see right from wrong anymore. I must have looked at it for too long...

[kanooshka]

@motoyuki: Awesome work on the fruit. I really like how all of your shaders turned out. I definitely like the second image more than the first. What I would like to see is a little more contrast. Your fruit is looking fairly flat right now but definately would make a great studio render if that's what you're going for.


@Jeremy: Nice to have you back around, I wish I could have come over to the west coast for SIGGRAPH. If you could possibly critique my Four Scripts image it would be much appreciated! Thanks =)
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=5317033&postcount=791

[psycosven]

Hey thanks Jeremy!

So, I took and tried rearranging the scene a little. Simply moving one of the Candles over caused everything to seem unbalanced, and awkward. Then, while trying to get another one of the candles repositioned, I found a new camera angle that was much nicer. I also tried to lighten the flames a little; but after the render, the color was still too strong.
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/candles4.jpg
So I took and adjusted the colors in the flames a little and got this...
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/candles5.jpg
While I like it, I realize that I am too familiar with the piece now. So, any suggestions or critiques would be great!

[jeremybirn]

psycosven - Nice job! Maybe the candle wicks could be mapped darker, so the wick wasn't as bright as the flame and the wax. I still think there's too much fill light. Why don't you hide all of the lights except for one light from one of the flames, and test it and make sure the decay is right and everything's working, then slowly put back the lights on each flame while making sure no extra fill light is creeping into the scene that will drown out the candle light.

kanooshka - Your kitchen scene is off to a good start. The composition seems lopsided to me, as if it wants more room to extend to the left and has too much blank space on the right. Before you tweak the composition you have to get the reflections working on the table-top though, that's such a big part of the shot that without the window reflection the whole image is missing something. There might be a ltitle too much fill light on the back-lit wall of the kitchen, the wall around the window can go darker. Maybe you could reduce those vertical lines on the chair too?

motoyuki - I don't really know what's going on with the reflections, there are strange things happening on the plate but it doesn't look like reflections of all the fruit. The scene is bright, but still has a little shaping on it. Some of the fruit looks like plastic. You really want to focus on the sense of contact between the plate and the fruits, and get that right. Try a simpler scene with just one piece of fruit over the plate, in one pass, and make sure the reflections are working perfectly, then add more fruits and keep testing with each of them.

-jeremy

[ScallyFox]

Jeremy thank you a lot for the feedback, I'll try to improve my candle scene.
And I'm waiting patiently for next challenge!:bowdown:

[djinakatarina]

Hi,

I would like to get some proffesional comments on my Ligting&Texturing work, please give me some critiques!!!

Thanks

Katarina Savichttp://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq200/djinakatarina_photos/SVECE_FINAL_DOTERANO_Svetlije.jpg

[Leotril]

Hi.. heres a new update on the Brand X challenge, this time experimenting with refraction values still some work to do with that i think it came a bit dense .. i render out some passes final comp in AE and color correction and post effects in PS..

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/Brand%20X/comp1AE-1b-1.jpg

more cleaner version , oops :hmm:

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/Brand%20X/comp1AE-1dk.jpg

[psycosven]

Thanks again Jeremy!

I tried what you said, and looked up some images of candles burning in the dark to get a better sense of the light fall off. Apparently using an inverse squared decay in Max for the light does not cause the light to fade quick enough. So I switched to the attenuation setting to fix the problems, played with that a little, and got this.
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/candles6_1.jpg
I also started playing with the haunted hallway scene. I had started it when the contest had began but became frustrated with all the geometry errors in the converted file. I gave up on it at that point, but I saw the new files posted and wanted another shot at it, so here is my first swing at the Haunted Hallway.
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/creepy_hall9.jpg
Thanks for all the help so far! Still love to hear any helpful feedback!

[Phantom-vfx]

hi there , this is y ntry for the hallway
http://phantom-vfx.com/gallery/Stills/halfway.jpg
c&c please

[psycosven]

Hey Katarina! I am not professional, but I can offer this much as opinions. First thing I notice is that the shadows are confusing in the render. It seems you have an omni light in front of the picture that is causing the shadows to disperse radially from the center of the image. It might make more sense to have the shadows correlate to the flames from the candles; and the light that is causing the light blue color on the wall thingy in the background might also have a slight shadowing effect to the rest of the image. I like the dark blue shadows for the mood they give against the yellow light; but in some areas those shadows seem to glow to me and pop out from the rest of the render. The effect leaves me feeling like the vase should be falling into the table. The textures look cool to me! The panels in the wall thingy seem to be too repetative though. Might try to flip the textures vertically, horizontally, and even just adjust them to break up the repetations. Hope that I have helped you in some way! Can't wait to see how it all turns out in the end!

Hey Phantom! Thanks a lot for the kick in the butt man! That looks cool! One thing that catches my attention with your render is the position of the hanging lamp. The contrast of the dark lamp shade and the brightness of the window cause a focal point of interest. Add the fact that the arch pulls you straight up to that as well, and I'm stuck there. I think it might help to move that light fixture a little. Looks good to me though!

[bstandard]

Thank you for the C&C Jeremy. Sorry for the delay, I was getting married :D. Anyway here is my revised image. And once again C&C are welcome. Thanks!
http://www.killerbros.com/CGTALK/hauntedHallwayRevised.jpg

[djinakatarina]

Hey Douglas!

Thanks, I am more then glad if someone can give me a comments on my work, everyone is welcome not only proffessionals. I agree with you for the shadow, Yes there is a light in the midle, wich is not very logic, I will se what I can do. And for the texture actually I didn't put a lot of time, as you sow, I have to change that , I was more concentrate on the light. Thank you very much and see you with new posts...

Kat

[marcusmartinez]

thanks all for the c&c you all really help me to push things further.

I've done a bit of work on my fruit bowl.
I've sorted out the problem with the reflections.
I tried to give the light just a tiny bit more directionality. also I tried to get rid of the plasic look of some of the fruits by mapping the specular color. (though I'm not really happy with that, but I don't really know whats wrong. so please look at the fruits and tell me why they aren't really realistic looking!maybe also how to resolve the issue)

I wonder how one can completely turn of the specular on the maya fast sss shader...hmmm.
also if someone has a clue how to get it more photorealistic looking, please point me in the right direction so I can research a bit and still improve maybe.

jeremy: thanks for the critique on the hallway, I tried to improve in those points you mentioned. I like it even better now because the yellow frontlight gives a nice contrast to the blue BG, but I feel that it is close to being overdone, kind of.
anyhow, I think I pushed it far enough for now and will start with a fresh project. maybe the bottle collection. but a last comment on what you had still done would be nice.

djinakatarina:
as psycosven mentions, there is this problem with the shadows. but apart from that, I must say I really love the atmosphere in the picture. I can almost smell the room and feel the warmth. really amazing feeling. it does't have that CG look. lovely. I think its the candlelights that make the picture so believable. the candles could use some sss/translucency though... anyhow, love the feeling....

Phantom-vfx:
love your atmosphere as well. really nice picture.

thanks in advance for your c&c

[jeremybirn]

djinakatarina - Nice job! For the look of candle light, it would be best if it pooled and concentrated more around each candle, getting darker in between. You might need to switch from dmap shadows to raytraced to get really nice soft shadows, but the shadows of candle light go much softer than that. There are shadow artifacts on the window glass, perhaps the glass geometry doesn't need to be set to cast shadows, or maybe you just need to increase the dmap bias of that shadow.

Leotril - Nice start. The colors are somewhat strange. If it was just the green bottle having a purple reflection, I might accept it as a stylization, but the red and green highlights on the top of the cap look like digital mistakes to me. The highlight on the tip of the dispenser going black makes the top of it look like a photo negative, not the positive light you want to cast on the good product.

Phantom-Vfx - Nice job! The distant perspective gives an interesting, almost orthagonal view of the hallway, makes a nice composition. It might be nice to use more than just the diffuse shading, try to get some specular highlights, like a glossy reflection of the window onto the floor and maybe the walls. I don't know if the mid-section ceiling needs to go that bright. The outer sides of the image are almost black, like an extended frame for a small scene. You might think about either lighting them or cropping them out and making a vertical image.

bstandard - Nice job! The hallway scene without the hallway! That's an interesting image. I think you might play with some kicks or glossy spec highlights to give a little presence to some of the walls or stairs, even just some more rims on some of the railings and steps could help hint at the surroundings without giving everything away.

motoyuki - Nice job on the hallway. On the fruit, the rim light seems to hit different sides of different fruit: the left side of the pear, the right side of the apple. Try to make that more consistent, even if you need to simplify and consolidate lights to do it. The bunch of grapes is looking very subtle yet believable.

-jeremy

[Pedro3D]

Hi All, here are a few render's from the fruit bowl and the bottle scence to mix it up abit scene I really enjoyed this challenge;

C&C are welcome
here is version 1
http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n319/Masiker/Finalver1.jpg

Enjoyed it so much I did 2 images version 2
http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n319/Masiker/Finalver2.jpg

[marcusmartinez]

last entry for the fruit bowl.
I did some minor texture and lighting tweaks and added overall nicer looking rims on the fruit.
this is it for me. I'm already waiting for the post of the new lighting challenge, which will ne my first time ever on a new challenge :bounce:

thanks for your help jeremy


Pedro3D:
coool renders. it nice to see that mr. pear and mr apple are a couple and also mr pear likes diving in the crowd...

[hiva61]

Hi Jeremy ... sorry for long time to post here,,, for this scene i added some grain to look more dirty ,,, of course i rendered in 1280*864 but because i have free account in photo bucket it resized my pic. thank you all .:blush:
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/gg28/hiva61/Final_Gr.jpg

[Leotril]

thank u for comments jeremy il try to fix those issues with the brand X scene ..

@hiva61 .. congrats on your hallway scene love the textures :thumbsup:

in the meantime i did some work on mine.. straight from render minor correction in PS :curious:

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/Haunted%20hallway/5Quad1a.jpg

[Sorath]

i gave the fruit bowl scene a try.

maya 8.5 on an mac book pro osx - everything procedurally mapped besides the apple, the background and the bowl.

http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/9224/fullcompbigjy6.th.jpg (http://img376.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fullcompbigjy6.jpg)

c&c welcome

cheers
Bastian

[hiva61]

Hi every one and Jeremy ,,, in the last version no body had not the feeling of a haunted hall ,,, so this is the haunted version ,,, thank you all
http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/gg28/hiva61/Hauntedversion.jpg

[Leotril]

I did some minor changes in camera and wood shader on the floor the image .. im trying to improve on many aspects with this like getting the final render darkness on some elements hopelly some C&C would help me :cool:

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/Haunted%20hallway/6Quad4.jpg

[marcusmartinez]

hello,
I just want to give some c&c to some of the images uploaded lately.

Leotril: there seems to be a light coming from the front lighting up the right front of the image. I think there should not be light coming from there. In the back of the image, since there is a lot of light falling in, it could be just a tiny bit brighter, so a little contour of the stairs is visible maybe? I dunno, but it seems there ifs some fog in the backl of the room? the light would light up the particles then and create this volume light effect. also I think the wood thingys on the right are too bright, and they look as if they didn't belong to that room. the lamp shade caould use some texture?

hiva61: sorry, but i still don't find it very haunting. one of the wooden posts just ends nowhere btw, using this camera perspective. I don't know what it is, maybe the textures? maybe making a night shot of it would tone the whole thing down, so it's really frightening...

Sorath: I like your cloth. how did you do that. it looks so soft. the banana on the left looks almost like metal. I doesn't look like all fruit are sitting in the same light somehow (I could be wrong though, since this is an almost painterly style... to me it seems like that) also the banana on the very left is very dark at the bottom, but where the contact to the other banana is the shadows do not match in brightness.

cheers

-marcus

[Nehak]

Here is my try on the Film Noir challenge. I started working on the scene when it was first posted, but never got down to completing it due to busy schedule. Finally completed it now that I have some time off.

Rendered with max 2009 & Mental Ray.

The first one is what I did originally for the film noir theme.
http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/4056/filmnoir01zb7.jpg


LOL but couldn't help myself from doing the second image looking at how spooky the scene looked ;)
http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/1145/filmnoir02af2.jpg

C & Cs are welcome as usual :)

[Sorath]

@motoyuki - thanks for your crits, the cloth is heavily tweaked (shadow highlight) painted in photoshop, that's why it is looking so soft.
i know the fruits are off, maybe i graded this image too much. anyway, i'll post a photorealistic attempt soon, i hope that one will look better.

cheers
Bastian

[Leotril]

@motoyuki.. thank u for the feedback .. the foreground light its create by the gi + fg solution im using and i try make it darker but light gets there somehow and there are no aparent light leaks.. i may try experimenting with some negative lights .. ill continue to work on the scene when i get some time k

[mirmel]

Hi!
here's my final render for the fruit bowl!
(I did some corrections, and I hope you like it)
I've add an occlusion pass.
thanks Jeremy for your feedbacks.
C&C are welcome.
m

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/103/fruit4xw3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[marcusmartinez]

this is my first try on the fruit bowl. done with one directionel and rest spots + caustics

it would be nice to get some c&c. I see it's not there but I can't tell .... :shrug:

[psycosven]

Hey motoyuki! That is an awesome render man! Nice textures, I love the Jack Daniel's bottle! A couple things I notice.. First; the bright, bright white chemistry glass distiller-somethin-er-nother.. It looks like it is self illuminated (but I know it is not), could it be your caustics react too well with that in comparison to the rest of the bottles? Then, if you do decide to tone that down I am wondering if that bright spot on the table behind it might not flare out a bit too. Also; I like the texture on the table, but I wonder if it might not be too shiny for a rough wood surface. That is all I can see that I would recommend, hope I help somehow. Other than that, it really looks awesome man!!

[psycosven]

Welp, after I got the last render of the candles posted I noticed a section in the glass incense bottle that had a little extra geometry and looked a little like poo.. so I killed it, and this is the final render.
**gone for now**
Then I played with the hallway a little and came up with this as well..
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/creepy_hall13.jpg

I love to hear any critiques on any of my work, it helps a lot!! Thanks!

[jeremybirn]

psycosven - Nice job on the candle scene, a lot of the foreground objects are looking good. The background bothers me a bit: it looks as if there's lots of light back there, but I don't see any slashes of light coming through teh cracks to light the foreground, or any light leaking around the edges of the screen on the right, it just sortof exists in one place then cuts off. You could get rid of it, or else work to sell it, but don't leave it hanging. The hallway: the bottom of the stairs doesn't look like yet, it looks like a flat white surface there. Maybe you could get rid of the light that's right above the camera, light the stairs more selectively, and see if you can get more shadows or occlusion to darken parts of the scene and just use light selectively on larger surfaces like the walls.

motoyuki - Wow! Great bottles! Some of that textured glass is very believable. A few spots stand out to me: from left to right, the Klein bottle looks too bright a shade of white, just too glowy even for frosted glass in the sunlight. The caustics next to the Klein bottle seem better suited for clear glass as well. The next bottle to the right, with two round parts, looks good overall, but the bottom liquid looks too dark, compared to all the light underneath the bottle. Try to darken what's under the bottle, and put more light scattering through the liquid. The square label on the bottle behind it looks a little bright to me too. The stuff I'm talking about are little nitpicks, really that's a great scene already. I'd like it if the view through the window (just one triangle where you see directly outside) were brighter, too, maybe with a glow that blooms onto the surrounding geometry a bit.

mirmel - Still looks good! I think you might be using a dmap shadow that's making little diagonal stripes on the plate. The dark spots on the banana look like shadows in places instead of liek banana texture. You might brighten up the right side of some of the fruits, or add reflections of what's offscreen. The little rim on the lower left of the orange looks a bit fake to me.

Nehak - Nice job! The scene mostly works, I think the people look like a 2D cut-out, not a convincing shadow on the blinds. The skeletons look nice, but maybe a little rim or kick of light could give them some shaping. The amount of fill light coming from behind the camera roughly seems a little bit uniform, even on distant objects like the well, maybe it could vary with height or be broken up more, or the gound under the well could merge more with the well?

Leotril - Try to tie the window together more with the light on the floor, maybe more brightness right around the window, more rim on the banisters? There doesn't seem to be much light from that lightbulb hitting the walls near it.

hiva61 - Interesting scene! In some places, it looks like it has lots of leaves inside the house. In other places, especially the screen-right archway, it looks more like colorful wallpaper with a picture of ivy, wrapping around the corners. Maybe you could hide the weaker spots with more 3D trees and vines in the scene to fill it in a bit more?

Sorath - Nice fruit scene! Very painterly! You've got nice shading throughout. The textures on the bananas look stretched out in different directions and those are a bit distracting. The cherries look good, but I think the reflection environment is too symmetrical and could be replaced. Maybe the fruits behind the apple could use a little less diffuse illumination and more sprecular and reflections. The leaf looks a little flat and opaque, you could let a little light through it and give it a bit more of an edge. Really nice job overall!

Pedro3D - Nice fruit scenes! The firs tone is pretty good, although the bottles on the windowledge don't look as well integrated as they could be. The second one is great, nice simple scene.

I hope you all try the Lighthouse now!!!

-jeremy

[marcusmartinez]

psychosven: thanks for your comments. I'll try to improve in these points you mentioned when I find time.

I'm thinking of following things to improve on your candle image:
1. the candle flames could be a bit darker, so they're not so blown out, maybe they can show some more of the yellowish-red color you'd expect from candle light.
2. maybe you could ask yourself, what's behind the wall... is there a room where blue light from the moon is fallin in? or is there another candle lit part of the room? is anything happening there? some texture on the paperthingys??? right now it's just white.
3.I don't know whtether my monitor gamma isn't right or not, but I can see a lot of areas that are pitch black. if you are aiming for that, that's ok. but then I would assume that the black areas ae contributing to focussing on something in the picture. ??? maybe the pictureframe?
4.I don't believe the materiality of the picture frame. It seems to be the same material as the vase... try a different material maybe??? that would also pull the focus in the middle of the frame. (maybe put a different picture in the frame... ask yourself whose room this is???)
5. the specular reflections are kind of nasty. those on the pictureframe are not anialiased very well. they are not very appealing (but I don't know if I could do any better...)

the hallway:
1. what is outside the window? is it so dark, there's no light at all outside? there must be, otherwise the moonlight wouldn't be able to fall in and light the particles in the air like that.
2. I like the marmor texture, but I don't buy it. it's too shiny.
3.if there's volumetric light, there must be a lot of particles in the air that reflect the light, hence, there could be high humidity, this would show on the walls and in the texture.
4.what's the lighting in the room? is it a flourescent light(greenish)? if so, it's likely that the shadows are spread out more, since most flourescent lights are tube like.
5.it's not very haunting.

sorry for the long post, but this all comes to my mind looking at your renders. hope that helps.


mirmel:
I love your cloth.
I think you should check the gamma on your renderer. your render seems a bit dark, but it's just an assumption...
overall I like the mood of it!
the bananas have these dark areas though. it looks kinda too uniform to me.
and: that's just what I would add. maybe the orange could have a bit more high frequency pattern to give it more the feel of orange skin?
i notice some artifacts on the plate. could be self-shadowing artifacts...but that's just minor

Nehak:
I really laughed a lot when I saw the second image. it's great!


EDIT: I just noticed that jeremy has already replied to most posts... so it seems there are some thoughts that overlap. I'm not gonna delete the post though cause it took me an hour to put all things together....

[psycosven]

Thanks Jeremy and motoyuki! I do have to admit for the haunted hallway, I find it hard to work the camera and lights to create a spooky scene.. I'm trying to avoid the cliche props; mostly for the reason that I am lazy and don't want to have to add to the scene, but also because it is cliche and that dulls the effect in my opinion... I guess to a point there has just been so many "scary" movies which have helped in dulling my senses. Now it seems to me that only sudden movements or certain types of noises affect the senses in this manner. Those are very hard to capture in a still image. However; This is only an obsticle to work around, and I will keep trying to figure out how to make this work. The more help, the easier the struggle. I agree the marmor texture was too shiny, I tried to dull that down a good bit. I also toyed with the lights to get some better effects without getting too complicated. I am trying to go for a florescent lighting, because I always hated the way it lit rooms and the headaches from the strobing effect they tend to have. I'll try to get more out of the shadows. But for now here is what I have been able to find time to do..
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/creepy_hall15.jpg
I know contrasting colors and levels of brightness put people on edge, so I tried adding some red to the area above the stairs.. With that render I tried a tired post effect in photoshop and got this...

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/creepy_hall15_post.jpg

I'll get to the candles later........

Thanks again for the help! Feel free to help more!!

[Leotril]

@psycosven .. the hallway scene could be a bit hard for some folks including me of course .. i think u should start only with the your key light i guess is the foggy one and make the other lights ur using not visible i think thres to much foreground light try using a point light for the light bulb those two lights are the most important here i guess .. keep going :wise:

heres mine i did some changes like the wood floor shader and some tweaks here and there as suggested this one has a bit more color added film grain and corrections in photoshop

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/Haunted%20hallway/hauntOBJQuad2dCompAE1-1crop.jpg

[psycosven]

Hey Leotril! Thanks for help! right now I have 4 lights in the scene. 2 omnis of different color and attinuation for the light bulb, the foggy moon light, and a red one for some contrast in the stairs. The miserable fill I think is being caused by Max's environmental fog.... I think, from what you said, I am going to kill the fog and setup a cheap and easy PF emitter, that way the stupid fog interacts with the environment instead of just filling it. :p I'll get to that later today when i am not otherwise engaged in projects. Your render looks good too! Only one thing I notice, you have a bright light from a window and fog, but no indication of that light passing through the fog. Other than that, I like it man!

Images are down again... My webhosting server has been having lots of problems lately.. I am in the process of setting up a photobucket account.. ..was doing Imageshack, but they are taking too long in sending registration info, so too bad for them... :D maybe that'll work better in the long run..

here's kinda an update on the candle scene.. working on the background stuff, and tried adding a hint more color to the flames, also slight texture changes..
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/candles8.jpg

[JeffPatton]

Here's my attempt at the fruit bowl/still life challenge:
http://features-temp.cgsociety.org/gallerycrits/11835/11835_1220829146_large.jpg

[sklioness]

am happy to see this thread for previous challenges ...
will be posting my previous work soon ...!

[sklioness]

thanks jeremy for addressing the old challlenges...

here's an image i did for haunted hallway on maya 8.5 ...please do reply with ur c & c's ...

^_^

[marcusmartinez]

leotril:
I really like your work now. only thing I'm asking myself is: what is out side the window?
but the image looks really realistic to me.

:thumbsup:

[Leotril]

@motoyuki.. the outside has been bothering me also it looks a bit white and i think it needs a bit of glow .. in the beauty pass u can see the hdr image i was using for the sky but in after effects i added a bit of glow to the lightbulb and make the reflections more clear .. during that process the sky turn white for my next update ill fix that.. i like ur bottle scene very much ..thank u for ur comments

@JeffPatton.. nice fruit !! i like the pear and grapes those looks very tasty :thumbsup: but the rest of the fruit need some work on shaders .. can u improve it ?

@psycosven.. i like ur candle scene very much the latest changes really adds to it.. the only thing that bothers me is some sharp edges on the window in the background they look like reflections maybe some blurring will help or make them go away..

[psycosven]

Hey Jeff Patton! Man, you've help me learn a lot! Back when I was in school a teacher of mine showed me your site. I was trying to figure out some of Mental Ray, and in the process passing off any knowledge to teachers and any other students who cared to listen. The files you had up online helped me a lot! Especially the Subsurface scattering stuff - loved the iceberg! You actually inspired me to make a discoball using high photons with MR GI and caustics that awed many a student. haha Kinda surprised it kinda looks like you aren't using any SS materials on the grapes, they still look good though. Other than that; I like the apple, but honestly to me the pear looks like plastic.. But in any case, Thanks for the all the old help you never realized you were giving me!!! You've influenced my CG work a lot!

Hey Leotril! yeah, that is supposed to be a paper curtain, kinda one of those orental type things.. was trying to get away with a little light passing through it, but the clarity in the transparency is bad.. Guess it will be something to fix in a comp..

Hey Motoyuki! I am still working on the frame of the picture. I really try to get away with as little texture and modeling work as possible for these challenges, and just focus on the lighting. But sometimes the textures are what make the lighting acutally work. It would be pretty near impossible to make every scene work in just gray textures. I can get rid of some of the glare on the glass, but I have to do it in a comp. I've tried all the settings I can think of in Max along with changing textures completely, and the crazy bright flares in the glass textures remain. As for the flag in the picture, I really want to leave it like that. It is kinda a small tribute from me, to the way a country used to be with the rapid decay, both economically and constitutionally, it is facing now. I am trying to setup a scene to depict a mournful aspect in this sense, while still making the individual peices fit. If I were to change it though, I would probably throw an image of Captain Caveman up. I really appreciate your help and look foward to more critiques from you! You've been very outright about your opinions, and I appreciate that. Thanks!

As for what you said with the hallway; I actually kinda started fresh on some aspects of it. It helped that I was able to take pictures of an empty 8 story building today with only camera flash and early morning lighting to light the interior. I got some stuff that helped so i am working off some fresh thoughts. Let me know what you think.

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/creepy_hall16_comp.jpg


Always hope for C&C's!

[JeffPatton]

@JeffPatton.. nice fruit !! i like the pear and grapes those looks very tasty :thumbsup: but the rest of the fruit need some work on shaders .. can u improve it ?Yup, left half of the plate could use some more texture lovin' for sure.

Hey Jeff Patton! Man, you've help me learn a lot! Back when I was in school a teacher of mine showed me your site. I was trying to figure out some of Mental Ray, and in the process passing off any knowledge to teachers and any other students who cared to listen. The files you had up online helped me a lot! Especially the Subsurface scattering stuff - loved the iceberg! You actually inspired me to make a discoball using high photons with MR GI and caustics that awed many a student. hahaThanks for those kind words! Always glad to know the info/files I've shared over the years have been useful.

Kinda surprised it kinda looks like you aren't using any SS materials on the grapes, they still look good though. Other than that; I like the apple, but honestly to me the pear looks like plastic..My wife had the same comment about the pear. I should decrease/break up the reflectivity further. On the SSS, actually the only two materials that aren't SSS materials would be the back drop & plate...and I'm considering adding it to the plate.

Thanks for the critique's, I'll have to dig back into this one a little further. :thumbsup:

Good luck on your hallway entry! The textures are looking pretty good. IMHO, the lighting looks a bit dark in your last render (or maybe it's my monitors)? Although I figure the heafty darkness is probably intentional due to the "spooky" theme.

[marcusmartinez]

psycosven:
your hallway starts to look like it's a bit haunting! scary!
shadows from the window on the right could be a bit softer.
try using some rim lights to model out the shapes a bit more maybe.
where the light falls into the room, there could be a tiny bit more light, more color at least to increase the color contrast between inner light and outer light.
if that's a moon behind the window, it could be a bit brighter.

candle light scene:
it looks much better now.
because of the flag: wasn't meant as anything really I just thought, who would put a picture of a flag on a table with candles??? I'd rather put a flag on a post, no? hehe...
because of the speculars on the glass... I thought about it after looking really closely, and I think the problem that I have is that there are five specs from five candles, and they all seem to be of the same intensity. maybe if you duplicate the lights on the left and isolate the spec from the diffuse. 1x diffuse light, 1x specular. then you could control he intensity of the specs and play around with that. also since these are reflections, you'd likely see a bit of the illuminated candle stems in the glass as a reflection.... that would probably help.
just thoughts... as I said before, haven't done that one yet, done know how I'd solve it...

hopefully I find time soon to do a bit on my bottles....aaaargh!!

cheers man

marcus

[psycosven]

Hey Jeff Patton, wow! Surprised me on the SSS materials! How long does that take to calc and render like that - and on what type of crazy machine? Yeah, the hallway render is dark. I was trying to keep it that way to give it more of an uncertain and uninviting feel without it getting muddy. I was also trying to make it interesting enough to keep someones attention. I did a little update on it, but only a few parts of it are brighter.

Hey Marcus, can't wait to see what you come up with in your next post! I think I might try a little of that rim light in the hallway, see if I can't bring out a bit more of the stairs with some specular glare. I added a couple more lights and added them into my now growing comp in order to soften the moonlight on the wall a little and to play with the shadows just a bit. I also added a bit more of the glow from the moon light, that in turn upped the brightness in the window. Thanks for the suggestions! Think they helped a lot!

until I add those rim lights, here is the render.

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/creepy_hall16_comp2.jpg

C&C's always appreciated!

[mirmel]

Hi!
finally I've had time to refine my fruit bowl scene!
Here's the final work, what do you think?
thanks to everybody for suggestions and comments!

motoyuki: maybe It's true, my notebook's monitor is too bright,
Jeremy, have you the same impression looking at my works?
Anyway I'll check it ...when I find where putting my hands.

psycosven: I like the mood of the scene! Lights and shadows on the right wall are very nice, keep it up!

http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/5831/fruit11copylk4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[psycosven]

Hey Thanks Mirmel!

I got some of that rim lighting added to bring out the stairs a little. So here is another update.

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/creepy_hall15_post3.jpg

Thanks for all the help so far guys!

[rende]

Finally had some time to give this a try

http://fluentart.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/undertheboardwalkrender.jpg
Maya/MR

[frayo]

rende: among all the boardwalk entries i saw, i like yours the most. dark and dirty. though, there seems to be conflict in the lighting. it seems that your lightcource is high up (mid day) because the shadows are sharp, yet your sky it late afternoon. i think its sunset. well, there could some other light source other than the sun and sky, but i just wanted to point it out. i like your contrast by the way.

psycosven: now this is scary... i haven't touched the hallway scene yet but i think your lighting here is very effective. it makes me want not to be in this place. i think its very good. care to share a screenshot showing your light sources?

as for my bottles, i'm not sure if there is much credit for the setup i did here. this is just IBL in an unbiased renderer. i don't intend to work on this again the way i did because this image took 48 hours to render (i've actually beaten my 17 hrs record for the fruit bowl. its a 4 year old machine). Of course there were versions prior to this...but this one gave me the most satisfaction and is closest to my target (something like a photo). still CC's or any advice is welcome and appreciated as i will be able to apply them in the next scenes.

scene setup in 3dsMax. rendered in Indigo 1.1.5. PS for exposure adjustment, color correction, a bit of glow (coz camera is facing the lightsource) and grain (to even out the image).

http://www.red-filament.com/images/common/red-filament_bottles_800x600.jpg

http://www.red-filament.com/images/common/red-filament_bottles_1024x768.jpg

[frayo]

ScallyFox: i failed to thank you for your kind words back in p.55. i can't imagine how i missed your post. your candle scene is gorgeous. my work area right now is dark (lights turned off) and it feels like the candles are really in front of me. beautiful DOF! might i ask what renderer are you using?

only the shape of the flames (red and green candles) are of concern for me. they look like they are identical and were just rotated to face the other direction. the candle holders are a bit too clean and shiny...but other than that, it's a great image with right mood.

[psycosven]

Hey Frayo! Thanks! Sure thing on the setup shots. I just hope you can make sense of them. there are 4 spot lights outside the building; 1 for the main moon light, 1 for fog, and 2 for the edge effects of the light on the wall. There is also one spot light inside the building that I moved around and took several renders with for the rim lighting on the stairs. There are also 2 omni lights where the lamp is inside the building. and that is about it for the setup.

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/setup.jpg
http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/setup_front.jpg

And the comp node view.

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/dak_mars/setup_comp.jpg

Hope that works in giving you an idea of how I got that final image setup!

[a-vector]

Hi all,

This is my attempt at the fruit bowl, rendered in blenders internal engine, textures painted in zbrush. Crits welcome.

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/3329/fruitv13copydarkerloweruk0.jpg

a.vector

[marcusmartinez]

hi everyone,

I finally found time to finish my bottle collection scene.

next will be the train thingy I guess :applause: , but the scene is so huge and slow on my little laptop...

let me know what you think.

-marcus

[psycosven]

Hey Marcus! Looks awesome! Only one more thing I would suggest. Maybe you could do an AO pass with a really short condensed fade distance, just to give a little bit of something for contact shadows. Don't want to get too crazy on it, because you are working with all that cool glass and it could make it look muddy! That would be an easy add in photoshop if you wanted to try it. Love the look of the white glass chemistry looking thingy now! :)

[jeremybirn]

motoyuki - Great job on the bottle scene! I think you should join the current challenge and try your hand at the lighthouse while it's still active!

a-vector - Welcome! That's really great. You've got very nice textures overall, maybe the tips of the bananas could use another map. You've got good overall shaping and tones on the fruits. I think the contact shadows are going a bit too black, the areas where the orange or cherries touch the plate seem to sink into blackness, where I'd expect a little bit of light to get reflected into those cracks. Give that little the darkest areas a little fill light, and use rich colors so that the dark tones stay saturated, mostly warm colors, except for a little green under the apple leaf.

psycosven - Nice job on the candle scene. On the hallway, thanks for posting that breakdown. There seem to be specular highlights coming from a source behind the camera, hitting the top and edges of the archway, I'd rather see specular light and kicks and rims all motivated by the window light. The right side of the staircase seems to get a lot of light from below, but no light from the left. The windows with the bright light are on the left, so you could reverse that. The two vertical posts seem to get lit on the side facing the camera, but not lit on the edges facing the windows, you could reverse that. The banisters in most of the staircase are very dark, you might put some rim light from the windows onto them to bring them out a bit.

frayo - That is a nice, fairly believable bottle scene already. The lower right corner could either use some light on the wall, or else you could put less light on the right-facing surface of the window ledge. Right now the side of the ledge almost looks like a continuation of the top. A little reflection on the window glass, or at least some glints or highlights or dirt, would add to the sense that there was glass there. I don't really feel as big a sense of directionality to the lighting as I'd like - why isn't the cork in the bottle getting lit more from the left, for example? Whe don't we see more shadows on the table to the right of the bottles? A cloudy day is one thing, but inside vs. outside should still provide a lot of contrast.

rende - Good start! Nice textures on most of the surfaces, the fish could use a map too. I think the surface of the water should mostly be reflective when you look up at it, there's only 1 area known as Snell's Window that becomes transparent. Work on getting some shadows and shading under water, and maybe consider limiting the brightness in the foreground.

mirmel - Good job!

sklioness - Good start on the hallway! I think you need more shadows, to keep the light from going all the way into darker corners and areas like under the stairwell.

JeffPatton - Nice job on the fruitbowl! If you want feedback, I think the bump on the pear is a bit much, the grapes look terrific, the apple and bananas could use some texture, and perhaps the scene could use more reflections on some surfaces, especially the plate. The lighting is consistent and gives good shaping, you might just think about a little bounce or fill light right in the darkest shadow areas.

Leotril - Great job on the hallway! That's a really nice one!

-jeremy

[Cuni]

Hi,
this is my attempt for the fruits scene. Still not happy with shaders. I want to add some SSS to grapes and orange.
Just 2 images: first one no GI/FG, the otherone with a little touch of Final Gather (notice the color bleeding).


http://img45.imageshack.us/img45/5448/fruits2lightsck9.jpg



http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/1459/fruitsfgqx4.jpg

C&C more than welcome!!
Lluis

[marcusmartinez]

hi psycosven,
thank you for your suggestion. I have actually tried the ao pass. cause i always render it out, but since I'm doing a lot of lighting (actually I currently try to specialize in lighting) lately, I always get the feeling that it looks wrong kinda. I don't like it too much except for small details in interior renderings maybe. I tried adding it again to see what it adds, and I just decided not to use it with this scene. but I know what you mean, sometimes a multiply by small percentage can add a good bit of detail, and also it provides for unbeatable contact shadows..... BUT: it is not a shadow... :cry:

btw your lighthouse is nice man!

cheers

-marcus

[a-vector]

Hi,

Jeremybirn: Thankyou for the comments, it's great to get quality feedback :) . I have updated the image but still need to add some low intensity fill lights... I removed tha ao pass which got rid of the really dark shadows and added the cloth background, which is actually a photo and a normal map built of a small area of the crosshatch in the photo.

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/1901/fruitv14finalfz9.jpg

Thankyou again
a.vector

[rende]

thanks for the comments on mine, only saw that the fish were unshaded after the lengthy render.. guess i'll have to revisit the scene when theres some free time.

[frayo]

Jeremy: Thank you for your very helpful comments & critisms. I'd have to say, I've learned from it (C'Cs) as much as what I learned from doing the exercise for days. Thanks for sharing your time and expertise.

[yassein]

hi all
here is my test for candle Challenge
http://lh6.ggpht.com/yasser.yassein/SNp4w5OkjbI/AAAAAAAAAEo/vaG9wNL2Q1M/s720/z.jpg

[yassein]

and thes is my test render for Brand X
i hope you like it
http://maxforums.net/uploaded/7394/1222282301.jpg

[marcusmartinez]

yassein:
beatiful renders. the leet shot looks very photorealistic. one little thing. the plastik of the bottle just above the liquids looks transparent, and not as if it had any thickness. but I think noone really notices that.

the candle light scene: very nice, but I think the shadows could be a bit softer, since the flames in relation to the objects are pretty big light sources, which would lead to softer shadows maybe? I don't know, but I've goit the feeling that the image in the picture frame is vertically squeezed a bit. the color of the gold is a bit oiversaturated I'd say.

-marcus

[yassein]

thanks marcusmartinez :)
here is some adjustment and i hope you like it
i make he shadow sofer and play with goold mat
http://maxforums.net/uploaded/7394/1222380370.jpg

[ndr87]

I recently learned about these lighting challenges and thought it looked like fun and good practice. Unfortunately I'm having an odd problem, I downloaded the underwater scene and opened it in maya. any time I add a file texture though it makes the geometry turn transparent and makes it look like it has small diagonal stripes on it. this happens no matter what file texture i use. however I downloaded another scene, the halloween one, and this doesn't occur on the geometry in that scene, nor have i ever seen this problem occur before. Anyone know how I might fix this? Thanks!

[rhocando]

hi Jeremy and all,

This is my try at the Christmas Challenge.
I'm a new user and trying to learn Lightwave 9.
This was my first attempt at using emitters. I have them as flames on my candles. I think I still need a lot of practice to get the look I want but , heck, I'm happy I was able to do it at all :)

The textures were created in Lightwave. I didn't do any post work on the render. Haven't gotten that far in my learning yet.

I added the sofa, blanket, pillows, rug and candles to the scene. (I see my candles have rendered crooked? hmmmmm)

Many Thanks to Jeremy Birn for the wonderful model!

Thanks for any comments or suggestions you have for me!

http://i535.photobucket.com/albums/ee356/rhondawatson/xmasscene018-1.jpg

[rhocando]

The renders here are really great! I'm especially enjoying the fruit bowls. Really nice work all!

[ndr87]

Here's my first attempt at one of these lighting challenges. Suggestions on how to improve are welcome!

http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/pp92/ndr87/still_life_finished_C.jpg

[frayo]

ndr87:

It's looking good. maybe some dirt on the table to breakup the shiny surface. some dirt on the glass of the picture frame...and the reds in your candles are overly saturated. But I really love your smoke! care to share how you did this?

[ndr87]

Frayo:

Yes you are quite right, the candles are too saturated. I'll change that soon. As for the smoke, I'm afraid that was just a finishing touch in photoshop... I hope that's allowed in these challenges. That was the only part of the scene that wasn't rendered. I'm not quite sure what you mean about dirt on the table or glass though, i realize nothing is perfect which is why my objects all have very slight bump maps applied so they are not perfectly smooth, but i'm not sure the table would have dirt sitting on it. Maybe i've misunderstood, thank you for your suggestions though :)

[frayo]

ndr87:

I'm sorry, my mistake, I wasn't clear enough. I guess the right word would be "imperfections" like scratches, stains, dents...some might even cause glossiness in the reflections. You know...some sort of history of what the table top went through e.g. years of wipping with like semi-abbrasive cloth/wipes. Right now it looks too shiny it's almost wet. That was what I meant by dirt. :)

Smoke plugin/filter or painted?

[ndr87]

Now that I look at the table again, it DOES almost look like it's wet. It's funny how such obvious things like the super saturated candles and the wet table are only noticeable by someone else. Maybe because I've spent too long looking at the image lol. Thanks once again for your suggestions, I'll work on them and hopefully post a new pic later today. :)

Almost forgot, the smoke was an image I found and modified in photoshop.

[ndr87]

I fixed the issues that were mentioned, thanks! Any other suggestions for improvement are appreciated.

http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/pp92/ndr87/still_life_finished_D.jpg

[rhocando]

That's beautiful ndr87!

I kinda liked that shiny table tho :) Maybe somewhere between none and all?
You've done an amazing job.

Seems like the most subtle touches are the most important.

I know I'm far from where most of you are here and where I want to be. Hopefully by looking at all of you artists beautiful works I'll be able to learn how a pro does it. And I think I'll get a copy of Jeremy's book.

For now, here is my try at the fruit.

I used Lightwave. The model went a little goofy with polygon patches showing up here and there. I haven't a clue why and certainly don't know how to fix it. The textures, minus the plate print were all done in Lightwave.

http://i535.photobucket.com/albums/ee356/rhondawatson/fruitdish01.jpg

Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions!

[ndr87]

Rhocando, glad you like my pic!

Although I use Maya now, I got started on Lightwave so feel free to let me know if you have any questions, although there are certainly people here who are better able to answer than me :)

I especially like the texture on the orange. Unless you've done this on purpose though in order to see the fruit textures clearly, it seems your scene needs shadows for starters. The easiest way to do that will be to turn on Ray Trace Shadows in your Render Globals.

The edges of your objects are also jagged, which will be fixed by turning on antialiasing in your camera properties.

And now I must leave so I'm not late for class, good luck to you :)

[rhocando]

I was trying to be "artsy" lol, which is why I didn't place shadows but, I guess the goal here is to try to produce as realistic of a render as possible. I'll work on that. And too, looking at it....the fruit kinda looks like it's just floating in the air without a base.

Would you know how to fix those polygons showing up in the shadow area of the blanket?

I much appreciate your willingness to share!

I will try the things you've suggested.

I am also trying the candle challenge. The textures are coming along but I can't seem to get the flames working. How do you do that?

One final question.... how many lights do you have in your candle scene?

Thanks again Nick!

[jeremybirn]

rhocando - Nice colors on the fruit. Work on your shadows first. I don't know if those black squares are polygons or if they are part of a shadow map, but a good first step would be to set up a spot light casting shadows and aim the light so that it only covers the fruit.

ndr87 - Lovely scene, that has a great feel to it! A little reflection could go back onto the table, just don't make it look too watery with the bump mapping, and if the candles appear in reflections make sure the flames are also reflected. The topmost flame looks a little nuclear, with the super-saturated yellow glow around it, try to tone that down a bit.You might put a bit of light on the incense sticks, just so they aren't so black. The background seems like it has very agressive occlusion, or at least soft shadows that outline both sides of each crossbar, maybe that could be toned down a little or replaced with regular shadows.

rhocando - Your Christmas scene is also a good start. Parts of it don't look lit yet, especially the blue area in the lower right. I hope you can keep going with one of these and take it further.

ndr87 - Sounds like you're describing what Maya does when you have a polygonal model with no UVs assigned to it, and you view it in shaded view with texturing turned on. If you want a real-time texture view, you'd need to assign UV's. The "Automatic Mapping" command ought to be good enough.

yassein - Nice job! I think the candle flames need work - the one on the right is almost missing, and others have dark vertical bands running through the center. Soft shadows would be nice. For a real candle-lit feel, try using less light, making it less consistent so things are only bright near the candles, and try using some warmer light colors.

yassein - Nice start on the challenge 11. The goal in that challenge is to fine a way to demonstrate that Leet is superior to Brand X. Pretend you are making an ad, trying to pursuade people that Brand X isn't as good as Leet.

a-vector - Looking really good! You could use a little bounce light so contact areas don't go black, but the fill from the left is already bright enough. By the time you get the grapes all the way on the left, they look overlit, or lit too uniformly. There might be a problem with the fill light shadow, some areas in fill light, like the top of the apple, don't appear to be getting shadowed. The cloth texture looks great, it is probably getting lit too uniformly and could use less fill or be lit more from the side.

Cuni - Good start on that fruit. The shadows look very dark, as if some fill or bounce is needed. You might frame-up the shot a little tighter around the bowl, too.

-jeremy

[Cuni]

Cuni - Good start on that fruit. The shadows look very dark, as if some fill or bounce is needed. You might frame-up the shot a little tighter around the bowl, too.

-jeremy
Thanks for your comments, jeremy.

I added more bounce light, framed-up around the bowl, worked on shaders, changed the cloth and the overall mood.
There's some SSS on the orange and grapes (need more work), I haven't touched the pear yet.

All shaders procedural except for the cloth. No post work.

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/5229/fruitsv02by6.png


Thanks

Lluis
http://img440.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fruitsv02by6.png

[diazsoftware]

LightHouse (with a beach house? :))
Maya Software+Occlusion(MentalRay 34% opacity), 40%"PhotoFilter" (warmingFilter 85) in Photoshop.

http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/3253/lighthousemoremv8.th.jpg (http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lighthousemoremv8.jpg)http://img136.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif (http://g.imageshack.us/thpix.php)

I changed the reflection, fillLight on the fence, did three seaGulls, added some new ground bump&color, Added a "Trygg-Hansa Liv-Bojj" (Thanks Ackee), duplicaded the stairs from the house to the "entrance" of the LightHouse.. It´s still bad reflection...
The fluids BTW is straight from the preset, scaled and color changed, resolution is pretty low (140,12,140) and I actually used "Don´t use Real Lights ?!" and typed in the same r-value as the DirectionalLight r-value... The Fog was also made by a fluid. Orange in the bottom and blue color on the top. Tweeked som with the Incadecense and the opacity...

[ndr87]

Rhocando: As far as the candles go, I'd suggest starting by using a gradient to change the color of the flame from blue at the bottom through an almost white in the center and orange at the top, just experiment to see what colors look right to you. you can use a gradient as well to fade the flame out so the edges aren't so sharp. turn up the luminosity and turn up the glow. this should be a good place to start from anyway. I look forward to seeing your candle scene :)

[Cuni]

diazsoftware: very nice render. Maybe you could make your clouds more "solid", with more volume.

Lluis

[rhocando]

Thanks Jeremy! I will work on the things you've mentioned, and yessirrreeeee, I certainly will follow through and finish every project!

Haven't worked on anything today or much yesterday as I've been under the weather but hopefully can start back up tomorrow.

Ndr87...thanks again! I will work on that and see how it goes.
Here's a very bad render of my candle wip but it will allow you to see what i'm starting with. Haven't had the chance to work on it much but I'm looking forward to trying your suggestion.
http://i535.photobucket.com/albums/ee356/rhondawatson/candles002.jpg

Cuni, your apple looks really great!

[rhocando]

I've also begun a "realistic" version of the fruit.
It's definitely a wip but I'm open to suggestions before proceeding!

http://i535.photobucket.com/albums/ee356/rhondawatson/realfruit1.jpg

[mehdiahmadi]

Hello, this is my first work for lighting challenge and on this site.
I used " 3ds max " and "Vray" for rendering and "finalFlares" for glows and "finalDOF" for depth of field and "photoshop" for modification.
I hope to get critics from all of you.

Thank you Jeremy Birn for lighting challenges.


http://i36.tinypic.com/2cgehwh.jpg

[Leotril]

@jeremy .. glad that u like my hallway scene .. heres my candles effort so far.. i use ae and ps for composition and color corrections

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/candle/beautycomp1-1.jpg

[a-vector]

Thanks once again for the crit Jeremy. Blenders internal render is not a true raytracer so it's a bit difficult to add 'bounce' light to eliminate the darkness in the contact sections. The way I achieved that render is by colouring the shadows of the lights (reducing their intensity). That is also why, as you correctly point out, the apple lacks shadow at the top.

Having struggled to push the render further I tried a couple of other render engines. Indigo gave some nice renders at 9+ hours but I struggled to get the subsurface on the grapes looking good as indigo doesn't accept color maps as part of the subsurf material. Yafray gave some ok results but also took a very long time to render. I finally settled on using modo's renderer which is fantastic and amazingly fast.

This render took +-20mins using a physical based sun and sky, gi and the only light being the sun. Unfortunately Modo doesn't have a particle system so the kiwis lost the fur. Interestingly after trying some post pro and tone-mapping I actually preferred the original image so here it is:

http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/7974/fruitmodov06uv1.jpg

Thanks again for your cirts.
a.vector

[ShiningRay]

http://features.cgsociety.org/newgallerycrits/g81/331981/331981_1224366364_medium.jpg

It starts and everybody.
I am Japanese who is studying CG by self-study.
Because the lighting was the first time, three points were illuminated for the
time being.
Moreover, the texture is not used because it was thought that it concentrated on the lighting, and
it changes only to the setting of the material.

[silvia]

I took a shot at the haunted hallway challenge, here's what I came up with. I was trying to get something slightly different from what everybody else did, I hope you like it.
http://silviapalara.com/portfolio/haunted.jpg

[silentlamp]

http://i387.photobucket.com/albums/oo313/silentlamp/christmas_final.jpg

Hi

This is my first try with lighting. I used maya software with raytracing and composited with occlusion pass. The lights used for the tree are point lights and rest all the scene is lit with spot lights. Kindly comment...... I will be glad to improve the scene.

Regards,
Silentlamp

[ShiningRay]

Hello Silentlamp Mr..
I thought it was very good because it made Christmas where the lighting with warmth existed
with the family felt.

[silentlamp]

Thanx a lot shining Ray. I am a Ms not Mr...........

[ShiningRay]

I am sorry.
English writes sentences while using the translation site by the
inexperienced one.
English Language Education is not advanced at all in Japan ･･･
English is being studied.

[silvia]

I am sorry.
English writes sentences while using the translation site by the
inexperienced one.
English Language Education is not advanced at all in Japan ･･･
English is being studied.

Don't worry, you are not the only one who is not a born English speaker. I think you are doing great!

[dboydesign]

Silvia: I like your setting. I always had this "thing" for black and white pictures were only the blood is coloured ;) Remember the good old horro movies. Actually its a great image, because I coud see this not so " evil " character that tries to be a "evil" character coming down the stairs and laughing while he`s hands are (whats the english word for it? when you find something you like and moving your hands like sliding forward and backward? )well anyway, he fall down the stairs and we all have a big laugh.. ha ha ha :P

ShiningRay:

Good start, but i never thought that bananas was so reflective :P But the best tip I can give its " Tweeking ". Tweek, tweek and tweek some more :) Its important to understand what all the lights are behaving and studying what happend if I put the light there and so on.
Hope to see more from you :)

[ShiningRay]

silvia:
Thank you. When it is possible to say so, it encourages it.
Because it is a great place, I want to come to be able to use it though the Japanese who is acting in this forum thinks it is few.


dboydesign:
Thank you for comprehensible advice.
The setting of the feeling of quality of the model did only color information. Feeling of quality
and the lighting have strong relations.
The setting is changed again and it contributes.

[silvia]

dboydesign I am glad you like it!!! Here is the latest version of it, slightly reframed and cropped, with additional blood, and some post work. Hope you guys like it

http://silviapalara.com/portfolio/haunted_1.jpg

[silentlamp]

silvia:

Nice attempt man........... Some more edits are required...........
one edit is that the way u have worked on splotching the blood on the left side some such splotches could be put on the chair and the stairs bricks and of course the axe which is looking pretty clean. Try to give some bounce on the right side of the floor it has become too dark I think in real life u will definitely get some bounce till the end also. The shadows on the railing of the staircase should blur a bit (as in real life) as they go away from light. the planks of wood in the right side should also have some shadow according to key light. Try to show particles of dust in the light near the bulb if possible. Thats all that I can say right now. I am not an expert but this is my opinion about the image.

Regards,
Silentlamp

[dboydesign]

silvia: Oh man! More blood:drool:
silenlamp just told you what I had in mind when i saw your picture again. Missing some blood on the chair and on the axe. Maybe some blood footprints and a bloody handle from the fingers?
Aha! No I can see that some one have draged the body away ;) Good detail.
Not so sure about the dust but you might want to try it out :)

Looking forward to a update :)

[ShiningRay]

http://features.cgsociety.org/newgallerycrits/g81/331981/331981_1224707965_medium.jpg

Thank you for advising last time.
The setting and the light of shader were changed a little.

[jeremybirn]

ShiningRay - Looks good! The apple shader is so saturated that it's distracting, maybe add some reflectivity and highlights to it and less pure red? In the lower right of the plate: the cherries are red but their reflections are purple and the orange doesn't seem to have any reflection at all (unless the dark blue thing is a reflection?), see if you can debug that. Your soft raytraced shadows need more samples or rays to smooth them out so they aren't noisy.

silvia - Looking good! I'm glad you darkened the upper right, that had looked strange in earlier versions. I think the red blood could use a little more light and reflections on it. There's still a lack of shadows or occlusion in the fill areas. Even though the fill areas are darker now, you could still benefit from nice shading moving into the corners or between the boards and the wall. If you had occlusion, you might even get a tiny bit of bounce light onto the bottom of the stairs in some areas. A little glow or rays or something around the bulb could be good.

silentlamp - Welcome! Nice Christmas scene! I like the overall tone. In the brighter areas of the scene, the lighting looks very contrasty to me. For example, look at the window frames near the tree: there are some bright parts, but other parts look black. With all the soft illumination in that area, I'd expect more fill light. It could be a dim, deep gold or red colored fill light, but something needs to add a rich warm tone to the shadow areas in the brighter parts of the scene. The gifts look nice: the one in the front and center has a strange transparent-looking ribbon that needs a new material. Inside the fireplace is another area where some warm fill and bounce could add to the scene. That teddy bear and chair could look softer and could be placed in a less stiff and symetrical post. (A tip for next time you post: you can use "Insert Image" (instead of Insert Link), and then if you put in the address of the .jpg file it'll show up as an image without people needing to click on it.)

a-vector - You don't need raytracing or special features to add bounce lights. Just add a dim spotlight aimed up through the plate (or from whichever angle) to illuminate the area that needs an impression of indirect illumination. You can give whatever colors you need to bounce light, often you want some deep saturated tones in areas where illumination would have reflected off colored fruits. (Instead of changing the "shadow color" of a light, adding fill and bounce lights with their own colors to illuminate an area is a more natural approach.) Usually bounce lights don't need to emit specularity. Besides the bounce light, you could work a little on the texture mapping of the tips of the bananas and of course the kiwis you mentioned. Try to avoid the alignment of the specular highlight on the kiwi with the step touching it like the middle of a target.

Leotril - Good start. The flames look like hollow glass or something, if you render them as a separate layer you can just add or screen them for better results. They look more opaque at the edges and transparent in the center, really that should be the other way around, with extra transparency at the bottom. There is a nice glow around the bright tops of the candles, but no similar glow around the flames themselves. If the flames are the light source, they should be brighter than the tops of the candles and have more of the glow around them.

mehdiahmadi - Welcome! Wonderful scene! I think you could use more fog or atmosphere. The scene has a lot of depth, from close-up on the hand to the distant hills and sky, if the further away things like the hills were seen through more and more fog and haze, then they would get more distant and gray and give more depth to the scene. A little more glow blooming out around the light bulbs could help them too.

rhocando - Welcome! Reagarding the fruits, keep going with the textures and surfaces. Maybe your ligths could use softer shadows as well? The candle scene has some textures, now you need to make the light come from the candle flames...

Cuni - That fruit scene is great, especially the texture work!

-jeremy

[y2kviv]

Hi Guys...!!
This is my Halloween Scene Rendered with Maya Software Render...
All Comments are Welcome...!!!
http://i438.photobucket.com/albums/qq104/y2k_viv/Halloween2-1.jpg

[ShiningRay]

ShiningRay - Looks good! The apple shader is so saturated that it's distracting, maybe add some reflectivity and highlights to it and less pure red? In the lower right of the plate: the cherries are red but their reflections are purple and the orange doesn't seem to have any reflection at all (unless the dark blue thing is a reflection?), see if you can debug that. Your soft raytraced shadows need more samples or rays to smooth them out so they aren't noisy.
-jeremy

http://features.cgsociety.org/newgallerycrits/g81/331981/331981_1224878450_medium.jpg

Thank you for advice.
It some made a change based on advice. The apple makes the highlight change Schaeder and come out, and loses including a strange reflecting of the plate. The moving crowding of the plate because the color of fill light and the shadow of rim light were projected.
It smoothes more than before because the frequency of shadow was increased.

[silvia]

Thank you all for the great advice! Here is my update

http://silviapalara.com/portfolio/haunted_2.jpg

A high res version can be found at
http://silviapalara.com/portfolio/haunted_final.jpg

[ShiningRay]

Hi Guys...!!


This is my Halloween Scene Rendered with Maya Software Render...
All Comments are Welcome...!!!







y2kviv:
Hi y2kviv.
It is a lighting to think of the scene at night.
I thought that a soft shadow that hung to a warm-colored light and wall of the pumpkin and the luster etc. of stone steps were very good.
It is that the lighting a strong lens flare and at the left of the scene is too bright and the plant is too bright for the candle that some were anxious.
I also make a better work though the lighting just started studying.

[y2kviv]

Thanx... shining Ray for ur suggestions...!!

[silentlamp]

Silvia Palara:

The lighting on the back wall n the floor doesn't match, so is the case with left wall n floor. there should be a suttle gradation from light to dark......... otherwise your scene has really improved a lot...................

[metal0130]

Seems I have missed the deadline for the Lighthouse one so I will post it here instead. I am pleased with my results so far as I feel it has come a LONG way since my first render of it.

I will post the old and the new.

Old:http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/6682/finalcz9.jpg (http://img296.imageshack.us/my.php?image=finalcz9.jpg)

New:http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/4426/final1029lz5.png (http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=final1029lz5.png)

Any tips to further this along are welcome. I like the contrast but I am not sure if it is too dark or not - my monitor could be set brighter than some.

[coolayan]

Heres my version of Haunted Hallway..
C&C's r welcome..
Happy Halloween everyone!
http://i338.photobucket.com/albums/n436/barorot101/ReaperDirtyl2800.jpg
Max09,VraySP2,CS3

[Cuni]

Very Cool!!!

[coolayan]

oopp just wndring y der scene is empty & no entourage at all...
is it allowd to put any 3dmodel to the scene? sorry for my ignorance..
i didnt read the guidlines..

[ShiningRay]

http://features.cgsociety.org/newgallerycrits/g81/331981/331981_1225529688_medium.jpg

It is a lighting of kitchen practice.
The house near the beach of daytime was built imaging it. GI is setting up the light for myself without using it.

[ScallyFox]

coolayan - terrific render!!! I love it!! (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=338022)

here is my attempt on Halloween challenge

http://keep4u.ru/imgs/b/081101/24/24b63eeb4aa31b83b8.jpg

:cool:C&C are always welcome!

[coolayan]

Very Cool!!!

coolayan - terrific render!!! I love it!!

here is my attempt on Halloween challenge



C&C are always welcome!



Thanks Guys..
glad u like it..

scallyfox dude no image:hmm:

[RingoStar]

Here's another fruitbowl render. No retouch, straight from maya.


http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/5600/fbowllm0.th.jpg (http://img240.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fbowllm0.jpg)http://img240.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif (http://g.imageshack.us/thpix.php)

[Leotril]

@jeremy .. ill work on the candles for my next update thanks for the observation..

heres a new one on my beloved neon challenge i did some minor tweaks in post but the image i get from the render is basically the same :hmm:


http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/neon%20update/neon%20update%203/AEcomp4a.jpg
1k render (http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/neon%20update/neon%20update%203/AEcomp4.jpg)<-- click here

[ScallyFox]

barorot, (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=338022)very strange, I see my uploaded image well:hmm: (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=338022)

RingoStar, nice waterdrops!! Can you share the tecnique? is it mesh or displacement?

[RingoStar]

Hi,

the waterdrops are particles. I emitted from the fruit geo for one frame without any speed. Then I use a water/glass-shader with a very soft fractal bump to make them look uneven. I didn't use any environment map in this scene, they might look evebn better when you add a reflection map to get more highlights/reflections.

[ScallyFox]

Thank you for sharing! Very elegant way to make drops!!

[jeremybirn]

Leotril - Nice job overall on the neon scene. I like the bit of reflection you have in the truck windshield. I think you could use a lot more reflections of what's in front of the truck, reflecting all up and down the front grill, bumper, etc. Maybe an environment map or a big polygon in front of him textured with a city lights image? The blue/green neon tubes look strangely transparent where you see through to the flourescent tubes behind them, maybe a compositing error? The flourescent tubes look dim and thin, if they are supposed to be turned on they should be much brighter and light the lampshades they are mounted in. Some of the yellow lightbulbs are going dim, and so is the NG in the top center neon. Once you get all the light sources really glowing, you could probably use less fill light and get a little more contrast and variety into the lighting. An area like inside the garage should be much brighter than the outside at night, maybe with some light spilling out, but we expect big differences in brightness and color.

RingoStar - Nice fruitbowl! The drops of water are nice. There seems to be a lack of fill or bounce on the left side of the image: the fill levels on the right (grapes, orange) are fine, but the dark shadows on the bananas and under the stem touching those back fruits are unnaturally harsh and dark. The top end of the banana could use a different texture. Some reflection of an environment (or reflections of other fruits) would help parts of the scene, especially the look of the cherries. You might make the shadow of the apple leaf onto the apple much softer and let a little green fill light though there.

ScallyFox - Nice Holloween image! I think you could do a little more with color: maybe the fill light outside could use a cooler blue color, and the light inside the pumpkin could be warmer, especially in the darker parts like the candle base it shouldn't look gray in there.

ShiningRay - Good start on the kitchen. The view outside looks too dark. The sky and clouds outside don't even look as bright as many of the surfaces inside. Inside, you could use more shadows or occlusion, especially to give contact shadows underneath the plate with the fruit, and nice shading making the walls get darker as they approach the corners. If you use raytraced shadows, make sure that your shadows appear in reflections. (Your fruit is coming out well also, it would need some texture and reflections to really bring the scene further.)

barorot - Nice job on the haunted hallway! It's OK to add models to it, that's fine.

metal0130 - Good job on the lighthouse. The new one is nice. Maybe the inside of the lighthouse, especially areas like the sharp shadow on the ceiling, could be softer and more illuminated. The rim light on the rocks and fence posts is nice, but it could fade away as you move further left, so it lights things on the right just as brightly but doesn't light the things on the left side much at all.

silvia - nice job on the haunted hallway scene. I think you could use some occlusion (or fake a sense of occlusion) on the architecture, especially making both walls get darker wherever two surfaces come together to meet at a corner. That wall on the right side could also use more shadows from the boards. Maybe the upper right corner could be darkened a bit, it's hard to even tell what that surface is.

-jeremy

PS - As a reminder: this thread will close at the end of this year. In 2009, we will be using older challenge scenes in more focused flashback threads instead.

[jeonado]

Hi, everyone.
I am new to this forum and this challenge.
I discovered this challenge through the book "Digital Lighting & Rendering".
Here is my first attempt to the kitchen scene.
Constructive criticism are needed.

Max2009, Mental Ray and no post work.
Sorry for small render image because I'm using a quite dated machine. :)

Note: I don't know how to attach image here. Seems like the add image function is busted.
Oppss, is my own problem, seems like everyone here got no problem with image
attachment.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_togwyrdcnSs/SSDNngTlDXI/AAAAAAAAAHc/NOi_eF2owSk/s1600-h/Kitchen_Afternoon.jpghttp://2.bp.blogspot.com/_togwyrdcnSs/SSDNngTlDXI/AAAAAAAAAHc/NOi_eF2owSk/s1600-h/Kitchen_Afternoon.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_togwyrdcnSs/SSDNngTlDXI/AAAAAAAAAHc/NOi_eF2owSk/s1600-h/Kitchen_Afternoon.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_togwyrdcnSs/SSDNngTlDXI/AAAAAAAAAHc/NOi_eF2owSk/s1600-h/Kitchen_Afternoon.jpg

[jeremybirn]

Welcome jeonado -

That's great. Nice solid look. There's a little light leak of some kind underneath the plate and fruit. The reflections on the kitchen cabinets are a little grainy and could use more ray samples. The area right directly under the wine bottle looks very dark, but then there isn't any other shadow cast by it, I'd love to see a little more directionality there. Maybe you could block-off the back door or side door to light so there wasn't light coming in all the openings, and it would help give more shaping and variety to parts of the scene?

-jeremy

[Leotril]

Leotril - Nice job overall on the neon scene. I like the bit of reflection you have in the truck windshield. I think you could use a lot more reflections of what's in front of the truck, reflecting all up and down the front grill, bumper, etc. Maybe an environment map or a big polygon in front of him textured with a city lights image? The blue/green neon tubes look strangely transparent where you see through to the flourescent tubes behind them, maybe a compositing error? The flourescent tubes look dim and thin, if they are supposed to be turned on they should be much brighter and light the lampshades they are mounted in. Some of the yellow lightbulbs are going dim, and so is the NG in the top center neon. Once you get all the light sources really glowing, you could probably use less fill light and get a little more contrast and variety into the lighting. An area like inside the garage should be much brighter than the outside at night, maybe with some light spilling out, but we expect big differences in brightness and color.

Thank u jeremy :thumbsup: for that review .. i follow ur suggestion about the city lights plane i also try to get some difusse light from the city lights images .. theyre not that clear on the truck paint shader but on some geo they are like the sign side of the truck and glass .. i also fix the incadescence lights being to transparent and work on the contrast a bit .. i desaturated teh image in ps after making the final comp in ae i also added some passes like indirect diffuse env and specular env into the mix..

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/neon%20update/neon%20update%204/Comp1a-2a.jpg
click for 2K (http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/neon%20update/neon%20update%204/Comp1a2.jpg)

variations -> more color (http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/neon%20update/neon%20update%204/Comp1-1.jpg), more contrast (http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/neon%20update/neon%20update%204/Comp2-1.jpg), angle 2 (http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/neon%20update/neon%20update%204/comp1-1-1.jpg), angle 2a (http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/neon%20update/neon%20update%204/comp2-1-1.jpg)

[jeremybirn]

Leotril -

Still looking good. Some of the issues I mentioned remain. The bottom of the arrow is still transparent. I'd love to see some reflection on the front grill and front bumper of the truck, to give those a chrome look. It seems as if the flourescent tubes illuminate the ceiling above their lampshade (which would be shadowed), but don't fully light-up the interior of the lampshade around them. For that EXIT sign, maybe the sign itself doesn't need to light up, it could just be a glow coming from behind it?

-jeremy

[earun]

i have used maya 2008
plug in: mental ray
render time : 22min






http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/3504/70264129qb7.jpghttp://img370.imageshack.us/img370/7295/19539625to9.jpg

[ScallyFox]

Thanks for comment, Jeremy, here is small update..
http://keep4u.ru/imgs/b/081118/6d/6dabc8ccb22adbe810.jpg

jeonado, nice pic! I like the mood and light.

[jeonado]

Welcome jeonado -

That's great. Nice solid look. There's a little light leak of some kind underneath the plate and fruit. The reflections on the kitchen cabinets are a little grainy and could use more ray samples. The area right directly under the wine bottle looks very dark, but then there isn't any other shadow cast by it, I'd love to see a little more directionality there. Maybe you could block-off the back door or side door to light so there wasn't light coming in all the openings, and it would help give more shaping and variety to parts of the scene?

-jeremy

Thanks, jeremy.
Your advice has been noted.
But I still can't get rid of the bottom of the bottle being too dark because I'm still new to
mental ray. I've just migrated from the houdini's mantra renderer to mental ray.
I've set the render output to a 32bit hdr image so that I can apply a tone-mapping filter
in photoshop to enhance the tonal detail that I usually can't in a LDR image.
I also have tried to block the openings, but is not the result that i desired.

Here's the final render.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_togwyrdcnSs/SSP5YXEkF8I/AAAAAAAAAHk/jNsamMTAhn0/s1600-h/Kitchen_Daylight_Final.jpg
The caustic effect can be further improved but now I just in a procrastinated mood.
I've thought of to render a z-depth pass to create the lense blur thingy in post but
I've changed my mind because I still not familiar with the anti-aliasing setting in MR.
It is often tricky to have a desirable depth blur in comp with correct AA setting.

What do u think, jeremy sir?
Is that possible for you to migrate those knowledge that you spread in maya dvd to a max compatible one? I would buy one copy... :)


ScallyFox, thanks for your compliment. much appreciated.



(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_togwyrdcnSs/SSP5YXEkF8I/AAAAAAAAAHk/jNsamMTAhn0/s1600-h/Kitchen_Daylight_Final.jpg)

[doodlerboy]

I'm starting to get super pissed off. For the Lighthouse challenge, I take the land unwrap and I start putting textures on it, but it keeps rendering blurry. How do I stop getting my textures to look so flat and dole? I'm seriously getting discouraged from this every time I look at everyone elses stuff, and mines all crappy and looks low res.

http://www.postimage.org/gxEHPH0.jpg (http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=gxEHPH0)

[jeonado]

I'm starting to get super pissed off. For the Lighthouse challenge, I take the land unwrap and I start putting textures on it, but it keeps rendering blurry. How do I stop getting my textures to look so flat and dole? I'm seriously getting discouraged from this every time I look at everyone elses stuff, and mines all crappy and looks low res.


Hi, doodlerbody.
By looking at your render, it leads me to think that you are just using a super low-res texture. What 3d software do you use? You can fix this problem by increase the tiling numbers if it is a seamless texture. If it is not a seamless texture, you may want to find a higher res texture? if your 3d software does support filtering for texture map, you may want to reduce the blur amount. Procedural texture would help as well.

Cheers, hope it helps. I often come across this wtf circumstances too. Don't feel discourage, it is destructive enough to stop us from going further.

Bye, bye.
Jordan.

[doodlerboy]

Thanks so much man. that grass is a 1600X800, but I had to scale it down alot, so that did mess with the res. I will tile it! Thank you. And I'm using XSI so I'll try and find out hot to uncheck the blur on my texture.

[silvia]

Thanks so much man. that grass is a 1600X800, but I had to scale it down alot, so that did mess with the res. I will tile it! Thank you. And I'm using XSI so I'll try and find out hot to uncheck the blur on my texture.

Yes, it definitely looks like you should tile it a few times, because from the image it looks very stretched out.

[ShiningRay]

ShiningRay - Good start on the kitchen. The view outside looks too dark. The sky and clouds outside don't even look as bright as many of the surfaces inside. Inside, you could use more shadows or occlusion, especially to give contact shadows underneath the plate with the fruit, and nice shading making the walls get darker as they approach the corners. If you use raytraced shadows, make sure that your shadows appear in reflections. (Your fruit is coming out well also, it would need some texture and reflections to really bring the scene further.)

http://features.cgsociety.org/newgallerycrits/g81/331981/331981_1227329342_medium.jpg

Thank you jeremy !

The blue sky is seen the background, the bounce light from the ceiling is turned on, and Iroage is put up ahead. Some Shader's settings have been changed along with it.
Moreover, the shadow was put by using Oclujon for some parts.

[jeremybirn]

ShiningRay - Looks good! It's srange that the outside looks so dark, compared to the light coming through the window. Even the bounce light coming into the window frame from below looks much brighter than the white coulds outside. The wall texture looks strange, like a giant paper texture map. See if you can get the corners between walls uniformly darkened on both sides where the walls meet.

doodlerboy - Keep going with the textures. Try a main light with shadows, too.

jeonado - Good work!

ScallyFox - Nice job!

earun - Those are nice images, but they don't look like lighting challenge scenes.

-jeremy

PS - Reminder: This thread will be closed at the end of the year. In 2009, we will have a different approach to more focused flash-back challenges with specific start and end dates to encourage group work and create updated galleries.

[jeonado]

Jeremy, Thank you for reply. I try not to use full global illumination next time and just merely an occlusion pass , so that you can point-out more of my mistakes. In that case, I can learn more.

ScallyFox, you got some nice works nicely done. Look forward to see more renders from you.

I'm heading to next challenge which is the haunted hallway. I would like to watch a few horror movies to get inspired enough before i start.

doodlerboy, look forward to your texture work.

byebye,
jordan.

[ScallyFox]

Jeremy, thank you! I'll stop now with old challenges, and wait the "remake challenge" you mentioned after new year!

jeonado, thanks, looking forward to see new renders from you!

[Leotril]

jeremy thanks for your patience and comments during the challenge and off .. this could be my final its not the greatest quality and resolution .. i can do some final changes and tweaks and different perspectives renders in greater quality and resolution ..im hearing some final suggestions so freel free.. maybe the materials some of them are too bright ? anyone C&C most welcome

thanks in advance

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm255/Leotril/neon%20update/neon%20update%204/comp2post.jpg

[juansilva]

Leotril. Sorry if someone's already made the same comments...I haven't been following the on-going challenges thread for a while.

The scene has an overall nice look. However, there are a few things that concern me:
Are you still applying these glows in post? It seems you are having the same issues you did with the glows on the film noir scene. For some reason they end up looking way to bright and wash off the elements in your scene.

Also, there's something odd happening in the car: you get really nice reflections on the hood, but virtually non and a really flat look on the side and even on the tyre rims.

The pole with the sign seems to be getting enough light, and yet there is no light hitting the signs on it.

Lastly, watch out for the bump levels on the sidewalk, and the turqoise-lit surface in the back.

Hope that helps.
Cheers.

[Leotril]

juan.. nice to hear from you

lets start about the glows .. the render that im using thosen traslate well the maya glows u know so i have to to that in post using the incadescene pass (ae glows) this time added the vertical horizontal lines .. the beauty came a bit overbright so on some materials including the neon lights fixtures thinks are looking a bit bright .. i get some nice reviews about the glows before probably this time are lacking im missing some blue glow effect i was getting on my previus updates ..

ur right about the side of the car missing some reflections specially thats been botthering also need to tweak the car paint shader a bit more.. i need more diffuse on those signs for sure .. ill check the bump levels also..

all things noted.. i also think the specular highlights are a bit strong and white need to check my area lights intensity

thanks for ur review :cool:

[jeremybirn]

Leotril -

The front bumper and sides of the truck don't seem to reflect much. I see bright reflections on other objects, like that sign post with the P at the top, but not much on most of the truck. The headlights don't seem to cast much light onto the ground in front of them, you could add more of that, but take away how much light the headlights cast onto the chrome rectangles right around the lights. Some of those flourescenet tubes still don't look as if they are illuminating the fixture they are mounted in. Whatever's causing the white frosty look on the bottom of the big blue-green neon arrow, get rid of that.

-jeremy

PS - Reminder: this thread closing at the end of this month.

[dcbeatty]

Really liked the book. Here's my first submission.

Thanks very much for any tips and encouragement!

[dcbeatty]

Hi.

I've been trying to post pictures using imageshack, but no thumbnail appears. I get a "torn paper" icon when pasting the URL. I copy the listed "http:... etc." for the image, any help?

Thanks very much. By the way, is this forum closing for older challenges?

[jeremybirn]

Hi.

I've been trying to post pictures using imageshack, but no thumbnail appears. I get a "torn paper" icon when pasting the URL. I copy the listed "http:... etc." for the image, any help?

Thanks very much. By the way, is this forum closing for older challenges?

If you have a URL that ends in .jpg, then just insert it with the insert image button. If it's another URL, to a web page containing the image, then just past the link in as text, or with the Insert Link button.

This thread will close at the end of the year. Next year we will have threads for specific flashback challenges as a way to use the older stuff. There's a current challenge #17 going on now, and another new challenge coming in January as well.

-jeremy

[dcbeatty]

Hello,

I've attached my fruitbowl challenge as well as the first 2 kitchen scripts.

As I said before, I've found the book very informative and hopefully at least some of what I've learnt comes through at least a little.

Last 2 kitch scripts to follow in separate post.

Thanks again for all comments.

[dcbeatty]

Hello again,

Here's the last two kitchen challenge scripts.

Thanks!

[NAYAK33]

Hi, jeremy sir i don candle lighting.This is my final out put.Lighting don by maya standard lights.

software used-----MAYA and ADOBE PHOTOSHOP.

[NAYAK33]

hi jeremy sir, i don four scripts lighting this one also done maya standard lights.i try to create more realistic lighting with out used any plugins.

[kanooshka]

I had wanted to submit an entry for this challenge for a long time so here's a go at Neon and Chrome =)

http://dockay.com/CGTalk/LightingChallenges/NeonAndChrome/NeonAndChrome_01.jpg

[phil-w8]

Hi all,

As you can see this is my first post here on CGTalk.
I downloaded lately the christmas challenge scene.
Since the christmas scene doesn't figure in the on-going challenges list, I was just wondering if i could post my render here, so i could get a feedback from you guys ?

Thanks in advance.

Phil.

[jeremybirn]

dcbeatty - Nice work! The fruitbowl is a good start, I think the apple leaf attracts too much attention right now, with the highlight on top and the black shadow underneath. You could probably fill-in the black part of the pear too, and add some reflectivity. The kitchen scenes are nice. The first one is good for a romantic look, although it's not clear how that much light is coming from a moon that looks dimmer than the table, maybe the moonlight could be toned-down and be warmer and less green as well. The one with the wine bottle made prominant looks a bit like the POV of a drunk, but it also looks very CG. Not just because of the lens flare, but also the contrast, going to black on parts of the ceiling fan and wastebasket, which objects that could look more washed-out in an overexposed scene. Your sci-fi one is nice. I'd like more interactive lighting from the portal onto the set, especially pouring onto the counter and reflected in the sink right near it, and on that cabinet right next to the sink. The murder one is well defined by the camera angle and blood, but I wish there were more shadows, especially on the lights cutting through the counters, and under the fruits. Maybe reflections and highlights would let you get away with more dark areas in the diffuse tones.

NAYAK33 - Nice candle scene. I'd love to see more contrast in the table-top, with bright areas illuminated by the flames, and dark areas in the shadows or further away from the flames. Some of the metal parts could also use more lightness and luster. The candle wax seems a little too bright compared to everything else, especially in the mid and lower parts of the candles. Your four script ones are great. The first one is nicely textured, even though I can't tell which script it's based on. Second one is a very nice image, a little blocky looking on the right, but the view through the window and the fog are nice. The last one I also can't tell which script. The texture with the wood slats works OK on top of the table, but the sides of the chairs and cabinets should have a different wood.

kanooshka - That's a very good scene overall. In terms of "big picture" goals, one thing I'd love to see in that challenge is the sense that the scene contains more than one lighting environment. The lighting inside the garage, from overhead flourescent fixtures, is different from the light from the near at the door, and different from the outdoor light in a city at night. Getting different-looking lighting inside the garage, with a different color, intensity, and softness, could really add to the scene, especially since you can see that some of the florescent tubes are turned on. Maybe there could be greenish light, with some spilling out through the doors? The truck looks nice, I'd like to see the front headlights brighter, with reflections in the front bumper of the lights on the ground. The set lights could cast more shadows, on the right side of frame there's a yellow column that doesn't appear to shadow the ground.

phil-w8 - Welcome! Post your scene before this thread closes at the end of the month. In January a new challenge will be announced, I hope you can try that one.

-jeremy

[phil-w8]

Ok this is my render.
I used Maya 8.5, rendered with mental ray. I rendered the fog light alone and the rest of the scene in another rendered and screened them in phofile:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/philippe/My%20Documents/maya/projects/default/images/xmas30_wfog.jpgtoshop.

C & C are most welcome.

Thank you and Merry christmas to all.

http://www.philippelhage.com/lighting_challenges/xmas30_wfog.jpg

[phil-w8]

Here's my tryout on the following scene.
I'm using Maya 8.5, Mental Ray. Rendered the fog light alone and the rest of the scene alone and screened them in Photoshop.

C&C are welcome of course.

http://www.philippelhage.com/lighting_challenges/xmas31_wfog.jpg

[NAYAK33]

thanks jeremy sir for your feedback.Now i don Under The Boardwalk lighting.I hope you like it.

[jeremybirn]

NAYAK33 - Nice scene! The low-polygon rock in the foreground makes it look very videogame-ish, some extra tesselation or displacement would help that. The spiky things appear to be comped in front of all of the grass, even grass that might be behind them. The water surface seems to have shadows on it or some transparency that shouldn't really be there, try to get rid of any hard lines on the water surface. A little more fill light on the top of the tire would help, but pehaps bring the closer fish into more darkness, just to help keep the 3 fish from looking like twins. I hope you try the new challenge that we'll start in January.

phil-w8 - That's a great scene! I think you could use a little more soft fill light: a very soft blue glow coming through the windows, but with soft shadows and very soft edge and from more angles than the focused light, and very soft warm illumination from the tree lights. That'll fill in the black edges near the windows and give nicer shading to the gifts. The glow and reflection from the fire look great, but maybe have a bit too much green in them. I hope you try the new challenge that we'll start in January.

-jeremy

[sumitchanda2009]

hi i am sumit chanda , working as a cg lighting artist in india.
http://s706.photobucket.com/albums/ww66/sumitchanda2009/

[gashworm]

Here is my go at the hallway scene. Texturing in Maya, Rendering in 3delight with points based occlusion and color bleeding. A little color correction added in post.

http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn242/gashworm/hallway.jpg

[phil-w8]

Dear Mr. Birn

Thank you for your reply and comments. I will try and get a new render as soon as i can.

I have one question though, you suggested that i add more fill light coming in through the window. I'm currently using one spot light as the moon light. Should i remove that spot light and replace it with multiple spot lights that light the room from different angles?

Since i'm learning all by myself Maya, i need a bit of guidance. :$

As for the coming challenge, i think i'll give it a try

Thank you.

Philippe

[BinaryRay]

I will try the old challenges, bowl of fruits first...

http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/633/fruitbowlfr7.jpg