Still life: photorealistic pool balls

[superfly18]

Not bad, i like it. Seen this kind of work down before, but here goes:

For some reason...when i look at the #5 ball, i get the impression that it has a light IN it, or between 11 and 5. The DOF that you have in the front is odd, not really my cup of tea, but good.

It appears you have 2 #5 balls...one in the front and one in the back. Red is suppose to be #3 and orange is #5. If the #5 ball in the front was suppose to be what it is, then make it have more of an orange look to it.

[jugger]

nice picture but i think superfly is right. the balls have way to much some sort of glow around it. especially the brighter colors like red/yellow. also for a photorealstic rendering there has to be much more dirt and dust on the balls as the table. as we speaking about the table. it doenst look like the pool table fabric. more like a plane with a decent bump mapping. where are the fingerprints in the green :)

[mixed]

i think the problem with the 'glow' around the balls is caused bye color bleeding. isnt the FG feature nice in mental ray :)

[HapZungLam]

yep. gi is too high, balls are glowing.

[kiaran]

This is an option in the MR globals for increase the photon filter size (or something like that) to help reduce the grainy GI effect that you are getting on the table. Also do some tutorials on the internet to learn how to optimize render times. By using less photons and increasing the filter sizes you can dramatically reduce render times and increase image quality. Rendering with an HDRI map would also give nicer reflective highlights on the balls. Keep at it. Good job so far.

;)

[secretasianman]

nice balls.

[D_Nice]

Also the 1 ball has too much of an orange tinge to it. It should have the same color as the yellow band on the 9ball.

As previously mentioned, the glow is a bit strong. Also the pool balls might be a bit more believable if they had a bit more wear to them.

Looking at the image again, the felt could use a bit more depth to it. Looks a bit too smooth and flat IMO.

[Wetatron]

Nice render, but you say you've tried to get it photorealistic based on a photo, is it possible to see this photo so we can judge?

[LordShaitan]

I agreee with the post before, but one thing that stuck out in my mind is that your rendering these ball as if the table was in a room with a hole in the celing letting in white light from somewhere, throw in a couple rectangle lights with some cast shadows, and put the corner of the table and youll be fine. Also you might want to think about adding a stick to draw the eye into the picture easier.

[Tidus_44]

great job one thing to add on to theres is that the felt needs a lil work it looks a bit fake for some reason, maybe if you were to put a few scuffs on the felt (blue chalk) as well as maybe a few on the ball themselves. otherwise great job man

[bvicarious]

Thanks for your replies, your comments and advice are greatly appreciated. I didn't mean for this to turn into a wip, but I made some changes to the image considering your crits.

superfly: i had noticed the problem with the 5 ball, for some reason I never got around to fixing it. Also the set I had was pretty ghetto, so the colors were a bit off. But I did change the color so it appears more orangish now. Now it is more distinguished from the 3 ball, which is in the back.


I toned down the GI a bit to make a few of the balls appear less floaty and glowing.


kiaran: the graininess on the table is intentionally from a diffuse map and slight bump rather than photons. Incidentally I did try using HDRI lighting since I compiled a light probe of a pool hall, but it didn't cooperate too well with my materials, since I did a lot of tweaking of all the variables to the point where they're more of a hack than a true simulation of pool ball material.. but I will be using HDRI in upcoming projects.

The reflection, as in the photo it was based on, is a soft box that was hovering a few inches above the balls. A black cloth was placed around the scene to block out the camera and people standing around. I thought it would give the balls more depth and volume, rather than having the light bulbs of hot lamps reflecting in the balls.



Now about the felt looking fake and flat, well thats because it actually is fake and flat. When i took the photo, I had to improvise and use a piece of green construction paper for the felt. So in the render, I wanted to make it look somewhat close to that. I guess overall it was a pretty dull picture to begin with, I just wanted to make it on the computer :p

so anyway here's the update:

4x5 chrome photo (http://www.tcnj.edu/~vaccaro3/anim2/45balls.jpg) (poor quality, used a crappy scanner)

full size (http://www.tcnj.edu/~vaccaro3/anim2/pool-crit.jpg)

http://www.tcnj.edu/~vaccaro3/anim2/pool-critsm.jpg

[gfx]

i think if the reflections of the lightbox on the balls were to be sharper it would be more convincing.

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