Lighting Challenge #13: Christmas

#41

Thanks to jojo1975 and cosmonaut, we now have Max and Blender files on the download page.

-jeremy

#42

T-R - Nice job! The fire light could be located more back into the fireplace, with less of a highlight towards the front. For the lights on the tree, it would be nice to see more illumination from the lights in 3D, with less of the 2D glow or bloom effect on top. I wonder if the lights could have a little more saturation, too?

greyother - In terms of color correction, an inexpensive first step is to find a reference photograph (take one with your own camera, or download from flickr.com) of a christmas tree or christmas lights, where you like the tones and exposure, and view that side by side with the renders you are making. If you are matching the tones from the reference image, then your work will match the tones from the reference image on any monitor. A few adjustments to make the picture look right might be in order on some monitors, and in some offices there’s more light than you’d have at home. If there are windows or big flourescent panels lighting your office, then expect your monitor image to look different than you see at home in the evenings.

jojo1975 - Good start on the scene. I don’t know why some of the branches of the tree are lit brightly, and others aren’t. Maybe if it were more clear where that light was coming from, and if it lit the tree more evenly, and cast shadows, it would be more believable? The dark board in the floor almost looks like a little step down or hole in the floor.

-jeremy

#43

Hi,
This is Inspirer test

#44

Looking great Buca I love the floor and the fireplace. A couple suggestions I could think of so far would be more light coming in from outside because the background plate you’re using is pretty bright and some more bounce light towards the chimney because there is a lot of black. Keep it up =)

I started working on the lights in the tree and I wasn’t really liking the look and feel of it so I felt like making it harder for myself for some reason. I wanted to make the christmas lights of a different variety. Most trees that I’ve seen have had the smaller lights in larger number. This will make this challenge even more of a challenge for me but I definately love a challenge.

I wasn’t exactly sure how to do this but after some thought I found the perfect method. What I did was take a curve and wrapped the tree. I then took a set of 2 cubes and extruded them along the curve with twist. I then created 4 lights of different colors set point lights in them then duplicated them along the curve. Then randomized their rotation with a mel script.

I have 2 version here the first version is quadratic decay and the second is cubic. Personally I like the quadratic decay better.


#45

Nice entry everybody !

here is my first entry, so far…
I only set up the lights ( need some tunning )
no textures and shader work get… no FG, raytracing, GI…no post work just maya soft with depth map shadows, Im using 6 spot lights and 2 point lights.


render time 55seg
C&C please !

#46

noob question:

what is bokeh effect?

#47

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh

#48

Second try. Changed camera (i think the first one was too narrow)
Add DOF (so I dont’ need anymore overdetailed fire) Added star effects (in max) and star effect in photoshop (and also adjusted a bit light)
I will try to vary something in the texture but I dont’ know what.
There are two rim lghts (under the tree) one omni near the fireplace, and a it of environmental.
Probably I should vary the color of rim … every suggestion well accepted

#49

This is my first entry into the Challenges, feels good to be here!

My image was rendered in Vue6I using Global Illumination. Lights:

1: Sun (moon) light - Infinite Light
2: A street light spot out the window
3: A light from the other room to cast the shadow of the boy
4: A spot set to affect the ornaments only to bring up a bit of twinkle
5: The tree light objects were converted to area lights.
6: I wanted more tree lights, so I duplicated them, changed the filter and rotated them around the tree a bit.

Render time was 4 hrs @ 1600x1000.

#50

still test rendering. this time trying to go for a chtistmas morning atmosphere.
just an exterior sunlight system for the lights.
gi and fg combination on mental ray, 3ds max. render time about 10 minutes, but already had the photon map stored. with about 100000 photons.

#51

Added more lights to the tree as well as did the lighting on the tree. I originally had the lights transparent with a point light in it and the lights casting shadows and refracting through the glass. Unfortunately that took over an hour and a half just to render that pass. I decided to change the setup so the lights didn’t cast shadows, were translucent and use volume lights instead of point lights. This rendered much much faster.

#52

Ok so I decided to join. Before showing you the images a little background information about me: I’m not a professional and I’m doing this as my hobby for fun. This is my first contest on CGTalk and I thought it would be cool to get some practice after having read the great book by Jeremy Birn Digital Rendering & Lightning 2nd Edition. Jeremy thanks for a valueable asset.
So here it goes. I haven’t applied any textures yet and I have just tweaked some of the materials a little. The software I’m using is Blender 2.45. I’m rendering on a Intel Dual Core with 2Ghz and I’m using the Blender Internal Rendering since I’m using the compositor to render in layers. I turned on raytracing to get some lightning effects more easily and to have some mirror and shiny metal effects on the ornaments and because my machine can handle it.
So here it goes:
This is just filllights to give a evening mood going

Rendertime was roughly 40 seconds and I’m using area lights to cast a dull blue light.
This is just the fireplace and I haven’t modeled a fire yet but am planning to do so soon:

This is a area light in the back of the chimney. Rendertime roughly 1 min.
This is the fireplace with a spotlight added to give a firyshine and another spotlight to simulate bouncelight from the floor.

I ve added a slight texture to one of the spotlights to give it some noise from the fire. Render time 1min.
This is render with only a spotlight to highlight the ornaments:

Rendertime about 30 secs. All other lightsources disabled.
This is a render with just the christmastree lights. A pointlamp for each light that is set very low:

Shadows are turned of for the point lights since I couldn’t get them to render through the lamp mesh. I have to figure out how to do that and still be able to enable shadow. In order to mask the light by the tree I set up a render layer for the tree mask and put that on top of the normal pass to mask out the light that is hidden by the tree. Rendertime roughly 1 min.
This is the combination of all the above renders without the lamp meshes (I just forgot to add them :sad: ):

Render time is about 1:10 min
This is the combined render with AO and Radiosity turned on. I also added a slight bloom via compositor to the lamps.

Radiosity skyrocket the render time to approximatly 2:12:30 min so I’m not sure if I will use it in the final render although it increases the quality quite a bit imho. The AO pass was in add and subtract mode so it added quite some light.
AO pass:

Currently I’m trying to find a way to get an AO Pass that does not highlight the image so much but still darkens the elements that need darkening. I kind of like to have the mood of the combined lightning image with the additional quality of the AO.
Anyway this is a long posting and I hope you all read it up to here. So keep up the great work and C&C always welcome but don’t be too harsh on me :wink:

#53

I take this great scene as opportunity to enter my first competition here.

This is my first try and more a test and rough sketch for me to get a hold of the scene and the possible lighting setups.

I am using solely blender for this project.

The idea was to create a contrast between the cold winter outside and the cozy warm
christmas room inside. No textures so far are used beside a reflection map for the glass balls.

For the fireplace and its glow I use 4 pointlights and 1 spotlight. 1 hemilight is used to do the light bounce from the floor.
For each electric candle on the tree I use a point light with limited range acting only on the tree parts and the glass balls. The get the glow from the tree an the walls I use 2 separate points lights which do not light the tree.
The moonlight lighting the door frame and the window frame is one spotlight each. Ambient occlusion is used minimally to achive better shadows.

No postprocessing or compositing was applied so far.

The next step will be to separate into different render layers and work on the balancing.

Render time for the current image was at 16 min at 1600x1200

#54

Awesome! Thanks for putting this up Jeremy. I can’t wait to get mine up. :slight_smile: Great job so far everyone!

#55

Here’s my take on it…

mental ray (duh), all mia_materials, physical sun/sky with portal lights, photographic exposure shader, mia_lens_bokeh for DOF with hex iris… FG, no GI. Four lights

  • one in fireplace
  • sun
  • a ceiling light
  • a single skylight portal

Image is Straight out of the renderer, no post (glare effect is “Lume Glare”).

Rendered in 40 minutes in HD res.

Also have a DOF-free variant:

And one w. crazy DOF :wink:

/Z

#56

Well Let’s say that Jeff has conviced me. I was trying to tweaking some light for bubls in Vray but I’m not satisfied with the result I will give MR a chance since I alwyas wanted to learn more about it :wink:
So more to come this week and btw can jeef share a bit of hints about the light material :wink: ?
jojo

#57

Ok so I’m one of Greyother’s students. I haven’t been doing 3d for long, maybe 7-8 months now. He recommended that we enter this for building our skills and I’m going to give it a shot and see what I get. I know the left side is a little blown out, I have to turn down the sun a little bit more. I’m using 3d max 2008 with the mr architextural shaders for the most part. I didn’t put a shader on everything and my scene is far from done, I was just testing out some lights. I also hid the tree because it’s very dense and destroys my computer. I have a mr sun and area light in this scene with fg turned on. I’m running a 3.0 p4 (crap, i know) with 2gb of ram and a quadro fx3450 gfx card. any help would be highly appreciated. oh btw Mr. Hash, it’s sako. :stuck_out_tongue:

#58

Hello everyone! WOW! Awsome work every one! thumbs up to all!

-M.Junaid Baig.

#59

Master Zap: I am in awe of your abilities.
kanooshka: Interesting what you said about the volume lights instead of point lights. My render took about 26 minutes with the point light shadows on.

      Here is v2 for me:
#60

Here is an updated version from me. I changed the perspective a little. Additionally I lowered the energy on the AO Pass from 1 to .1 and I added some spots for the shine from the christmas tree on the walls.
The windows are made to show reflections and I added a brick texture to the chimney. The christmas balls got a second material shiny red. and I also lowered the energy of the lamps that make the tree shine green. Last but not least I made the lights brighter so that they showup better.

Rendertime was 10minutes (while I was surfing the internet)
Tips on how to improve the image are greatly appreciated as well as further C&C
Things that are still missing: Texture on the floor. Some variation on the material and textures of the presents.
BTW is it ok if I put this up on another forum for C&C?