no dinos shot 
Lighting Challenge #17: Natural History
jeremybirn
#83
This is going great! I’m really happy with all these images, and glad to see that this huge scene isn’t too great a challenge for a lot of people to dive into. Here’s some feedback on the more recent posts:
lazzhar - That’s great! The composition is really dynamic. I think you could move the light you have on the columns on the right side of the frame over onto the dino and give him a little more contrast. The glass base is like an escher drawing that’s hard to figure out. On the right, the glass wall appears to be dark and I can see the top and bottom of the glass wall, and its reflection below it. On the left side of the glass, there appears to be a top, a bottom, then a brighter part of the floor, then a dark edge, then the reflection?
swag - Nice angle! It could use a center of attention somewhere and some more texture and reflections. The upper left hallway needs lighting work: parts of it near the sunbeam need some fill or bounce light, and so does the ceiling of the part in the far left. For this big a space, some kind of haze or depth fading to reduce the contrast a bit in the distance would be nice.
Sealaender - Good start! I think you need more contrast or light on the dinos to draw attention to them within such a wide shot. The overall fill light looks very uniform, as if the same amount of light comes from the right and the left.
visua - Great! That’s looking nice and solid. The two doors don’t look very believable to me, maybe you expect to see some ground outside the building? Adding those smaller lights around the architecture is a good idea, but you’ll need to put some geometry there so people can see the lights themselves.
suedix - Good starts! Both camera positions are good, in the 2nd one I think the framing should be fixed so you don’t have half of that dino cut-off on the left edge. The floor reflections look nice, but I’m not sure that you have shadows visible in reflections. The reflections of the dark side alcoves look much too bright, especially in the 2nd one, as if the world getting reflected didn’t have shadows there. The glass material looks good on the top of the one display case, but needs some work on the glass around the dinos.
JoyVoltenburg - Welcome! That’s looking good! The two lamps in the back don’t look lit-up, except for the light behind them. Maybe the glass in the front could be brighter, and then you wouldn’t need as much light behind the lamps? The t-rex could use a little bit of kick or rim lighting, especially with all the light behind his head and to his upper left. Maybe a little reflectivity in his material or some specular highlights in places would bring the surface to life more? You might move the sign that lines-up with his foot.
fuhshizzle - Nice start on the night scene! Placing small sources around the scene give it a nice night feeling and a good sense of scale. You’ll probably need to add some geometry (a model of the lamp itself) to motivate most of those spots of light. I don’t know what’s going on in the foreground with the three cubes, I guess that’s just a test of some kind? I think you could do more with reflections and highlights on the floor and walls. Nice texture on the floor, too!
Victor-Larsson - On the version I brought into Maya, a lot of the surface normals appeared to be flipped, but that didn’t seem to be a problem in rendering in MR. When coryc was making the Lightwave version he said he had to flip tons of normals. I don’t know if anyone has a better version for your software?
davidsharp - Welcome! That’s a very strong start, nice composition, good basic blocking on your key light. I’m looking forwards to seeing more.
manki - Good starts! I like the 3rd one down the best.
scorpion66 - Good start! Keep going!
HOOJK - Great! You have a solid scene, good basic lighting. I think it could use a little more of a center of attention, maybe light the left dino so we see more contrast in his face, or swing the camera to see more of the right dino? Your textures are off to a good start, too.
mmoses00 - That’s great! I think the dino head looks a little dark and contrasty. When you his something like that with a bright light, I expect the whole thing to light up a bit because of all the white surfaces inter-reflecting, or because the material is thin, translucent and porous. Maybe a kick of light from that window below his teeth would help, and some light to fill in the area around his eye so the eye itself stands out?
Phil-roberts - Wow! You’ve just joined, you make one of the the first posts, and it’s terrific! Welcome to the challenge. Your shading on the dino really makes him pop. I love the small highlight/reflection detail in the surface. I think the noise looks too much like it was projected from the side and gets stretched-out horizontally in places, maybe a 3D procedural noise or at least a different projection angle could fix that? Maybe on the interior surfaces some of the highlights should be shadowed or blocked where he self-reflects. The marble and glass could use some reflections and highlights too. I like the color contrast between the warm tones and the cool greens.
-jeremy
jasvant
#84
thanks for the great comments as you always give.here is my image with few correction.hope you will like it.:arteest: 
[post]5375322[/post]
[post=5375322]The LightHouse![/post]
weng888
#85
hi , wow , love this new challenge will be lots of work though . here is my starting camera angle … starting to detail the scene already … hope i’ll meet the deadline
Fex
#86
update for the night shot…rendertimes are quite hefty (2h on a 3ghz dualcore and still grainy)
next one will be experimental
jorust
#87
That a great challenge Jeremy. Kudos to Alvaro and Joel for those great models.
Will join this one. Been years :argh: since my last contribute so it´s time for some renders.
My idea for the image is to place myself with a camera, inside the museum, trying to find a good angle to photograph the Rex. The sun hits the rex and makes a nice diagonal and lead my eyes into the museum.
Anyway, my first render in Modo. Done on my laptop, so render time was around 30min.
Leotril
#88
I basically started from scratch with this one… importing some shaders from previosly challenges and automapping that to the whole geo it takes about 20 mins, after that i added a bunch of pointlights with low decays values and one directional light that could be the moon for this instance in conjunction with and hdr wich i use for GI+ FG spherical mapping to represent the sky soft illumination .im planning to add some fog for next update and fixing some issues i got witch shadows (raytrace) or occlusion … maybe rendering some passes not just the beauty this time … the rendertime about 2 hours …hope u like the changes
hardware : Intel Quad Q6600 2 GB DDR3
software: vista x64, maya 2008, renderman, photoshop
holle
#89
hi there…
now this is a pretty nice scene for testing!
many nice renderings to see here.............
ok,
here my first try of the scene.
Luthias
#90
Here are two possible camera angles for my entry. Not sure if I will go with either of these yet.
option1
Option 2
lazzhar
#94
Thanks.
Another one:
Rendered in two passes:
And:
Obviously some post retouching has been done.
Great stuff in here by the way.
Edit: Sorry I’ve just seen the note on the first page about mentioning details about the render. Unfortunatly I didn’t pay attention to the rendering times, but they were around the 10 minutes up to 20. I used Maya 2008 ext 2 with mental ray. The machine is a dual xeon e5420 @ 2.5 Ghz with 4 GB of RAM.
I used only direct lights not GI or FG or Occlusion here.
JBrant
#95
I thought I’d post another update with a new camera angle and compositional tweaks before I really sank my teeth into the materials. C&C welcome.
holle
#96
hi lazzhar,
looks pretty nice.
but I think the falloff of the front light goes to deep into the scene.
jeremybirn
#97
JBrant - Both are nice starts, especially 2nd one with the more interesting composition. You’ll need some light from the scene onto the dino.
lazzhar - Looking good! The blue light on the dino is fine for fill as it is, but I think the blue light on the set should be split into multiple lights. The area where the blue and warm overlap on the set near the stairs looks a little forced. More, smaller lights can help the sense of scale, and your fill lighting should include a little bit of light on the right side of that display behind the dino.
holle - Nice job! I think the wall texture is almost there, it just has a bit too much bump up close, and further away too much of a repeating color texture. Some reflectivity might add to it. Where the roof/ceiling meets the top corner of that archway, the arch looks bright or the ceiling looks dark, they should meet at the same level of brightness. Once you get the floor textured and reflective, check to make sure the color balance is working over the whole scene. I’m worried about most of the blue being down below, but that might be a temporary effect of some surfaces not being shaded yet.
Leotril - That’s great! I agree a little fog or depth fading would add to it. Maybe some more light could happen in that hallway near the bright doors, just enough to put light behind the dino and make him pop more? Some reflections on the floor and walls and glass would be nice.
polymess - Welcome back! Good basic blocking for your lighting and camera. Looking forwards to the next version.
Fex - Keep going! I hope you can find faster settings for test renders, to hammer out a brighter exposure level and make key elements read clearly.
weng888 - Welcome! Looks like just an occ pass, let’s see more!
jasvant - Nice scene! The floor has different patterns on it: the shadows, the reflections, and also a black and white round pattern of some kind. I think the reflections could be more prominant (you could break them up a bit with a bump map if they look too perfect), but the round pattern is too bold and should be brought down in contrast. The dinos look good, but the one that’s getting back-lit could use some rim light really outlining the brighter edges of his back and head.
-jeremy
kamendola
#98
Hi, i use Cinema4D + Vray
[left]I participate just for fun because I do not have the time but I try to work out a 3D, I’m young, very young when I try to do my best to get more beautiful pictures!
I am sorry I used an online translator 
[/left]
