Lighting Challenge #22: The Carnival (WIP)

#301

Hello, this is my first post here! :slight_smile:

Some really nice images in this thread, and great modeling by Dan Konieczka.

@xeltestic: I like the ominous angle of the ferris wheel in the background now that itā€™s visible against the sky. The roller coaster in the background might make the carnival seem even bigger and scarier to the small child; Iā€™d be interested to see it in there to see how it looks.

@Voig: Awesome texturing detail on the carousel. Itā€™s a little hard for me to see the details on the top part though, because the overall image seems kinda dark. Maybe itā€™s just my monitor.

@dzazaleo: I like yours a lot. Great color scheme & abandoned looking textures. One idea I had is that the texture on the top cone part of the carousel doesnā€™t quite seem to match the quality of your other textures. Is it fabric with dirt on it?

@VinVang69: Lol, cool take on it. :slight_smile: Those horses look evil.

@zbugja: I think your image is my favorite so far. Awesome idea and composition and textures!

Hereā€™s my attempt so far. I liked the original camera so I stuck with it. Iā€™ve been using lots of lights overall because there seem to be lots of separate light sources in this scene. Iā€™ve used mainly spotlights to highlight certain things and area lights to represent lights from arrays of individual bulbs. I think some areas still seem a bit dark. Feedback is appreciated! :slight_smile:

Iā€™m using Blender with its internal renderer & compositor.

#302

Hereā€™s an update to my scene. Bright night. (Yes the balloons are still mylar. :))

 [[click to see full sized image]](http://ebbstudios.com/download/cgslc22a8_final.jpg)[[img]http://ebbstudios.com/download/cgslc22a8_final_thmb.jpg[/img]](http://ebbstudios.com/download/cgslc22a8_final.jpg)
#303

Marty -

Thatā€™s great! I love it! I think the lighting could be better integrated between the merry-go-round and the surrounding area, a nice glow of warm light from all those bulbs could light the back of the bench, the shadow area under the bench, etc. The horses could be more reflective, too. That tent to the right of the merry-go-round looks dull and too similar to the m-g-r top, maybe some lights inside the tent would help separate it. The Ferris Wheel could motivate some extra light on the trees in front of it, and maybe the right side of the tent.

-jeremy

#304

hey, thank you! I appreciate it. :slight_smile: And Iā€™ll take a look at the suggestions and see what I can do.

#305

Havenā€™t had much time, but I brightened up some various things, modelled some streetlights to motivate the pools of light, tweaked pretty much everything else.

#306

Finally got time to improve some of the textures and correct dark areas.
Didnā€™t post that much for a while but I watched all the images feeding this thread and all I have to say is ā€œwowā€. Everyoneā€™s doing a great job. All this different styles/compo are really inspiring.

1080 Hi-Res

#307

Thanks you, sir for such a nice model

I would love to give a shot for it
. :thumbsup:

Planning to do night lighting
.

Very soon I will post my draft
#308

fredduck - awesome updateā€¦ I really like your texture updates and the whole scene looks awesome.
The only note I would have is that the yellow balloons look strange for some reasonā€¦ They look out of place not nearly as realistic as the Red balloon. The Red balloon looks great!
The yellow balloons balance out your composition but if they looked more realistic it would make for the perfect 3d imageā€¦ (i think removing transparency for the yellow balloons might help)

#309

Wow there are some really interesting ideas and stylesā€¦inspiring indeed!
@fredduck: beautiful work! I agree with brookselliott. The yellow balloons do stand out. I guess if both colors of balloons are stylized or both are realistic it would make the whole comp work better.
@Inky99: I think you chair needs to get some lights from the carousel since itā€™s pretty close to it.
@MartyD: I really like where you are going. Itā€™s very different!
@BradC: Everything seems to work well. I specially like your hi-striker. If you can have something in the foreground would be great!
@xeltestic: I like your composition. It draws me into the scene. Maybe the wheel can be pushed back a bit. I feel itā€™s too close to the tent.
@pmcb: Looking forward to seeing more!

Here's my update. I don't know how to make it more spooky or scary so it'll be more "tale of horror", but it's what it is. I'm out of ideas :p. C&C are welcome as always!
I'm using 3ds max 2009/mental ray and after effects.

[img]http://www.yananwu.com/link/carnival_finalComp.jpg[/img]

These are my passes: Key+Fill, Ambient, Bulb Glow, Reflection, and AO.

#310

Replying to thread so I can see updates :wink:

#311

Xeltestic and Kanooshka - Thanks for your comments - very much appreciated! I will keep them in mind as I continue to work on it. More updates to come.

#312

@MartyD - Your trees look very nice and realistic ! How did you made those trees ??

#313

I think he mentioned E-on VUE at some point. Either way, great job MartyD! What are the render times with your set up?

EDIT:
guys Iā€™m wondering here. The lights on the ferris wheel - what would be the best way to approach this. Id guess there are several. My first thought would be to use a self-illuminated material with ā€œilluminates the scene (when using FG)ā€ turned on. Another one would be to use for each bulb a standard omni with shadows turned off and attenuation turned on. But that seems like overkill. Or should I go ahead and visualize the light fall off with texturing? Any good suggestions are welcome :slight_smile:

EDIT again:
@nan1203: hey thx for your comment I will definately have a look into it, though it was kinda my purpose cause I thought it makes the girl look even smaller. But ill give it try 4 sure. Yours coming along nice as well. I tried a low angle shot my self but couldnā€™t get it to work. Yours looks great.

#314

@ xeltestic I will start with the self illumination approachā€¦ I guess that one omni for every light will really be a too big effort and not worth the computation time. You can put self illumination + one area light and see if this trick do the job :wink:

#315

Here is my new one render. I hop that you like it.

#316

Hi jojo1975, thx for the response. I think that might be a good enough solution for the ferris wheel. The merry-go-round in my case is a different story and I needed a much better solution cause its a front element. Now i played around with a lot of things for the MGR outer roof lights. First I tried setting up projector maps in omni spheres. Didnā€™t get that to work right. Then I went into playing around with photometric lights and web distribution. Still that is quite render intense for the amount of lights id need - so I skipped that idea as well. Then I tried to get the mib_photometric light shader to work in max - to no avail. In the end I returned to idea number 1 - omni spheres with projector maps. I looked at close up pictures from carnival lights for reference and painted the projector maps in Photoshop. Itā€™s not perfect, but I think its a good compromise cause its really fast to render. Here is my test. If anyone has questions about my approach let me know.

#317

Here is a small update. didnā€™t get any time this week. sorry:cry:

#318

xeltestic, I didnā€™t really understand what you said! but your lights looks good to me. Maybe a shade dim or maybe not.

djprasun, nice one. The submerged part of the pier does not look very well motivated? I canā€™t really figure out the source of the lights or light illuminating it. And I feel that the wall of the ship around itā€™s two port holes are not reflective enough and looks a bit lopsided when compared with wall of the deck above. And could the rain drops just outside the port holes have a brighter glint? They seem to be lit too uniformly.

T.

#319

Thanks everyone for the comments.

  ha ha. I take no credit. They're all part of Vue's vegetation system or EcoSystem. You just add them to the objects material and paint with a brush. It's pretty easy. And you can create new plants too but to use the EcoSystem, which includes wind and forces and interacts with all the parameters you can set up, you have to use the built in parametric models and paint their leaves. If you're interested there are some great examples from Incredibly Lush at cornucopia3d.com
  
  Render times at the moment are pretty huge. Vue's anti-aliasing is not so good apparently. As soon as soft shadows are turned on straight machined edges are getting very jagged. To work around that I'm rendering at twice the final size and scaling the image in post. Also Global Radiosity on all those faces is taking a toll. Render times for a single frame are about 48 hours at the moment. Trees are a lot faster than ground cover and I have a better way of cheating distant ground in the works so that might speed things up a little.

And, just to add, there are some amazing images showing up in this forum. So photographic. I find thereā€™s always something new to learn by following along. Makes a difference.

#320

halfPintMike, I meant that the light emitting from the bulbs isnā€™t uniform because of the bulbsā€™ texture. This is what I tried to simulate simple by using a projector map with a standard omni. Below my reference and the top of my merry-go-round (tested different white point settings with the blackbody shader).

MartyD - 48hrs?? omg!! thats crazy. I hope u have to render only once :slight_smile: try faking softshadows with standard light arrays and shadow maps. Works like a charm.