Lighting Challenge #22: The Carnival (WIP)

[Creativemickey]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_g6499BTr7Cw/S6RsZTFrONI/AAAAAAAAAEk/VTHyvMwhYEo/s1600-h/1st+deaft.jpg

Hello,
This is my 1st draft…

[livuxman]

I again congratulate all because I believe that all the images are fantastic.

@ChaoticSilly,I feel fantastic result and I can not think of anything you could improve.
@VinVang69, scary eyes,I guess all dark and only see the giant-size image should convey a sense of nightmare.
@djprasun, very interesting and i don’t know why, but I guess in the foreground, next to the tree, watching the horizon a little animal.

I will comment further later when have time again.

Here you get three versions in which I’m working on which I decide not.
I’m also doing an animation, you can see the current status: Video

[ChaoticSilly]

@livuxman: Thanks! I think the ground water looks more natural in the 3rd image. One thing I might suggest would be to keep the reflections in the water sharp, but blur the ones on the wet pavement.

@djprasun: Thanks for the advice. I toned the brightness down in the image below, but I don’t think it obscures the background enough to give it a daydream feeling. I suppose I could try rendering it with a lower diffuse on the top but it might not look natural with the other glares.

@herbertagudera: The mapped glares makes the top of the carousel look translucent, like the lights are behind a sheet of plastic. I wonder if might be worth it to remap it so the glare parts are translucent and put a single light in the middle of the object.

1024 x 575

[djprasun]

@livuxman- Are you suggesting me to put an animal at the side of the tree!
Your render looks very sleek. The puddles looks really great according to me.You could make the texture below the bench and the bottom of the railing a little dirty. Right now it’s looking very clean. Any ways, I love your render. Your render is one of the best in this forum if not ‘the’ best.

[neonbulbs]

@djprasun : That’s an outstanding image. Well done…

[system]

Hi All

                 This Is My First Post For This  Lighting Competition , Done In Maya
   Mental Ray . Lighting Not Yet  Completed ! Please Suggest Your Valuable Comments And Critics! 
 :)

[livuxman]

@ChaoticSilly, thanks for the suggestion. At first it is what I did (you can see in the video), but later tried more radical combinations, as I have shown, where the water level is higher, but I will try it again.

@djprasun, many thanks, you’ve made my day. I will seek ways to dirty as you say, surely when start to add textures, because so far everything is geometry. As for the animal in your scene, it’s just what I came up in the mind, probably because when I look at your scene, it evokes some memories of my mind. It might not make sense, but your scene looks very natural, wild.

[BradC]

@bimalbose: Nice image. I like the addition of the trees and the extra lights on the tent and carousel steps. The glow/bloom on the ferris wheel looks a little unnatural to me somehow. Maybe because the bulbs don’t appear bright enough to be causing that much glow.

@ChaoticSilly: I agree with you, I liked your first one better overall. It looks like a distant memory or something. If you could get the top of the carousel to look somewhere between the two.

@livuxman: Very nice looking renders, and cool animation! I liked the tumbling papers. Lighting looks exactly like an overcast day. Wouldn’t pavement only have mirror reflections like that in areas where it was under some water?

@djprasun: Cool idea with the bridges, and nice atmosphere. I like it. I expect to see a couple of taurens walking across that bridge, haha.

@BradC: If you can have something in the foreground would be great!

That’s a good point, I have no particular subject. The only thing I can think of adding would be like a discarded stuffed animal, but then I’d have to do fur, bleh…

Here’s my latest update. I tweaked lots of stuff since last time. C&C is welcome!

1920 version

[lilnamz]

hello everyone,
I must admit , looking at the entries here I feel Like am a toddler yet,
but anyway, I feel this challenge has always helped us improve at each step and that’s why am here.

@ preetamsaha: I always felt software render cant give u the fancy render quality , but your output made me change my beleif. really nice render.

@djprasun :where on earth do u get such wonderful ideas for ur scene… both ur renders look gr8.

@kanooshka : thakn u again! I’ve tried following ur advise. hope this update aint that bad.

@ xeltestic: thank u for ur comments. I’ve tried tweaking the shawdows and changed the angle again. yet to play with the grass texture. here’s the new update.

again…maintained maya software for render and lil sepia effect in Photoshop!

[xeltestic]

hello everyone,
I must admit , looking at the entries here I feel Like am a toddler yet,
but anyway, I feel this challenge has always helped us improve at each step and that’s why am here.

@ preetamsaha: I always felt software render cant give u the fancy render quality , but your output made me change my beleif. really nice render.

@djprasun :where on earth do u get such wonderful ideas for ur scene… both ur renders look gr8.

@kanooshka : thakn u again! I’ve tried following ur advise. hope this update aint that bad.

@ xeltestic: thank u for ur comments. I’ve tried tweaking the shawdows and changed the angle again. yet to play with the grass texture. here’s the new update.

again…maintained maya software for render and lil sepia effect in Photoshop!

Yeah! much better! those shadows on the ground really bring a lot of interest to the picture. They are partly too bright though.
I think the throw shadows from the metal barriers are all in all well done. The one from the bench should be way darker.
Because it is a night scene I wouldn’t expect a lot of diffuse light from the sky to brighten up that shadow. The thing that would brighten it is the bounced light from the grass (which in term means slighter diffused edges on the shadow). In other words the shadow should be darker where no bounce light is hitting it. That goes as well for where the shadows are close to the feet of the bench.
The shadows close to the feet of the bench should be an easy to fix. Just do an Ambient Occlusion pass. You would benefit from that all over your image. For the other part of the shadow u want to darken you could try using a light with a negative intensity value. Make it a rectangle spot light for maximum control.

Now start to analyse the rest of your picture. Parts that are bright are so because of either direct light hitting it or bounce light hitting it. Bounce light is the light bouncing of other objects and its intensity is way lower then from direct light because much of the light has been already absorbed. In general turn off the specularity for those bounce lights. You might want to tint them slightly according to the objects material they are bouncing of (red object reflecting red bounce light aso).

I’ll give you another example for your scene. See the side walls of your stairs from your merry-go-round. Now they are all evenly bright. This is physical incorrect.
Applying what I mentioned above

• the light coming from the top hits the purple stairs - it bounces off at the same angle it enters the stairs, but because your stairs aren’t made of mirror glass the light gets diffused and bounces of in all kind of directions (but primarily upwards).
  So this diffused light hits the side of the stairs where as the upper part of the stair side wall gets more light and is brighter. This again bounces of the light and bounce and bounce…with the same principle getting less intense and more diffused with every step. This is called Global illumination. You can fake this by using standard lights for the bounce light or take a look at radiosity/GI/FG or other solutions in your 3D package. Its not so important how you are going to do it but more important to understand the principle. I hope I didn’t make your job too complicated now. Anyways great progress!
  

[Telefonie]

Hey guys

This is my first time entering a competition. I am very excited and hope to learn heaps during that time.
I went for the child's fantasy theme. So far I have textured the Merry-go-round, bench and the balloons.
Set up a basic light to set the mood of my scene.

[img]http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/9452/carousel3.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img704.imageshack.us/i/carousel3.jpg/[/img]

[kanooshka]

telefonie: Welcome! Nice shaping on the carousel. The image seems to be lacking some cohesion. Compared to the carousel’s dark values the Ferris Wheel appears overall very bright. Try to keep some more consistency with the contrast. Compositionally the Ferris Wheel looks very small and though it has to do with the perspective you may want to scale it up so it’s taller than the carousel. Some areas on the ground are going completely black, I’m not sure what’s causing that. On the tent in back some areas are going to black. Try to get some cool blue light from the sky to fill those areas like on the carousel.

lilnamz: Good update! Try to add some more control to your bounce and fill lights. Where the bottom of the carousel meets the ground I’d expect it to be just as bright as the shadow on the ground if not even darker. and the same for the the steps above. As for the top of the carousel there’s a very small range of contrast. Maybe an occlusion pass would be an option for apply shadows on the lights that are not casting shadows. Finally I’d like to see the specular highlights really increased, especially on the balloons and bench.

BradC: Nice update! The reflection of the ferris wheel works very well. The light from the Ferris Wheel is just a little too bright, it instantly draws all my attention to it from such a large collection of bright lights. I’d like to see some of the light from the Ferris wheel creating some rim light on the trash can, bench and balloons.

bimalbose: Welcome! I like where you’re going with this. Besides the bright areas from the rides the rest of the scene seems very ambiently lit. Perhaps increasing some specular highlights and adding some kicks would help define objects a little more.

ChaoticSilly: Nice image! Overall you have very nice shaping with the light setup. One thing I’m noticing with the balloon material is that there’s a dark band on a lot of the balloons. Try to get the light to softly diffuse through the balloons and at the same time, the side facing the sun I’d expect to be brighter than the opposite.

livuxman: Good work! I think I’d choose to go wit hthe first image. I like the contrast of the puddles vs the not as reflective ground. Though I know this image is from a cloudy day, I’d like to see a key light direction. Maybe the clouds are thin in one are and the sun is diffusing through or even a break in the clouds for the sun to shine through. Just a thought to add some more shaping to the objects.

Creativemickey: Welcome! Make sure your lights are casting shadows and that you’re using some kind of falloff with your light sources. Keep going!

[herbertagudera]

@herbertagudera: good progress. I love the street lamp as well. not so sure about the placement of the trash can still. Makes the merry-go-round look really small or the trash can really huge. One way to fix that is to introduce some atmospheric depth. Several ways to do that, eg make the background objects less saturated, use warmer colours in front and cooler in back to name a few.

@herbertagudera: I’ll have to agree with the trash can problem, but I really like how this has developed.

herbertagudera: Nice update! The ground has a very nice quality to it, I like the extra touch of the puddles. On the bottle in the foreground The material of the transparent plastic and the wrapper look a little too similar. Try increasing the amount of transparency and specularity on the bottle . There seems to be some sort of artifact on the bottom of the bottle, it looks like a dark arc. At first glance the large light in above the bench appears to be on or near the Ferris wheel in the background. I think this is due to the similarity in shaders, light color and intensity. Try to adjust this to differentiate the depth. As for the carousel the horses are a little overbright, they seem to be nearly as bright as the light sources themselves.

@herbertagudera: The mapped glares makes the top of the carousel look translucent, like the lights are behind a sheet of plastic. I wonder if might be worth it to remap it so the glare parts are translucent and put a single light in the middle of the object

my previous post

thanks for you comments and suggestions. here’s an update…

im still having trouble with depth… maybe because i’m introducing a lot of new things into my workflow… i just started learning about linear workflow and used wom_lights on this scene. also using Nuke is a first for me. im having trouble incorporating may passes. especially using the luminance depth pass in Nuke. or should i use Zdepth instead o luminance depth pass? maybe someone could help me on this?

hopefully my next post will be better. thanks again!

[Telefonie]

telefonie: Welcome! Nice shaping on the carousel. The image seems to be lacking some cohesion. Compared to the carousel’s dark values the Ferris Wheel appears overall very bright. Try to keep some more consistency with the contrast. Compositionally the Ferris Wheel looks very small and though it has to do with the perspective you may want to scale it up so it’s taller than the carousel. Some areas on the ground are going completely black, I’m not sure what’s causing that. On the tent in back some areas are going to black. Try to get some cool blue light from the sky to fill those areas like on the carousel.

 Thanks for the feedback :)
 I rearranged the scene a bit and chose a different camera angle. the black areas on the ground was a black shader on the footpath which i changed as well. I am still working on the textures of the Ferris Wheel. The background is still very plain I was thinking of adding mountains or silhouettes of buildings. I went with a brighter lighting too to make the scene a bit more cheerful. 

looking forward to hear more feedback
here is my update…

[brookselliott]

Telefonie - I really like your new scene! : )
I like your balloons except the ones tied to the bench look kinda strange. Maybe a bit too reflective mirror wise and are showing the edge of your ground plane. They are also out of the frame which looks kinda strange composition wise.
But I really like the open bright sunny day feeling…
It might goof it up if you put mountains or buildings in the background… Not sure but I know I like the middle of the desert carnival feeling you have now.
I really like your merry-go-round changes you’ve done. Very nice…

[Creativemickey]

Thanks kanooshka for your valuable inputs.
Please have a look at the 2nd draft and provide you inputs…

[herbertagudera]

a small update for the weekend

click image for a larger version

[tanmoycgartist]

Hey guys this is the first time i’m taking part in lighting challenge… hope u like my works.

[tanmoycgartist]

[left]This is my first post in this challange…
Please comment…
[/left]

[xeltestic]

 I just feel your wheel is fighting the tent...very little though, but I'm sure once more lighting and shadows go in, it'll work fine.

Small update. Took your advice to heart nan1203. integrated roller coaster as well. I’m going for a Blade Runner kind of visual style in terms of colour and couple of my lighting decisions. Not that this has anything to do with scifi, but I’m intrigued with the awesome lighting job in that movie. Anyways the noir concept fits in nicely. Still mostly painting going on at this stage.