Here’s a little WIP of my own. Looking for feedback. (Click on it to look at it larger)
-Dan
Lighting Challenge #27: (WIP) 52 Main St.
evolutie
#82
Kanoosha: Very nice! I like the warm redish interior and have nothing to say about it.
For the exterior, the shadow falling on the moomin looks a bit strange… At first glance I thought he was wearing some asian style jacket, (mistaken the shadow for a cloth wrinkle) but maybe that’s just me. Also the bottles and glasses outside look more like metal then glass.
Overall I would suggest adding some ‘dirt’ to give more life to the scene.
evo
kanooshka
#83
Thanks for the feedback! I definitely agree about the 3 glasses near the character, I’ve been struggling with those to look more like glass. I’m pretty sure I just need to make them appear more transparent. Perhaps giving the door a little more illumination will make the transparency more visible.
mettlemaster
#84
Sir
May be if u increase the number of refractions in Mental ray settings then it may do the trick.
Just a suggestion. 
evolutie
#86
thanks tsshivshankar!
ok… to elaborate on the whole process here is a pic to illustrate things
Going from top left to bottom right, the most interesting images are the first 3.
These 3 images are used by pptmopen to generate image 4.
Image 1 is a full beauty render of the scene. (yes it’s not very beautiful, but that doesn’t matter for the end result)
Image 2 is a render of the normals.
Image 3 is a render of the outlines. (using an outline shader)
pptmopen uses the first image to get the luminance.
Basically what it does next is drawing random strokes (in a given linewidth and length) trying to get a density of strokes that matches the luminance.
It uses the second image to determine which direction to draw the strokes.
The 3rd image is used to ‘stay in the lines’.
so with the info from those 3 images it generates a postscript file (postscript is a sort of printer control language great for vector graphics).
ppmtopen doesn’t generate postscript for drawing the outlines themselves, so I multiplied pic 4 with pic3, using pic 5 as a mask to only have outlines in the cafe. (maybe I should have some outlines on sniff though… it’s a bit hard to recognize him now).
The same mask used to make the ‘paper’ more yellowish for the cafe, and bluish for the outside. Pics 6,7 and 8 are used as masks to change the black strokes to red, green and yellow.
I think that ppmtopen program is pretty brilliant and it has given me a lot of insights!
Looking at this whole process I wonder if it fits within the lighting challenge rules though :-/
kanooshka
#89
Thanks for the interesting workflow explanation evolutie! Here’s an update of my own.
Changes include, Sub-surface scattering on character and clothes. Fixed the glass near the character, added a little specular reflection on the sidewalk and some other changes.
(click to enlarge)
nitroPHORUS
#90
Hey All… Great renders…
As i said earlier–
(There was a celebration in the town last night… Just clicked the picture in the morning… have clicked some pics in the night also, will upload them as soon as its developed… have clicked lots of pics in the night… taking a bit time to select the best of them… by then… please have a look at this image…and plz comment and criticize… it will make it easier for me to select the best pics from the night celebration time…)
and Here’s the Night Shot…
Comments and Critics are most welcome…
Thanks to all…
evolutie
#93
Kanooshka… How did you end up fixing the glass?
Nitz3D… Love the night party scene! Very nice how papa moomin and sniff are looking at the dancing moominis!
Kungfuuu
#94
@evolutie is it that highlight rgb pass in ur second refrence and which compositing package u used. ?
evolutie
#95
@ kungfuu
it’s not rgb highlight pass… it’s the surface normals output as colors (xyz -> rgb)
the compositing package is Nuke
mrKuman1983
#96
[/IMG]
This was rendered using Mental Ray for Maya, HDRI + Importons & Irradiance Particles + All Mental Ray Architectural materials.
Been a real pleasure working on this lighting project hope there many more to come, and great model credits to the creator!.
Comments & critiques very welcome.
Squared
#97
Hello everybody, how are you?
Here is what I started on yesterday. I should be texturing and tweaking lights sometime this week again, stay tuned.
Any comments & criticism & direction would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Squared
nitroPHORUS
#98
Thanks for the comments… I am not really good with characters… just tried to give it a feel of parting… thanks…
And i really liked the breakthrough of yours… hope to see more of these…
thanks a lot and all the best…
Ashford
#99
evolutie - link
Nice piece! Thanks for the breakdown, it’s nice to see how you’ve achieved that effect. One of the few things I can think of you might want to consider, is to watch the quality of the contour lines you’ve got - while I think it makes a lot of sense to have them there, they feel almost too mechanical for the hatched colouration. Perhaps they can be broken up with some strokes also?
kanooshka - link
Hi Dan, I like the direction your image is going, the lighting you’ve got inside the shop has a really nice quality. My main concern is that I’m not sure the lighting supports your intention - Papa is leaving the shop, and while my eye kinda goes towards him, the interior is drawing my eye to the shelves with the silhouetted bottle in front rather than the character.
Here’s my thoughts:
Try taking some of the power out of your interior, so that the balance between inside / outside is more in favour of outside.
Lower the ambient / fill light so some of the image is allowed to go dark.
Play some overhead / behind light on Papa’s shoulders to give them a bit of rim from the top?
Lift Papa’s screen left rim so that it’s not into his nose, and plays more along his ‘cheek’. Watch the shadow from his feet if this light remains bright.
See if you can put a bit more shape into his screen right face by playing a kicker light in across his ‘temples’. Looks like you’ve got a warm light roughly in the spot already? My suggestion would be something like the white light on this guy’s screen left temple (link). This might also allow you an excuse to have him casting a shadow out the doorway, more or less in line with the concrete crack in from of him. Alternatively, it could be ‘coming’ from one of the wall sconces.
Consider putting some bounce light under his face so his chin doesn’t get lost in his shirt.
Reposition the screen right barrel at bottom to break up the straight line silhouette of the two of them.
Not sure they’ll work in combination, but perhaps there’s something useful there.
nitz3D - link
These are looking really cool. Really like the puddle, confetti and grasses. Nice touches. Some thoughts:
Daytime: It’s a daylight image, but while it’s bright, and has a clear sky, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of shadow other than underneath the car. Given the light falling on Papa’s face, I’d be expecting some shadows going up the side road, or from the screen left.
Currently, I’m not sure where my eye is meant to be looking. Perhaps the guy in the garbage is the main character, perhaps it’s Papa, but either way, I think I’m lost because tonally my eye isn’t yet drawn to one particular thing first.
Nighttime: I think the treatment of the practical lights you’ve got in the scene is going nicely. Love the lights in the wheel arch. Very nice placement, and in this case, I think the composition is stronger because my eye is guided to the children and Papa’s ‘reaction’. This time though, it feels like you’ve got a massive area light overhead of camera that’s filling in all the shadows and nice pockets of dark that you could get - flattening all the details out and making it harder to see all the shape you’ve got in the shot. I’d suggest you take the light that’s illuminating everything down so you get to see the practical lights more, and then start to beauty light Papa.