Lighting Challenge #5: Under The Boardwalk

#201

Oooo I like this one!

/Z

#202

mbeazley - Starting to get a good Snell’s circle TIR effect there. One thing that you may want to try to get is the distorted, fish-eye look for the part that is visible outside the water. For the Snell’s circle, the view outside the water may only encompass about 95deg of the camera’s actual field of vision under the water, but through the physics of refraction, this 95deg contains the whole 180deg FOV from the water surface. Have a look at these 2 renders,the first with the water off, and the second with the water and refraction on (I tried to recreate your viewing angle as best I could).

#203

BarberofCivil,

Thanks for the input. It is awesome that you have shared a lot of the physics behind this stuff. My next question though is, how do you make the renderer do that? Should plugging in the IOR of 1.33 for the water be enough to get the refracted 180 degrees? Another quick question about your water, are using a real displacement map or are you just using a bump map? It also looks like your Snell’s Circle is very distinct, I am assuming you are using your own modifiers for transparency and reflection for the Snell’s circle effect? LW uses gradient maps for that type of stuff.

-mark

#204

Thanks. I’m using POV-Ray which is a ray tracer. The camera is inside the water object and the water has an ior of 1.33. Raytracing does the rest. I’m not sure how other programs work with respect to handling refraction and ior, especially when it comes to total internal reflection, so I can’t really help you there, however, if it is implemented correctly, it should be just a natural occurence when viewing from and object with higher ior to lower ior.

The surface of the water is actually just a flat plane with normal modifiers on it. The circle is distinct for a few reasons. If a mesh surface was used, the high/lows of the mesh would interfere a bit with the edge of the Snell’s circle, blurring it somewhat. Also, the switch from seeing outside to total internal reflection should be relatively abrupt. There will be some slight abberrations at theedge as the different wavelengths of light have slightly differing ior values. However, the raytracer treats all light colours as equal, giving a distinct seperation from refraction to TIR. Inside the Snell’s circle, there should also be some slight reflection from below as well based on fresnel reflection, but I don’t have this turned on at the moment.

#205

I love the texturing on the fish here.

MasterZap, thanks! I’m still working on it, but my confidence is higher now. :slight_smile:

Kev

#206

I’m running “murk” tests on the water’s atmosphere. This is with Maya particles, “cloud” rendering type, emitted from the ground surface.

-jeremy

#207

Cool stuff. I have re-made my water surface as a flat plane and have implemented normal modifiers on it like you have been doing and I like it much better. I will add the fresnel reflection in and see what it does.

Nice image Jeremy!

Kevb3d; that is looking great. I really like the caustics and the light rays.

-mark

#208

This is my last result, even if personaly I’m not convinced…

#209

Thanks jeremy for the comments!! this is wip so i will finish when i get the time.

#210

Went for a sunset type scene this time… errr… yeah…

#211

Wow! This thread is getting amazing! Especially with images like the ones MrBobble and kevb3d just posted, I’m thinking we could hit the front page again!

-jeremy

#212

Hello everyone,

my name is andy, i´m from germany and it´s my first challenge here.
this is was i have so far, it´s not finished coz i need to add more details / textures.
my goal is to archive a positive “place i wanna be” look.

hope you see the image, never used imageshack ;.)

#213

Wow!, Great image MrBobble. The transition of light from above water to underwater is just perfect. I love the warm colors, and the surface of the water is amazing. My only comment might be that it doesn’t appear that the boat is casting much, if any shadow/blocking any light from the ground under the water. Other than that I would say that you nailed it. Great work.

-Brian

#214

Hi all…
great challenge and great result.
this is my first attemp, this is somewhere under the water at 6-7 am in the morning. sun is only at horizon, the world is still cold from a peaceful night.
critiques and suggestions are welcome.
btw… i use 3dsmax and photoshop

#215

Jeremy - Thanks for the caustic texture. I’m going to try it.
Your last picture : what an incredible atmosphere…
What about my “Carribean light” ?

Shankar - Very amazing picture, it’s strange and dark. Caustics maybe smaller ?

whiteboywithsideburns - Aesthetic picture ! Nice work, I like the grey weather,
we can imagine the power of the wind on the waves.

jigu - Good light. With textures, it will be great.

hyst - Nice picture, the caustics are very present and neat…

karimD - Very good rock, sand and alga textures !

kevb3d - Great picture ! Very blur and amazing. Nice particles.

xoranimation - What colors ! It seems an impresionnist painting !

MrBobble - Great picture, good colors. I am very impressed.

This is 2 tests with particles, circular waves and prism refraction.
But the caustics on the pillars are strange.

Under-17B.jpg900x450

Under-16B.jpg900x450

#216

JCBug - Those are nice images. I guess it still somehow feels a little dry under the water surface, maybe because the ground texture looks like dry sand? Maybe it’s the crisp focus and color contrast between things and the hard lines, but somehow it seems as if it could go farther in looking as if we’re underwater.

wisedog - Good start, foggy weather can lead to a nice color scheme. It looks as if somehow not much light is making it under the water through, things are going very dark right away and maybe some light on the bottom of the boat and pier would help even things up?

xoranimation - Welcome! That’s certainly an interesting image; bright, almost surreal colors. I’m trying to figure out if that box is full of wavey water, or if it contains bent file folders or what?

MrBobble - Congratulations, that’s a truly great image! I can see lots of departures from reality in it, but I don’t know if you want to “fix” any of them, or just be proud of a great image. I hope you can post some info about what techniques or approaches you used, and I look forwards to seeing more images from you, whether they are for this or other lighting challenge scenes!

karimD - I like the moss or lichen or whatever, parts of the scene are starting to look watery even if not the whole image. It’s hard to tell exactly where the pier cuts through the water surface, and it seems strange that all the caustics are on the bottom of the dock while the light refracting through the water seems univorm and focused into hard, crisp shadows. Maybe some soft shadows or occlusion would help where the grass hits the ground as well?

kepler1571 - Nice image, why not try Lightyear brand tires? (Just Kidding.) I like the look of the water surface and wave patterns, it looks very wind-blown in places. I don’t know what that shadow is to the left of the boat. Underwater nice bright colors are appealing, I wonder if in some places it wouldn’t be quite as bright and clear though.

akwavox - I love all those textures, lots of rich detail and color. Right now everything looks so crisp though that it doesn’t seem to be underwater, maybe letting some part of the fish go a little darker, more murk in the water, some softer shadows or occlusion, could all help build the underwater feeling?

kevb3d - Love it! You’ve got a great murkiness there. If you wanted to plus it up any more, I’d try adding some occlusion (like darkness in the transition between the screen-left rock and the ground) and bounce light (in the two hot spots in the foreground, they should light nearby surfaces and cast a hint of a glow into the water as well.)

Shankar - I really like the volumetric light coming underwater with the little dots in it on the right, the overall light atmosphere looks really good. Maybe the patterns on the ground in the foreground don’t look very natural; the caustics or the ground texture probably both could be changed. And it seems as if the big rock near the foreground is the darkest part of the scene, darker than anything in the shadows, but then smaller rocks near it don’t cast much shadows or occlusion, maybe that could even out?

hyst - That’s a good start, maybe you could find the places with hard edges like the square on the tire and soften those parts of the lighting?

-jeremy

#217

I like how everyone has got a diff idea of who it should look like. Very nice renders I liked the last sunset one that one is hot but so many cool works here.

#218

jeremy:
thanxx for those kind words, i´m still working on the picture …

the box is full of nice windows-xp packages :wink:
someone must thrown it into the water, maybe the fisher

JCBug:
thanxx alot :slight_smile:

andy

#219

We just did…

I also like mrBobbles, although something makes it look a bit like a minature… but a DARNED NICE MINATURE!

/Z

#220

It looks like a painting you might see in a book IMO.