Lighting Challenge #6: Candle Light

#181

agreed - i’ve got some tweaks going on the edit suite at home now and it’s looking much warmer. i sometimes get too bright working from the laptop and have to get out of that habbit. Thanks.

#182

Yeah, I know I’ve got to work on the shaders/textures a bit more. There ARE shadows though…very soft shadows. The first attempts at shadows were VERY defined. I’ll see what I can do to add some more definition to those shadows. And I think I’ll just remove that super bright candle from the scene…what’s causing that are the three candles too close together.

#183

yohann - I like it :slight_smile: nice work keep it up:thumbsup:

#184

Thanks. I agree with the candle light looking a bit too strong. The environment is somewhat overcast and evening, but the candles look a bit strong. The candle intenstiy was actually bumped down from my main renders by almost 50%, perhaps they’re still too strong or it could be my screen material.

I have another main render. This one has the light intensity at the level used in the previous tests along with some other fixes. Improved the candle glows in size, intesity and colour. Toned the incense smoke down considerably. Also fixed the flame locations, waqsn’t calculating the offset from turbulence correctly so the flames and glows weren’t positioned correctly relative to the candles.

#185

malach - I think you need more than 4 posts here to do an attachment. Most people upload elsewhere to make their images more a part of the posts anyway. That’s a great start, overall tones and look are already solid. I’d say: Try to add shadows under the plate and candleholders. Try to get the tablecloth texture out of the plate. See if you can make the flames themselves brighter. Try to get a nice glow near the top of the candles, but not the whole candle glowing like that back one.

BarberofCivil - Love your “oceanfront” scene. I almost expect John Cleese to be sitting at that desk, saying “And now for something completely different.”

yohann - Looks great. Maybe framing up a little bit more room above the candles would balance things better? I agree on perhaps the saturated colors adding a bit too much busy-ness to the composition, things could be unified more with consistent colored lights.

In terms of corrupt files, no matter what program I’m using, I keep saving my scene as a different version number almost every time I save it. That way I always have a version from a few hours ago or a previous step if a file got corrupted or something was deleted from it that I want again.

padawan - Looks good overall. I agree on toning down the SSS and fixing the flare with all the radial lines. The composition with one bright candle hiding behind the vase looks a little awkward. The flames themselves are nice, if you can get them to appear in reflections.

BarberofCivil - Great! THis is just an observation, but it’s funny how easy it is to “mis-read” the glow of the incense as a reflection of that candle flame above it. I love the look of the brass candle-holder right in the top part near the candle, if you could work more of those kinds of reflections farther down it would bring them out more.

-jeremy

#186

Hmmm… wonder if I can find a mesh…
I may try and see what a few other environments look like.

Hadn’t noticed the close alignment before…

For the candle holders, it’s the same material on the entire holder, a radial brushed brass. Unfortunately it looks only as good as what it has to reflect and the lower parts reflect the base which reflects the dark environment while the top reflects the bright tabletop. Not sure what I can do to improve this other than adding environment, which would then increase my ambient environment lighting, losing the close intimate feel of the candle lights (unfortunately, my purist mind won’t let me add environment for reflections without the appropriate associated lighting, my artistic mind is going to have to do battle some time, kinda like in Superman III, but that’s another story).

#187

An update with some better flame and the distracting reflections gone.

#188

@ Triker: I like the overall mood you have there. Very nice.

@ yohann: I wish I had that vase to put in my living room. :slight_smile: Like it alot.

Here is another update. Added reflections, smoke and a little DoF. Also rendered it larger to viw it better. Hopefully I’ll get some time to put in more on my lunch break. But it’s getting there. Undecided on the picture. Fire away…

*EDIT: Removed the DoF. It ended up looking awkward…

#189

You don’t really need to remove the candle, just adjust the shader so it doesn’t brighten up so much. I can give ya my settings for them without SSS if you want.

#190

This is a WIP that I’ve been lighting a few minutes here and there, so far I’ve put in about 3 hours over the course of a week. I used Mental ray for the lighting and Photoshop for the gobos and some of the texturing. This is an SD render and takes around 2 minutes. I still I have to render out some different passes and comp it in Shake to get my final look that I want.

#191

Oh yeah! Yohann has a very nice vase. Great job…

#192

Deleted…

#193

Here is another update. Added reflections, smoke and a little DoF. Also rendered it larger to viw it better. Hopefully I’ll get some time to put in more on my lunch break. But it’s getting there. Undecided on the picture. Fire away…

*EDIT: Removed the DoF. It ended up looking awkward…

Very nice image! I love the colors on it and the overall composition. I noticed that the smoke seems kill the intensity of the candle on the right and the glow as well. The other candles look more lively than that one, so the contrast makes it look awkward.

#194

Quick question…

I was able to set up the SSS after reading the link that Jeremy posted earlier [thx btw], but I kept the candles with the original shader I had set up, for speed purposes. Now, I’ve been reading about ctrl_buffers and can’t seem to figure it out. If anyone has some info on how to set this up, please send me a msg, or reply to the post, it would be greatly appreciated. :slight_smile:

#195

Very nice image! I love the colors on it and the overall composition. I noticed that the smoke seems kill the intensity of the candle on the right and the glow as well. The other candles look more lively than that one, so the contrast makes it look awkward.

Yeah I added a slight vignette to the image n Shake. I just have to change the shape so it doesn’t affect the flame. Thanks!

About ctrl_buffers…have you read the thread about it?

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=209991&highlight=ctrl+buffers

For the most part any questions are answered there. But if you need more info I can try to help out…although I have only been using them for about a week or so.

#196

Very nice image, i would love to see a breakdown.

#197

Final update. Have to move on to another project for a show in Oct. and the girls at home like it (tho I’m not real good with volumetrics yet) But LOTS of fun! Thanks Jeremy for the challenge. May still make some minor tweaks if you guys notice something tho.

And thanks Mark for splitting up some surfaces for me till NT got the red dongle thing figured out. Got my new dongle today, but support is out for the weekend (sigh).

LW 9 - No postwork, about 25 mins final render at low AA. 6 area lights (1 for each candle, and 1 to control some translucency). No SSS nodes or formulas, SSS is faked with gradients and nulls, everything else is with textures in PS).

Hope you like it.

Jay

#198

I looked over that thread and there are lots of examples of what it does and some other enhancements with it, but I’ve only figured out how to connect the node on the camera… it’s a lot of confusing stuff on there. I have a copy of version 1.1 which has a readme with some type of instruction, but i’ve updated to v2 RC5, but nothing there on how to set it up.

Some help with it would be great if you have the time :slight_smile:

#199

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/candle.html

Thought this would be useful for anyone that hasn’t seen it yet. It’s actually a first time for me, so I’ll try the technique on here for the candle transparency. The animation was pretty weak =x

#200

I found an alternative [actually 2] to ctrl_buffers. One is framebuffer write and output mel scripts, which I really don’t have a clue how to use. The other one is MegaTK which seems to give better results overall. Only requirement is that you use the TK lights instead of the maya ones.

I’m gonna try and set up a simple scene and see how this all works, and then try it out with my candles scene to hope for the best. Here is a link to the MegaTK shader for mental ray.

http://www.puppet.cgtalk.ru/download/megatk_e.shtml