Lighting Challenge: Light Bulb

#21

good point on the 2D shaders, although i think a volumetric shader might be a bit more appropriate…along with hair lol.

yeah thats a pipe dream, i admit.

#22

here is a 22 minute render.

as you can see i have a window in there, should i make it brighter?

Id like some critiques from you guys before i submit my entry :slight_smile:

#23

Nice renders guys … Stooch, would there really be a caustic effect from a hollow glass bulb? If it were made of solid glass, then I could understand. Just a thought. :slight_smile:

#24

haha i dont know but i think it looks cool. maybe the caustics are caused by the stem itself not the bulb (the filament stem)

#25

I fear I liked the earlier renders better. Now it is all a bit washed out without clear reflections.

What exactly is the goal here? Matching that initial render or creating something original?

I somehow miss a more dramatic feel…

I actually like the caustics a lot :slight_smile:

BTW. If you look at such thin glass stuff (even some bottles show it) you often have the effect of not seing the thickness of the glass a lot. So I think it is rather correct.

Sometimes it helps to add some very very subtle procedural bump to make the glass look less perfect and allow for some waves or bumps…

Great stuff!

#26

Not sure about here, however the challenge on SDM I post is always for people to create an original. The title image is simply to inspire.

#27

to all the “original” comments… well its a damn BULB!!! lol, i can pick different angles but something tells me that it will look the same from anywhere. As far as light and reflection object positioning, im just doing what looks good. Im definitelly being more original then those that arent even giving this a shot :wink:

#28

You better don’t become an illustrator then LOL

Cheers, I’m out of here…

#29

To pollute the thread, here is my C4D WIP (still don’t like it):

#30

hey feel free to render out a bulb hotshot. :slight_smile:

#31

stooch, I think the glass is too reflective and too smooth perfect. I need to diffuse my reflections a bit too.

#32

Would that thin little film of glass really cause that much refraction of light to cause a caustic to be that intense?

All I have arround me in my office are those energy saver bulbs. . .

Oh wait. . . we have the interweb.

Very little/no caustic stuff happening. . .

#33

K, i removed the caustics and made the shadow less dense. I tried putting noise on the bulb and it just started looking like really shitty AA at best. I honestly dont think a bump map is necessary on the bulb, maybe on the specular channel??

#34

More original i hope.

#35

The glass is far too reflective still. I suggest that you not see such a strong reflection of the filament to the inside of the glass.

Since most light energy is passing through (due to transparency) the glass is reflecting little back.

#36

Ah, much more interesting! :wink:

As for the reflection, I think it isn’t that wrong when black is behind it. Glass with a black behind looks much more reflective than glass with white behind it. And because of the fresnel effect, at least the edges are quite reflective. Just the diffuse is a bit much IMO. Looks a bit like there is dust on the bulb :slight_smile:

The thing I find missing is some kind of environment or at least some material on the floor.
I think it could look cool to put some simple object like an upright cuboid partly behind the bulb.

Cheers,

#37


640x480
render time = 18h 25m 40s
AA = Adaptive SS, Level 4, Threshold 0.005, Pattern Hammersley, Size 1.5
Ray Depth = 12
GI = Monte Carlo, Samples 5, Depth 1, Auto Reduction ON, Intensity 0.5
[color=DarkOrange]rendered with the help of TLHPro Easy Glass[/color]
HDR light probe from the Unparent Light Probe set - with permission from Keith Bruns at unparent.com
[color=DeepSkyBlue]colour corrected using Digital Fusion (no effects added)
[/color]
AA on the filaments and glass was very good IMO…

300% pixel zoom of detail

The long render was frustrating. The first pass after an hour or 2 already looked good, but then the heavy AA just sucked all my machine’s power for another 16 odd hours.

I don’t think the wood texture map was of acceptable quality, showing some JPEG artifacts in the bump map.

I wanted to go for a sunny outdoors type scene. Sort of a bulb on a varnished table outside in the late afternoon.

Real bulbs have massive amounts of caustics streaming from imperfections in the glass when placed in direct sunlight. Of course my glass is CG, therefore perfect, hence no caustics :slight_smile:

There’s still much one can do to improve the image, including caustics…

#38

Paul, this looks great! Digital wood? Hey, there’s probably a species in Indonesia that does that :wink:
I think the glass looks too evenly dusty. If it were clearer with more direct incidence angle it would be more convincing imo

#39

Thanks David. :slight_smile: The even dustiness is the translucency thickness I set without setting translucency - Thomas’ tip. I studied a lightbulb here and it was pretty much like that, although if it was driven by a fresnel node it would have been slightly more realistic. There’s just so much you can observe in real life and try to transfer to 3D that I reckon this light bulb can easily keep a single person busy for a couple of years if you want to master it. Going for more stylized illustration images like the cover image and even stooch’s renders allows way more freedom and is much more subjective.

I won’t be posting more bulbs though, since my life’s calling is not to master the 3D lightbulb, no matter how tempting that may be. Anyway, stooch seems to have taken on that role judging by how prolific he is with this. :thumbsup:

If I had to produce a 20 second animation sequence of my lightbulb doing something, I calculated that at this render time it would take 385 days to render on my machine. Now that right there is my final motivation to stop this challenge, even though no one even mentioned animation. :slight_smile:

#40

LoL! I was afraid to admit that I lose patience with all these tests where you guys were bragging about 5 minute renders. I am definitely born for NPR!