Purple minion test

#12

just another update, while I finish the exterior and model the feathers, stuffing, and toys. I also made the room brighter

#13

Cool, lighting is better now. It’s still dim for my taste, but instead of trying to achieve realistic lighting with a whitle background, try using an HDR image. It should also make the scene instantly brighter and more realistic with proper settings.

#14

that’s the thing, I’m already using an hdri image (Image based Lighting). The reason why the background is white, well it’s because I made the hdri pic invisible. The image base lighting is the only source of light in the scene so maybe that’s the reason why it’s so dark. I could probably throw a couple of vray rect lights in there just to brighten things up more. I’m planning on putting a background to replace the white background. I’ll do that part in the post comp stage once I’m done with the whole scene.

I haven’t thought of what kind of background to put there though. Someone emailed me and suggested doing a parade in the background and have a huge minion balloon somewhere in the scene. We’ll see

#15

Then perhaps you should use a different hdri with more details. Are you using a free or a commercial one? There are some quite high quality free maps on this site http://hdrmaps.com/freebies
Try using one of them, they give good looking results. It could also be something in the render settings, you should be able to increase hdri’s exposure in vray, somehow. You could also use vray’s physical sky model. I can’t help you with these though, I was planning to start learning vray these days for my current project, I have no experience with it. And on top of that my power supply decided to stop working last night or even fry my workstation I don’t know this yet. Avoid throwing lights in the room for sure, if you have to use lights make them the size of the windows and put them a few inches outside of them. Add some directional light too, sunlight will make the room look nicer and better lit. A parade as a background would look impressive, you can paint that in PS or go crazy and make it 3d. :slight_smile:

Sorry for the wall of text, once again.

#16

The ones I use are free, I noticed also that most of the free ones suck, but I’m not willing to pay for commercial ones, atleast not right now. I’ll check out that link to see if it gives better results. I wanted to avoid using vray sun and sky altogether, but I’ll give it a shot. Yeah, you can play with the exposure in the vray camera setting…

#17

Why avoid using sun and sky together? That’s what they are meant for. :slight_smile: If you don’t mind me asking, which hdr were you using or at least what resolution was it?

PS: I could pm you a list with sites for free hdri of acceptable quality and licensing I have found if you want.

#18

well, the actual hdri resolution is around 2048 for each dimension I think, but I only allow 1024 resolution for the texture resolution since it already takes 1 hour and 15 minutes to render the scene. I’ll have to optimize the scene a bit more in order to use the full 2048 res image. Yeah, feel free to pm me if you like

Here’s a jpg version of the hdri image I use.

Also if I do the whole parade thing, I can only see myself doing the minion balloon, the rest would probably have to be matte painting or something

#19

This is from the site I posted, how is it working? Does it look any better now?

#20

well i dont have maya opened up right now, just taking a break at the moment. i’ll test out the hdri images tonight too see if it gets any better. I’ll also raise the texture resolution in the attribute editor. I’m done modeling the banana peels, feathers and some of the feather stuffing. Only modeled one toy. I’ll try to model some more tonight as well

As for the image of the hdri image I posted

that’s the same one I’m currently using in my scene. It’s naturally too dim. I’ll try the other ones

#21

The sun is very low on this one so it’s normal to look dark, use another one and you should be fine.

EDIT: Oh, you don’t need 2048 for lighting, 1024 is fine or even big. I just asked for the resolution just in case you were using something super small, like a mirrorball hdri.

#22

yea, i might go back to 1024, 2048 takes around 2 hours and 30 minutes to render. Just changing the hdri does change the lighting significantly though, that’s really cool. Kindof cool to see how lighting and drastically changes a scenes mood. I used one of the hdri files you provided

#23

Is there a light behind the camera or a window? You should pick a warmer HDRI, lighting is kind of blue-ish now. And I’m quite sure that you can increase the hdri’s intensity, apart from the camera’s but I can’t test it right now, my laptop can’t run heavy software like maya. A good idea would be to make a copy of your scene and apply a standard gray lambert material on everything. Hide the glass and test lighting there. This way your rendertimes will get reduced and it will be easier to see what’s going on. Check some making ofs here: http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/category/3ds-max/14/0/ they use vray for everything.

edit: From what I’ve seen on the internet, there is an intensity multiplier for the dome light, just increase that to make the room brighter only with the HDRI. You don’t need portal lights for the scene as the window is very big.

#24

No, the only lighting source is the hdri, there’s no other lights in the scene. Using different hdri changes the lighting in a big way. Yea there’s multiple ways to increase the intensity. through the vray camera, the actual attributes of the dome light, render settings, etc…I’ll have to worry about the lighting once I’m done with the scene

#25

You should have said that, I thought you were working on lighting, hence the comments on it :slight_smile:

#26

Yeah, I’ll have to worry about that after I’m done with the exterior. Someone also told me to make it a rainy scene. So many ideas from various people. I’ll try to add volumetric lighting, vignettes, and the right hdri lighting sometime this week. Once again, thanks for pointing me in the right direction

#27

Why rainy? It’s a kids room make it happy and well lit with sun coming from the big window :slight_smile:

#28

Sorry, was busy going to interviews this week. Here’s my current progress on the scene. I’ve been experimenting with vray fog, I think I overdid it though. trying to create a stuffing/cotton shader but it’s not working out the way that I’d like. Also the feathers aren’t looking right also. I’ll keep working on it.

#29

Good luck with the interviews! :thumbsup: I had some spare time so I photoshopped your image, instead of writting my comments here.
My comments on your image:

And an edited version:

If this is a problem I will remove the images just tell me.

#30

Good points you have there. I’ll reduce the illumination of the tv light and remove the dirt from the side of the chair. I’ll also try to work on the dust in the room a bit more. Haven’t used vray fog, so it’s interesting to experiment. As for the white thing on the floor, that’s a stuffed animal.

I probably won’t go as bright as your photoshopped image, mainly because you can barely see the background image, it’s too saturated with light. I’ll have to find a balance without sacrificing the background. It’s almost close to the white background I originally had, which isn’t a good thing. Anyway, thanks for the feedback…oh and I’ll also add feathers, that’s the main thing I’ve been working on besides the stuffing/cotton for the bed/pillows

#31

You don’t have to make the background that light, just the interior. But if you look at most interior photographs you can’t see the background, it’s almost white. And that’s why photographers either use extra lights or utilize hdr when the background is important.