Here is an overnight render of what I have so far. Still lots of shading and texturing to finish so I decided to make some lighting to present a mood and feel. Please let me know what you think.
http://www.serrao3d.com/TestMovs/neonA.mov
Cheers
ps: I forgot to render a neon pass to comp over, I will probably make a single frame render later on the day to show how the neons would be lilke
Hi Sheldon -
Nice animaiton.
Great start on the textures. Except for the screen-right walls, it looks like you have nice textures on the surfaces. On the sidewalk you can just slide the projection a little to get the squares to line-up with the edges of the sidewalk.
You’re going to have to focus on lighting. Right now everything looks ambient. I hope you can get rid of that, and focus on the light and shadows coming from the light sources such as the truck headlights, truck tail lights, neon tubes, etc.
-jeremy
You know, I thought about having the truck crash through (reminds me of the Particles 1 class project). Then, I actually said to myself, “nah, sounds like something Sheldon would do.” Heh heh…looking good. The truck doesn’t feel like it has much weight yet, but I love the road’s appearance.
So today I had the nice pleasure of my whole maya scene falling apart; thanks to saving a corrupted scene file. All my shaders were disconnected and my lights went on the fritz so I had to literally write mel scripts to transfer lights and spent the whole day relighting a new scene.
Anyways enough complaining from my end, here is a small update please let me know what you all think
http://www.serrao3d.com/TestMovs/lightPassB.jpg
Oh btw this image has the glow layer slapped on…
Cheers
Yeah for corrupt files! Gotta love it…
Looks good. I’d say the rain is a bit cheesy right now. I don’t think that the rain drops would have the fall-off-tail look - read the chapter in the book that deals with motion trails. So either just a line, or even better do a small sphere particle type and motion blur the heck out of it. Go search for “night” and “rain” in Flickr and see some good examples. Subtle is better. Also, the rain would make the pavement outside more wet/reflective than inside.
I’d say that the neon doesn’t feel like it’s illuminating anything in the scene yet (other than the particles). But overall a nice textured feeling - can’t wait to see the sucker in motion again.
That’s awesome. I think the rain will be fine once it’s in motion, but it definitely could use lots of motion blur.
I did notice though that the breaking of the board (from the animation) is a little odd right now. The boards fly off a bit too much (particularly the piece that flies way up and to the left). And I may be wrong, but it looks like the piece of the board that flies out on the right side might be moving through the pole of the stop light.
Btw, the road texture is awesome. 
Hi Sheldon -
The rain looks great. The level of detail on the rain looks like something that could ‘read’ in motion at video res. Where it goes all red right in front of the truck, instead of all that red I’d add the backlight from the headlights and maybe a kick from the white sign above.
The street still looks great. Now that it’s raining it might be nice to get a better distinction between where it is wet outside and where it is dry inside, but that’s just a thought.
It looks as if there’s some light in the scene that doesn’t have shadows or occlusion. Look at all the posts on the sidewalk, and then just crash into the sidewalk with no shadow or occlusion. The same around the posts inside the garage, the signs and trashcan outside. Some of these places should have shadows with directionality, not just all occlusion, too.
I can’t tell if the little light bulbs around the edge of the sign are on or off, they seem to have a bright outline surrounding a dark center. If you make them on, then be sure some light comes from them to illuminate what’s around them, too.
The neon tubes don’t look like very bright. They aren’t glowing or illuminating the surfaces they are mounted on.
The truck doesn’t look reflective. The front chrome looks more like gray plastic now without the reflections, and it’ll be great to see the carpaint reflect all the neon!
-jeremy
Here is a small update. I was playing with baking of reflection and trying to bring down the render times down (10 mins to 2 doesnt seem too bad … ). I will add some more lighting and try to get some more ripples in the water, which is too brief atm.
Low- poor compression faster
High
Cheers
Hi Sheldon -
That’s coming along nicely.
Maybe it could start raining before the shot starts?
The truck still looks completely matte finished. I don’t see any reflections in the carpaint or the chrome or the glass. It’s driving right under some neon, too, that should all be reflecting really nicely.
The light from the headlights could probably be broader and softer, at least a little extra to add a glow around the existing beams. The tail lights need a boost, I can’t see them at all. The rear bumper is going very bright and yellow, but that looks like light from the headlights.
The road reflection needs the traffic light post to block part of the truck’s reflection. You could also use more shadowing or occlusion under the truck.
The reflection in the wall is strange: it looks like a reflection of a differently lit truck. Nothing else seems to reflect in the wall at all, not even the neon sign mounted directly on it or the flourescent tubes above it, I think that’s what gives the reflection the sense of being screened on.
-jeremy
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