Ok, I redid the lighting. It’s nowhere near finished, but as I’m leaving (again) tomorrow (this time for Portland, OR) I decided to post a milestone.
There are a whole bunch of lights, the bright side is that it now has excellent antialiasing. The unfortunate part is that it’s still lacking definition, and it now looks a bit washed out.
Thanks for the help,
Zack
Hi zero2zillion,
Coming on nicely,
I am thinking that maybe you could put some kliegs in there to give it more lighting variation around the image. At the moment everything is very evenly lit.
Texture on the wall will help a lot also.
If it was me making it, I would brek up the verticle of the corner of the wall with the guitar by having the guitar on more of an angle, moving it to the right and bringing the camera round to the left.
Also, the colour of the body is maybe a little dark, maybe lighten the colour or get more speculars in there.
Hope the above helps,
Good luck
Hi, I’m in Portland I discovered this great bookstore called Powell’s that had tons of new and used 3D related books, including used animation master handbooks (I didn’t buy the handbooks though, one was the original Jeff Paries one, the other was one titled “Animation” and must date back to '90 or earlier). I found a used version of Jeremy Birn’s [digital] Lighting & Rendering and it’s really informative.
I’m probably going to redo my lighting based on this as soon as I get a chance (could be a month…)
Ok, here is the updated lighting. You’ll notice that the bottom is also more reflective. The main problem right now is the headstock material.
Critique Away!
The reflections on the body seem wrong–is that an environment map instead of reflection?
Have you looked at sonme of the new properties you can tweak on reflectivity?
Unless you are going to use global illumination, you need to fake bouncing some light off the walls to fill in the pitch black shadows.
In my opinion, there is more that you can do with lighting and depth of field, that is going to make this image great, rather than the materials. Even if you have perfect textures, it will look fake if not lit realistically.(if that is what you are after).
hope that helps…
The reflections on the body seem wrong–is that an environment map instead of reflection?
bingo.
Have you looked at some of the new properties you can tweak on reflectivity?
yes, but I was too lazy to model the rest of the room. 
Unless you are going to use global illumination, you need to fake bouncing some light off the walls to fill in the pitch black shadows.
I tried using GI, but after 3 hours of rendering it said it would take another 24 hours. This was on fairly low settings. there are no pitch black shadows, in fact there is a fill light that makes it so there is a bit of a range in the shadow of the neck.
Even if you have perfect textures, it will look fake if not lit realistically.(if that is what you are after)
That’s definitely what I’m after.
Zack
I’ll be able to work on this tonight, and then in another 3 weeks.
Hi Kili,
When you say you are going for “realism” - do you mean in the render quality, or in the model? i.e. are you looking for a “cartoony” styled bike with a realistic render quality, or a realistic bike with a realistic render?
I just don’t want to start commenting on something that you’re not shooting for…
BTW - Is this based on a particular bike?
JoeW
I think realistic bike in a realistic render, The bike isn’t based on any one motorbike probably 3 or 4. The basic propotions of the bike are based on the honda RCV. I would like to get as close to a photorealistic style as I can.
OK, here are a few observations,
Realism comes from details, so a mechanical model is quite the test of your “observational skills” - there are tons of bevels, chamfers, fillets and fasteners on a motorcycle - so what you might want to do is get an idea of the rough size of the specific part you’re trying to build and then build just one part of the bike at a time - you will be able to concentrate a lot more on the specific details of that part - and not get distracted by the overall complexity of the bike. Also, if you’re not a mechanical designer, or familiar with motorcycles and how they’re put together, you should really pick a specific bike and get as much detailed reference as you can. If you have to guess what something looks like or where it goes, you’re proabably going to guess wrong - and it’s going to look “funny”…
A few things pop out at me:
There are no seams on the bodywork - this could be handled with bump and diffuse maps, but it doesn’t look “real” You may want to seriously consider breaking up the body panels like they are on a real motorcycle - it may help with some of the creasing issues. Don’t be afraid to build from “pieces” instead of one continuous model - as a matter of fact, in AM you will save yourself a TON of work if you just build with simple shapes as much as you can. I built a motorcycle a while back - and I used a lot of little parts that were just interfered with each other as opposed to trying to make the surface contiguous - and it works just fine…(http://www.hash.com/users/joewllms/Samples/Bike1-27-03.jpg and http://www.hash.com/users/joewllms/Samples/HunterMax_FinalSmall.jpg
Overall, what strikes me is that you’re having some trouble with proportions (sorry). The frame is a bit thin, and you’ve got a few things in the wrong places - like the swingarm pivot and where you’ve run the exhaust. (I used to race and work on motorcycles a lot - so these things pop out at me moreso than the average person, I should think). I would suggest looking for a bike that’s close to what you’re trying to build, finding some good reference (do searches for technical drawings, blueprints, etc) and see if you can tweak what you have to fit - or - just go with what you have and maybe “blow it out” a little - make it more wild than realistic…
If you have any specific areas that are giving you trouble - perhaps it would be a good idea to ask about them - like “how could I make the calipers look better” or something like that…
I hope this doesn’t seem overly harsh (I’ve been accused of that) - I am trying to help. Realism is a tough nut to crack - especially with a mechanical model - and it’s worse when you have so much detail exposed - as in a motorcycle…
Keep working on it - persistence will pay off… if not in a perfect model, then in what you learn…
JoeW
I think it is pretty impressive. Mechanical modelling in AM is not the easiest. I don’t know about bikes though so my only criticism would be that some of the main body looks a bit “squidgy” as can happen with splines. Maybe use more geometry and porcialin. The rest of it looks top notch to me though.
Hi Joe,
Thanks for taking the time to give such detailed feed back. Your not overly harsh at all. I may buy myself a tamiya model of a motogp bike, maybe Rossi’s Yamaha for source. I’ll double check the proportions against the photos, but the rcv does look a little strange compared to many conventional race bikes.
I’ve used max at work for mechanical modelling in the past so switching to splines for this model was a bit of a learning curve, but i’m starting to get it.
out of interest what bikes did you race?
PS I can’t get the link to you motorbike render to work.
Hi John,
I haven’t used porcelain yet its a bit of a mystery to me from ready other posts is it kind of like meshsmooth in MAX?
Hi Kili,
Glad I didn’t offend - I intend to encourage as much as possible
Modeling in splines is a huge change of mindset from polygons - but once you get used to it, it’s not too bad. I think buying a model would be an excelent idea - then you don’t have to try to find photos that have the part you’re looking for - AND have it from the right angle…
I started racing (street racing) on a Kawasaki H2 - 750cc Two-stroke with a wickedly violent powerband (crude porting job - it LOVED to wheelie when you didn’t want it to 
) - then went on to dragracing on an amateur level on a number of bikes - Suzuki 1100’s and Kawasaki 1200’s - fun, but staying competitive was expensive. Started doing a little bit of stock-class roadracing on a Yamaha FZ750 - it was a great bike and a lot of fun, but it was expensive and time consuming (traveling) - and I knew that I didn’t have the “touch” to ever be really good - so I got out of it. My last bike was a Yamaha FJ1200 which I had punched out to 1380cc, refitted it with smoothbore carbs, Yoshimura Cams and exhaust, hard-chrome for the engine internals, ported heads (Vance and Hines), braided steel lines, refitted a rear wheel from a Yamaha 1100 so I could run 17" radials, beefed up clutch, air shifter, etc. That bike was insanely fast - and after I built it and rode it a while - I kept saying to myself “What the hell was I thinkin’?” I sold it when I moved to SLC because the drivers here are the worst I’ve ever seen - and I didn’t want to end up a hood ornament. I haven’t owned a bike in 5 years, but I keep looking at the Aprilia Tuono and thinking… hmmmm…
I fixed those links to the bike image - I’d left out a level in the directory structure - doh!
Porcelain (if John will forgive me) is a Material that you can apply to a group or a model - it modifies how the normals are calculated on the patches, and goes a LONG way toward getting rid of creases…
Keep posting updates
JoeW
here’s a little lipsynch test I’ve been working on
http://www.drakkheim.com/wip/scissors.avi Divx 880Kb
Being new to the animation part of animation master, constructive feedback would be MORE than welcome and appreciated.
well it looks to me like it was animated via the dope sheet, if not that then at the very least with pre-made phonemes. For your first animation frankly I would not use those techniques. build the face pose sliders to cover the basic ranges (close mouth/ open jaw, Oooh/Uhh, smile/frown, fbv/pout) and then scrub the audio and pose the face for each major phoneme this will keep the overkeyed look you have here at bay and introduce some interpolation between mouth shapes.
when animating dialog less is more. start with just open mouth close mouth and only add as much as it takes to get the point across.
Hope this helps,
-David Rogers
Obnomauk nailed it, yeah it was all done with the automagic dopesheet phoneme dectecting autoposing dohicky™. I’ll guess it’s just not the way to go. I’ll give it a rework manually tonight and see if that makes it feel more natural. I guess if something seems too good to be true it probably is… Thanks gang.
it’s not that it’s completely useless, as a visual alignment kind of thing it’s a great way to know where your audio is sitting in the time line. and if you spend the time to get things set up (setting max percentages of sliders for dopesheets) and build some “taming” sliders to sort of adjust things after dope sheets have had their way, and also delete some of the more extraneous auto phonemes you can get some good results. For a long bit of dialog the time to set it up so that it produces something useful is actually worth it, but for short sound bytes better just animate by hand.
-David Rogers
Here’s the rework posed entirely by hand http://www.drakkheim.com/wip/scissors2.mov (480Kb sorensen Mov)
Feels a good bit more natural now.
Obnomauk: Where do you set the max percentages of the phoneme sliders? the video tutorial said they were supposed to automatically max at 40% but mine didn’t do that when I went back to look at em. Mine were all keyed to 100%.
Thanks for looking
