This is my first submission on the lighting challenges. I’ve read and recommended Jeremy’s books to my students over the years and welcome any feedback on this image. I downloaded the file two days ago and rendered it in mental ray in 3ds Max 2008. I thought it would be a good test of the new features in 2008, plus I was in between projects. All comments welcome.
Here’s the link:
http://www.hagerman.com/images/temp/neon%20and%20chrome_.jpg
Thanks!
Joy
I was trying the challenge “An eye for an eye”. I know I am late, but i didn’t know about this earlier. I am running into this problem:
when I try to open UV Texture Editor. It gives me a blank editor window and this error
// Error: Object not found: polyTexturePlacementPanel1 //
This happens only for this model. I never faced this problem before. I have textured the eyeball, but when I try to texture the skin, I run into this problem.
I tried real hard to find a solution on “forums” and also asked friends, but I can’t solve it.
Can anyone help??
Thanks,
Aradhana
hey there guys.
we had to pick an image to reproduce at uny for our new assignment. i happenend to pick the wonderfull concept painting of Gary Tonge called “the room”.
i just realised that it was also used for a lighting challenge…
so here i am modelling the room myself (not using the one provided for the challenge), but i have a few questions:
do i need to contact Gary Tonge and ask him for permission? (i will obviously say, once i am finished that it was an original concept pinting by him, and give him Full credit for that)
would it be allright with Jeremy Birn, if i actualy re-model the room? (as in, starting from scratch)
can i post my progress here for modelling, texturing and lighting?
thank you in advance for your time!
-Richard Adenot
www.richardadenot.com
Here’s my take on challenge 9
I wanted to answer the question “so… where’s the driver then?”
And this is what I got.
I’m sorry I’m so slow to get back and reply to these! Family is in town… Anyway:
ErshadRahbar - That’s a nice scene. The atmosphere looks good - I like the way the light moves through the fog. By the way, nobody calls me “dear” except my girlfriend. 
lauras - Welcome! That’s a good start. A lot of the shaders and textures look good. i think the apple has too much bump mapping and needs more reflectivity. The cherries cast too dark a shadow onto the pear, but almost no shadow at all on the grapes. If you’re using a lot of light linking, you might turn off the “Shadows Follow Light Linking” render option. Apart from the parts of the pear that are too dark and need fill lighting, overall the lighting looks too even on everything else. Maybe the brightest light now is very frontal, and would look better more from one side or the top, and then dimmer fill light from the other way?
quakeking - Welcome! Nice bottle scene. I think parts of the bottles, especially near the bottom of the right ones, are too bright. I think they are too bright is because the shadows are not visible in reflections, maybe they need more Ray Depth Limit on the light or more shadow and refraction steps in your render settings. The reflection under the bottle in the window sill looks much darker in most places. Some of the refraction doesn’t seem to show enough steps, such as the clear bottle with a red bottle behind it that doesn’t show any red. Some caustics would add to the shadows.
VirtualCatharsis - Welcome! Good start on that assignment. It looks like you used depth map shadows, not just raytraced shadows, and they need to be adjusted. Probably a higher resolution and a higher bias are needed to get rid of the artifacts and the blockiness. The red liquid inside that container needs some refraction and maybe some caustics to lighten it up. The fruits in the bowl need bounce light to brighten up their black edges.
goldlens - Nice candle scene! For the flames, they might have a bit more glow around them, and be more transparent near the bottom. The glass in the background looks terrific, nice color and depth there. The metal holders to the candles don’t really look like metal, they need less diffuse brightness (darker base color) so the shading will come less from the diffuse and more from the specular and reflections.
aelphasis - Welcome! In terms of improving the lighting, getting some highlights in there, specularity on the walls, rim light on the bannisters, and maybe reflections on the metal shade would help. Subdivision on the shade to hide the faceting would help too.
JoyVoltenburg - Welcome, that’s a good start. It looks very bright, I think a building at night could have more contrast with darker areas, especially up above the lights. See if you can get nice shadows and maybe also occlusion below the truck, to make the contact between the front tires and the ground more believable.
riri284 - Post whatever you’ve got!
EdtheHobbit - Terrific! I guess the driver was killed in the fallout. It has a nice theme and nice colors. Maybe in the foreground especially on the right could use some dark tones, like really solid looking shadows and occlusion, so that it only gets foggy with distance.
-jerem
Hi jeremy,
i was going through the forums when i came across this particular area of the challeneges and the work on it is absolutely mind blowing. i particularly like the under boardwalk scene so decided to give it a try and spent abt a week on it spending 3-4 hrs a day. and finally i have something i can show. this is my fst attempt at lighting a whole sene and it really took the life out of me trying to get the water. any way this scene has been done entirely on maya without any passes and no post prod work done on it. i wud like your feed back on it as i have no idea what mistakes i have made. i am having a problem attaching the image on to this post. sry am new to the forums. can anyone tell me how to do tht. sry
Hi jeremy,
i was going through the forums when i came across this particular area of the challeneges and the work on it is absolutely mind blowing. i particularly like the under boardwalk scene so decided to give it a try and spent abt a week on it spending 3-4 hrs a day. and finally i have something i can show. this is my fst attempt at lighting a whole sene and it really took the life out of me trying to get the water. any way this scene has been done entirely on maya without any passes and no post prod work done on it. i wud like your feed back on it as i have no idea what mistakes i have made.
With Regards
Kunwar nikhil
kunwarnikhil - For help with posting your artwork, please see this thread. If you have an established account on cgtalk, and have made enough posts already, then you can post an image attachment. If you have a website, then upload your image there and just link to it here. If you dont have a website, you can put it on sites such as http://www.imageshack.us/ or http://photobucket.com/.
-jeremy
Just felt like playing with light a bit, here’s the fruits image.
Any C&C welcome.
EDIT : Removed old image. Here’s the new one, straight out of max’s mental ray.
Thanks jeremy’
i can finally post my work now. i still want to do a lil change with the beach texture but here it is do give me the feed back bye the way this render is completely maya software without mental ray
It’s great to see these submissions from new members, I hope they are the first of many.
Aldarion - Welcome! That’s a nice scene overall. I guess the lighting seems a little too frontal and uniform to me, it might look better if you swing the brightest light off to the side a bit more. The plums (askdan) in the back could use some rim or kick from the left where they are almost going black. Some of your shadows could be softer, right now they all look very hard-edged.
kunwarnikhil - Welcome! It looks very strange with the lowered water level, and the water lillies floating on air like that. Some refraction (real or faked) could set the underwater part of the scene to a different location than the above-water scene. Materials on the boat and ground above water look very bump mapped. See if you can use softer shadows underwater.
behrooz - Welcome! That’s a nice bottle scene. The feeling of the glass is good. The windowsill under the glass needs some shadowing (and probably occlusion and caustics) to represent the soft shadowing of the glass objects sitting on it. It should all blur with distance but be very pronounced right at the point of contact between the glass and the painted wood.
VirtualDragon - Welcome! First post and already you have a terrific scene! Congratulations on that! I think the water and the chrome of the truck have a bit too much of a diffuse look, you want really reflective things to start out very dark (especially at night) and only get brighter where there is something bright to reflect. The carpaint probably has too much diffuse too. Maybe after you darken the base color on those things, you could add some little specular lights to put colored kicks into the reflections. The garage could use more of a glow from the inside, and light from the truck’s tail lights.
GiarcNamwob - That’s a nice scene. I like all the things you added to make it more complex. It seems as if the lighting is a little uniform, and more dark corners and dark shadows and contrast would add to the mood.
-jeremy
nobody calls me “dear” except my girlfriend.
:banghead: 
oooooooooooooooooooo
so sorry for my mistake
because always i do 3 or 4 tasks together i make this mistake some times
sorry
:sad:
Hi Jeremy and all.
I might be the only one still doing this, but here is my (almost)final update
for the Sphagetti monster. http://www.seijimm.com/FSM_Comp3.jpg
Thanks Jeremy for your last advice, which I followed and I believe it looks way better now.
Still I can spot some area to be fixed, but I think I spent too much time on this already…
Any comments are welcome, thank you.
This was my first try at a challenge from a few months back. I didn’t realize I could post it after the next challenge started. This was my first attempt at using your technique to get the glow effect.
As usualy the 3ds model was imported to AutoCad 14 and rendered in AccuRender 3.
Hi All!
I took a break from editng my fruit to work on the Bottles challenge. Please let me know what you think! Special thanks again to Jeremy for all his help. 
Hi!
Here’s my second attempt at the fruit bowl. I know it’s not perfect, but I’d like to maybe put it on my reel. Any advice, crits etc.?
Thanks
Thank you so much for your review last time…i’m still working on it following your advise. Here is another one I did, this is the Lighting Challenge #2…
