FEEDBACK: Post here your take on the old challenges!

#521

CGmm - Hello! That is a nice looking FSM scene. I like the vegetation and cheerful colors and waterfall and mist. I think the lighting could be improved if there were less fill light on the creatures themselves. Right now, apart from the sun light, it appears they have too much fill light, light coming uniformly from all directions. If that appearance is not caused by fill light then it may come from translucency, but either way they would look better if the bottoms and interior and shadow parts went much darker, more like the cliffs. It appears that the back cliff should get some sun light on it. The poses are nice, but my eye is fooled by the little one, he looks like a more distant monster in the background, but then you see that he is in front of a part of its parent. Maybe you could give him different proportions (bigger eyes) so it is more clear that he is a child?

TMS - Good start. I think the glass needs to cast darker shadows, and you need to get rid of the white ā€œfrostyā€ edges. The bottles will need smoothing to get rid of the angles from the polygon control cages. To save development time, you can do tests with just 1 or 2 bottles until you really nail the glass look, and only make the bottles visible later.

epochapex - Welcome, thatā€™s a nice scene. I like the textures. The lighting could be better if there were more clear direction to the illumination, and shadows cast under the fruits. It looks like the light comes from the left, but I donā€™t see the right side of the fruits getting much darker, and the shadows on the plate are very faint. That kind of plate might be more reflective, too. I donā€™t think the background blurring looks like DOF, you can leave that out if you canā€™t get something more like real DOF.

VirtualDragon - Welcome! Looking good. I canā€™t really see wher ethe light is coming from in that one. If light is supposed to come through the window, then you should work on that. Look at shading in the corners where two walls meet, and make sure they look like they contact as well.

-jeremy

#522

Thatā€™s a nice scene! Glad youā€™re still working on the fingers. They could go darker in places, into a deep red to show transparency. The candle flame would look more believable if it aimed upwards. I think a little bit of blue specularity in the foreground hallway, especially a blue highlight on the floor, could really help tie together the blue background with the foreground, and some specular would help give a creepy presence to the walls as well.

-jeremy

PS - Please donā€™t start new threads in this forum, only reply to existing threads!

#523

Thank you for the feedback, Jeremy.

Yes, there is a fill light but not so strong,
so I guess Iā€™ll have to tweak with the sss settings too.

That little one is actually behind the others
and those kids have different propotion already (bigger eyes),
but maybe I can do little more. since he could be the youngest.
Iā€™ll try with some different position/pose and figure out.

Thanks again!

#524

Thanks Jeremy! Iā€™ glad you like the textures - theyā€™re all hand painted aside from the plate and cloth.

I find lighting very tough and unintuitive for some reason. I think itā€™s because the lights are quantities in a program and not qualities like colours & tones in a painting.

The depth of field done with zdepth using Fusion to composite, so maybe Iā€™ll look at adjusting the cam setting in Maya.

#525

thank you jeremy,
your suggestion and comments are invalueble,thanks for you support!

#526

Hello All,

[b] Script #2

NICK staggers into THE KITCHEN, squinting to shield his eyes from the morning sun.
NICK
THE ONLY REAL CURE FOR A HANG-OVER IS ANOTHER BOTTLE
OF BOOZE. THE TRICK IS TO PASS OUT AGAIN BEFORE YOU
PUKE IT UP.[/b]

I havenā€™t had time to render this with better sampling and I think it may look more like sunset than sunrise but let me know what you think.

Thanks to everyone here for all the critiques and help, I learn so much just from looking at other peoples work.

#527

lauras - Hello! Those are nice colors and textures on the room, that adds a lot and would fit well with early morning light. I think the wall with the window in it could be darker, to make it look more back-lit. Right now it seems even brighter than the side walls that would get light from the sky. Light from the sky should be the main source of fill light, and that light should be cool, with soft shadows, and all should come through the window. The sunbeam looks a little broad, although I guess the width is plausible, but it could use slightly softer shadows. (The sun is an area light in the sky, not a point light, and gets to be bigger area light when shining through some clouds.) The view through the window could be brighter, compared to how bright things look inside the room, and also to convey the idea that the sun is blindingly bright.

-jeremy

#528

Hi All!

Jeremy - Thank you so much for the critique! Itā€™s so awesome to have fresh eyes look at my projects. Iā€™ve revised my kitchen and had a bit of a hard time softening the shadows but I think I got the back wall correct. I also cooled down the sky light.

Let me know what you think. :slight_smile:

#529

This is my first post here! Iā€™m kind of a noob in the lighting/texturing world, so go easy on me :stuck_out_tongue: Any advice, however, will be greatly appreciated!

#530

Me again! Obviously I wasnā€™t really able to get the chrome quite right hereā€¦ any ideas?

(P.S. I know the cats are silly, but I just couldnā€™t think of anything else to put there! xD)

#531

Hi, Jeremy and all.
I uploaded the latest version of my FSM. http://www.seijimm.com/FSM_Comp4.jpg

I think I got it right. Now they fit in the background better.
Though I realized my monitor shows color/contrast in a different way
than my notePC, so I had to try match it.
Still more correction may be needed. What do you think?

Any comments are welcome, thank you.

#532

hello,

iĀ“ll allready uploaded the images in the halloween-thread but i think itĀ“s over !?
anyway, here my 2 pics (first one, updated).

cc welcome :slight_smile:

andy

close up:

#533

I worked on this one over the past week, and have realised the most annoying thing here is texturing. seriously i hate it. if someone could do my UV mapping for me that would be awesome :stuck_out_tongue: i didnt light the upper levels because they arent mapped. infact half the building is just a lambert without a file texture. and i think pretty much everything in this image is made of chrome/metal haha.
wasnt sure how to do a glare/glow in maya except for the post effect on most standard shaders. i dont know of any glow filters in mental ray, i suppose using a volume filter i could give it that sort of lookā€¦but render times would be insane. the biggest thing this image is lacking is any sort of ambience. theres no condensation/mist, no smoke, nothing. at that time of night the air should be saturated. but again, volume is the only way i could think of. unless i do a maya render and composit, but i like to keep it all on one clean render.
render stats:
maya, mental ray
lighting is heavily object based. standard maya shader with incandesence, glow at some tiny number and final gather on. standard point lights used to do brake lights, and one to light the garage where object lights dont reach, with 2 spotlights on the headlights, one blue point light for moon.
final gather, multibouncex2, 1000 rays. no gi.
terrible use of shaders and textures -5 marks. for some reason my environment isnt showing on that metal pole thing by the car eitherā€¦and the filesize restrictions mean theres alot of artifacts, the original render was clean and not splotchy, and the exit light didnt look like crapā€¦i swear :stuck_out_tongue:
again not colour corrected, dark and red monitor, apologies if it looks crap on a normal screen.
and yes, its quite tongue in cheek. i really dont like 4wds :stuck_out_tongue:

#534

google RoadKill UV toolsā€¦ itā€™s available as a Maya plugin and a stand alone software.
hope that helps
edit- on another thought architectural enviroments are easier to do with projections sometimes. consider your options :slight_smile:
-Mina

#535

ok, this is killing meā€¦
or atleast slightly irking me.
ok im not that phased by it, but, im trying to light the bottles scene, and im having a terrible time getting the damn things to light up. everywhere around the scene is kind of lit, but the bottles act like theyre sucking all the light out, and just making it really dark.
they basically are completely black, i dont know why, i tried replacing the shaders with basic lamberts to see if light wasnt hitting them, it is, it has strong shadows, but thats to be expected, its meant to be sunrise.
its like the light cant pass through the surface, but it shouldnt have any trouble, ive put raytrace depth on it.
any ideas?

#536

ive downloaded the UV tools for maya, but theres still tedious work to do with it, im longing for the day when i can click a surface and it will just map it for me :stuck_out_tongue: rather than fiddling with planar mapping etc to get it all perfect.
until that day, i suppose my lazyness and lack of motivation for texturing will haunt me :slight_smile:

#537

Got a little while, added some rim lights, changed the cloth material and made some minor changes. Iā€™m thinking of putting this into my portfolio, so please crit, I want it to be better than good.

#538

lauras - Thatā€™s great! When I squint at it, Iā€™m still not entirely sold on the window being the bright light source. If you look at the top cube of the window frame, there are two faces of that cube visible. The one thatā€™s towards us is brighter, and the one of the bottom, facing out towards the exterior ground, is darker. It feels as if the light from outside should be much brighter than the bounce on the interior wall. I think a little more light could get caught inside that wine bottle, maybe just a point light in the middle of it if you donā€™t want to bother with caustics?

srm5436 - Welcome! Try to stick to one project, like the fruit bowl, and work on it until you are done before you do another. Thatā€™s a good start on the fruit bowl. To get going with shadows, try lighting the scene with just one light, adjust the light to cast shadows, and get as much shaping and definition, nice bright and dark areas, as you can with just one light. Then add raytraced reflections to the reflective surfaces like the plate and fruits. Then, only as a last step, add some fill light and give the fill light shadows or occlusion. But really, start with a one-light rendering to make sure you have your key light illumination and shadows set as well as possible.

CGmm - Nice! it still looks very bright, but in an engaging, intentional way, like a storybook picture for little children. I like how some of them have some expression, the big one in front still looks kindof blank like he hasnā€™t noticed us yet. It looks as if some of the lights donā€™t cast shadows, and maybe in some places there could be better definition with more shadows or occlusion, but this isnā€™t strictly always needed in a stylized render.

OrganisedChaos - I usually use a lot of projection mapping instead of UV for this kind of thing, just because UVs can be so much trouble. If youā€™re working on chrome, make sure it has something to reflect, even if you need a big textured polygon out in front of the truck. The camera angle is nice, and youā€™re getting the neon working. The flourescent tubes donā€™t look as convincing yet, maybe because the entire fixtures including the metal reflectors are all glowing?

OrganisedChaos - Make sure you have enough raytrace depth (enough reflection bounces and especially enough refraction steps) for light to make it all the way through the bottles. In Maya this is set both in your Render Settings, and also on the shaders. Also, make sure thereā€™s an environment to reflect or refract running all the way around the models, they could be picking up darkness from any angle around them.

Aldarion - Welcome! Thatā€™s looking great, really lush feeling. I think thereā€™s too much contrast in some of the shader/texture brightness levels: the stems and the tips of the bananas go almost black. But then you could have a little more contrast in the lighting, so that the apple gets some really darker tones in the places where itā€™s shadowed by other fruits. I like the feeling of the purple fruits in the background, maybe they need just a hint of rim on the left side as well, but they are looking really rich already. The amount of contrast and darkness under the plate is good already.

-jeremy

#539

Anybody got the fruit in 3ds format. I would like to try it but canā€™t load anything else.
Thanks if you can help.

#540

Here is my first try on lighting after starting reading your 2nd edition of Digital lighting and Rendering ā€¦
this one (fruit bowl) might be old but still is a challenging oneā€¦
kindlyā€¦do give me your comments on this oneā€¦
i will be most thankfulā€¦

thanksā€¦
Anil Verma
India
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc61/sendanilhi/fruitbowl.jpg