FEEDBACK: Post here your take on the old challenges!

#141

Hi, this is my 3rd entry in fruit bowl…

#142

That’s cool man i like it, :smiley:

#143

Thanks again Jeremy for your comments, an updated version for the fruits and the room with soft shadows.


#144

Great Thread. Lots of good people with lots of good works. Very facinating and beautiful:) …

#145

sgbzona - Nice work! You could probably frame the fruit bowl better. Are you doing a lot of compositing? I see all these bright outlines around the tops of fruits, especially the top of the banana tip, that look like matting errors. The kitchen looks nice but could use better shadowing, it looks from the bright rims on top of the cabinet doors and the top of the chair under the cushion as if you have at least one light that isn’t shadowing properly.

neil09 - Nice job! Some parts look a little dull, if you’re trying for a back-lit look, maybe the apple leaf and the grapes could be made more translucent looking, and you could add a little rim light to some things like the grapes?

jpiette - Only looking at the candle: see if you can get much softer shadows. Those razor-sharp ones especially on the picture are really distracting. There’s some reference pictures in the original thread, but see if you can make the candle wicks darker, and make the center bottom part of the candle flames transparent. Maybe the flames themselves don’t have to be so consistently saturated a yellow, and you might make the wood a little more polished and reflective.

MonicaKruse - Welcome! The weirdmistake one is nice, at least it has some refraction. If you’re doing tests on reflectivity and refraction, you could focus on rendering just 1 or 2 bottles, to save time, until you’ve really nailed the glass look.

-jeremy

#146

Hi Jeremy,

I did as you suggested and gave fur a try. I used the NURBS model you provided which worked great since all the uvs were nice and clean. As for the actual fur, I started with the mouse fur preset and tweaked it to get this. I’m not sure if it actually looks like a real bunny…but it looks cute enough, hehe. The rest is just paint effects and a texture map for the ground.

I used the software renderer and one light only since both fur and paint effects started to go berserk on my as soon as I added an extra light…there really should be a light linking feature for fur and PFX.

After rendering I added a few adjustment layers in photoshop. I’m quite happy since it came out better than I expected at all…but I definitely wanna know if you think it makes the cut.

Thanks Jeremy!
Juan Carlos

#147

jcsilvar - You need to work on lighting and shadows! If you have a spotlight selected, you can say Fur > Add Fur Shadowing Attributes and it’ll get a fur shading/shadowing attr section. You have an “Intensity Multiplier” there that’s better than light linking (Maya light linking is just on/off, this is scalar for how much each light illuminates the fur.) Turn shading type to “Shadow Maps” get real shadowing, and use dmap shadows on the light too. That way you won’t get the belly glowing white from light that shined all the way through the rabbit, and you can even get shadows under it. Your grass and your rabbit hair both look kindof short, you could make them longer and make the fur a little more varied, and try to figure out why we can see through the rabbit’s left legs.

-jeremy

#148

Thanks Jeremy, I will post my updates very soon :slight_smile:

#149

Hi Jeremy,

thanks for your input. Clearly, I need intensive training in the ways of the fur, hehe. I was just trying to rework the image, but I’m having a lot of issues with the fur.

  1. I have NO idea why we are seeing through the left legs…I checked everything…but it’s still happening.

  2. I’m getting weird pixelated shadows on the model…even though my depth map shadows are fine…I think to fix this I’ll render the cast shadows from the model on the ground separately.

  3. Do you by any chance know if there’s a way I can render fur without maya having to re-calculate everytime? It takes really long and it can drive you insane.

I’d really appreciate it if you could point me to some good fur tutorials, other than the ones in the maya help.

Thanks so much again for all your help. Sorry to trouble you so. I do appreciate you taking time to help us all with our rendering issues.

Cheers.
Juan Carlos

#150

The rabbit scene is on a somewhat large scale and probably needs a dmap bias higher than default. If you frame a spotlight tighty around the rabbit you can do test renders for the best dmap bias, even testing without fur visible first, then turning on fur after it’s shadowing right. I’d want to see if the left leg looked good without fur also.

I don’t know about recalculating everything. You can turn off paint effect stroke rendering in the render settings, and turn off fur in the fur globals. If your fur density is really, really high often there’s room to optimise your fur description (more base width and tip width, more curl, some random noise on attributes to vary them) to make the fur look thicker, and of course your shadows do a great deal to give weight to the fur, and then you can get more coverage without really high fur densities that hang your system.

-jeremy

#151

thank you jeremy for responding! i did a refraction and reflection test on the bottles and that helped out remendously. After i added a few lights, this is what was rendered:

#152

from now on i’m gurafikkusugasukidesu :slight_smile:

#153

Thanks jeremy for your comments, you’re the expert tell me shall i continue to work on this scene or it’s good enough and i can switch to another scene?

I want to know if what i have done is professional enough in real lighting jobs.

I’ll post my latest entry when attachments are enabled for me.

#154

Thanks GreYFoXGTi :).

#155

MonicaKruse - The scene keeps getting better and better. Right now there’s a silvery metalic quality to the reflections that doesn’t quite look like glass, maybe it’s just a matter of getting rid of the diffuse shading and using the fresnel effect. When you look through one bottle to see another, the second bottle back doesn’t look transparent at all, I think you need more refraction steps for that.

gurafikkusugasukidesu - No, this is not professional enough to put on a showreel for lighting jobs, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I’m glad to see you practicing. You could keep going, work with my advice from the last page, and try to improve each scene more before you work on another.

-jeremy

#156

Here is a fairly small update, I have softened the shadows and updated the materials as suggested.

I would be interested to hear people’s opinions as to whether the soft shadow on the back of the banana looks fine, or whether I should shift the lighting about to remove it altogether.

Thanks,

Chris

#157

Thanks jeremy.
Here’s my updated work, i increased reflectivity in the window and the sink.

#158

Chrisdc - Looks good. Maybe the orange looks a bit like a lemon. The softer shadow on the back of the banana is fine if you like it, it just makes your lighting look a bit more sourcy, if you got rid of it you’d still need a little contact with the fruit that’s actually touching the lower part.

gurafikkusugasukidesu - Think a little about where you want people to look. Right now it’s the bright green seat cushion that draws your eye, and a lot of the larger surfaces look very flat. That low-polygon fan needs some subdivision or motion blur or something, or else don’t use it. I don’t see much reflection in the window, or the sink or floor or table really.

-jeremy

#159

Thanks jeremy for your patience with me, I think low reflectivity on floor, and table is due to fresnel fall off, I used dielectric material on the window which i can’t control really, and mi_car_paint for the sink which again i can’t control, but i shall work on your notes right away, Thanks again.

#160

Hi Jeremy,

Here’s the new render for the bunny scene I tried before. I did as you suggested and increased the width on the fur, so I would need less density and it worked like a charm…nooo drags on the system whatsoever. The amount of density I used last time was way over the top…I’m not gonna say any numbers so you won’t laugh at me…but let’s just say that I may have been trying to match Sully from Monster’s Inc., hehe.

Oh, and I solved the transparency issue. Turns out I had forgotten to turn the primary visibility on the model on…um…yeah, I can’t remember why I turned it off in the first place…I’m sure I had a good reason, hehe.

The eye’s still a bit dodgy though.
Please let me know what you think.

Thank you very much.
Juan Carlos