Lighting Challenge #1: Fruit Bowl

[K_Scott_Gant]

I redid a lot of things and went back to Mental Ray as a renderer as I still can’t wrap my head around getting any SSS-like things with Vray.

So back to Mental Ray. Again, this is only lit with a single MRspotlight from behind and a bounce reflector in the front. GI is on.

[Ravix]

Hi I did this in my free time was done on MR, GI i kind of get bored , hope to have time to finished and update after critics.

One directional light, mood: mornining wet overcast day

http://img83.imageshack.us/my.php?image=morningfruitsvelazquezfinal2xu.jpg

how u guys manage to put the imges without a link?

[threedeworks]

hello all again, here are my final versions…

the first one, three area lights (one of them as a strong rim light).

the second one, aka ‘cherries in the spotlight’… (two area lights and one spot)

the third one, as a closeup.

i reworked the light intensities and the textures for all three images. what do you think?

cheers

markus

[ernia]

Hello folks,

Here’s my final, too. 5 spots with area shadows and a bit of ambient occlusion. 1 volumetric light for the rays. No Gi. Slight level adjust in post. I had to smooth out the polys on the orange because it was too bumpy. And that’s it

Nice entries everyone. I personally like the painterly approaches like Acamacho.
Thanks to Birn and Wade for the challenge.
I would like to give credit to the modeler. Anyone know who that was?
ernia
“Wooden Fruit and Bowl”

[K_Scott_Gant]

Here’s an update. I’ve been playing around with the lighting and trying to get away from the GI mindset and just light it like I would if using a real camera. Also, I know the textures aren’t the best in the world, but I’m more interested in lighting and rendering.

[agreenster]

Wow you guys. Im no lighting artist, and I was just cruisin the boards and found this. I’m WAY impressed. I know who I’m coming to when I need something lit.

Keep up the good works peeps. Astounding

[threedeworks]

Thank you Kye, I didn’t use any specialized SSS shader. As Otacon say, I used some gradients based on distance to reference objects (nulls), to fake that effect in a very faster way. I guess this technique is applicable to any 3D package.
Otacon, thanks man! Your last test is nice too. What have you used for the SSS effect of your grapes? Btw, you are right. I’ve used that trick. As you know is faster than any SSS shader so far. I’ve applied also the same technique to simulate the radiance effect of the local scene and spinning lights for the distance scene lighting.
A color version:
…
Gerardo

gerardo, amazing!! very nice, bright and natural light.

btw., thanks for sharing so much of your research work in the LW forums! i wonder about those ‘hairy’ cherry stems, i newer saw this kind… looks terrific how did you achieve this effect? hd instance or photoshop?

[threedeworks]

hey guys !!

here my first render test. totally misssfast+simbiontxsi.
setup just for the main lighting, color profile, sss look
and grossly procedurals. bananas and some other fruits
have just a gradient for the moment.

**

…

ciao
francesca

nice, clean and crisp image! i love the contrast in it! maybe just try to give a little bit more light on the left side of the scene where the details of banana and grapes are lost into the dark…

ciao

markus

[K_Scott_Gant]

Ok, here’s an update. Perhaps a final update. I added more fill-in light…though it looks like some of the highlights on the bananas are getting blown out. I could have adjusted all this in Photoshop, but these are straight from the camera…er…renderer.

Of course, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I wasn’t crazy about my light placement, and wanted to go for more of a natural light through a window look. So I did this:

[floze]

Hi everyone. First off let me thank the initiators of this challenge, all contributors and all supporters. It’s places like this that guide my (sometimes mislead) energies into the hopefully right directions. Here’s my humble contribution, created in my precious spare time with love in every pixel :

mentalray for Maya 6.5 / Adobe Photoshop
First practical use of my own created EI03 and hls mr shaders.
Special thanks to Gonzalo Garramuño for gg_fakefur.
Very special thanks to Jeremy Pronk for creating IBL Tools.
Last but not least thank you Zap for the wonderful sss shader!

Thanks for watching! I’m looking forward to your advices.

[agreenster]

Holy crap floze, that is FANTASTIC

Maybe some light coming through the Apple’s leaf?

[floze]

Holy crap floze, that is FANTASTIC

Thanks dude, glad you like it.

edit: Yeah, the leaf was worrying me… maybe it doesnt have actual thickness, I’ll check that.

[ThomasMahler]

Very inspiring guys, keep it going!

[lazzhar]

Wow Floze you did a very nice job.

Wondering how it long it tooke to render?

[floze]

Wow Floze you did a very nice job.

Wondering how it long it tooke to render?

Thanks lazzhar. It took about 5h, but mainly because of the expensive indirect illumination, which was photonmapping + finalgathering. Without it, it’s a piece of cake, thanks to Jeremy Pronk’s IBL Tools. Basically the IBL Tool’s spherical light I’m using acts as a bunch of directional lights - pretty cheap to render. I could post one without the indirect light, but it destroys the mood imo.

A breakdown of the rendering process:
0:32:14.39 for computing finalgather points, using precomputed photon lookup of a 300k photonmap,
5:09:13.07 for rendering. The sss lightmap took probably as long as the finalgathering stage. Original resolution was 1k square, rendered on an AMD2600+/1GB RAM.

[MasterZap]

Here’s my humble contribution, created in my precious spare time with love in every pixel :

Floze; fantastic!

However I think I see one pixel in the lower right corner that is missing love. It contains only “truth” and “beauty” but the “love” is missing.

Ah, just kidding. Swedish humor… sorry.

/Z

[swag]

yehhh floze this rock very nice mood in there where u used the gg_fakefur shader

[floze]

yehhh floze this rock very nice mood in there where u used the gg_fakefur shader

Hmm, I used it on the bananas, the askdan* and the grapes. Only for a bit specularity and least little bit diffuse contribution though. And of course on the fabric.

Master Zap: I want the exact position (x, y, in raster space) of this pixel!!

*whatever fruit this might be, I assumed it’s something plum-like

[jeremybirn]

Hi everyone. First off let me thank the initiators of this challenge, all contributors and all supporters. It’s places like this that guide my (sometimes mislead) energies into the hopefully right directions. Here’s my humble contribution, created in my precious spare time with love in every pixel :

mentalray for Maya 6.5 / Adobe Photoshop
First practical use of my own created EI03 and hls mr shaders.
Special thanks to Gonzalo Garramuño for gg_fakefur.
Very special thanks to Jeremy Pronk for creating IBL Tools.
Last but not least thank you Zap for the wonderful sss shader!

Thanks for watching! I’m looking forward to your advices.

Sorry I fell behind on feedback, but that’s really great!

[Ravix]

hi , anyone know how to post ur image link to this page , so i can see it without a link

hey flloze that looks good , how u manage t do the translucency of the grapes?
is that a sss shader?

[http://img83.imageshack.us/my.php?image=morningfruitsvelazquezfinal2xu.jpg](http://img83.imageshack.us/my.php?image=morningfruitsvelazquezfinal2xu.jpg)