Lighting Challenge #13: Christmas

#221

Some very good work on here, CryingHorn: I love your render, The coldness from the window and the heat from the fire… wow. Great work all.

#222

@ CryingHorn Really good work ! even if the volumetric seems a bit too overdone (but that is only my opinion overall it’s a great image also very well balanced and toned)
I went for the photorealistic part there’s what I’ve done



So you can see I’ve used only 3 lights + sunlight system (mR) all MIA materials all textures taken fro mthe web. I like the appereance of the glare (probably too overdone but ok) Waiting for feedback ( I think this is semifinal images probably before deadline I will render one more and if everything will be ok I will do a video of how I placed the lights)
Thanks to all and KEEP ALL UP THE GOOD WORK

#223

@ jojo1975 a little over exposed i would say. and also the ribbon facing the camera looks flat. other than that, Great work.

and here’s an update to my humble entry :smiley:

Keep it up everyone!

#224

Actually, I like it to be blown out a bit from time to time. With this setup it can lend itself well. Part of what usually makes it look “3d” to me is that every little thing is at least decently lighted - real photography is often messy when not using supplemental lighting. Highlights blow out, shadows crush…

Is anyone else having trouble with the mapping of the fireplace? For some reason I have to scale my texture bizzarly down - it’s tiling like crazy!

#225

what software are you using ? With max an add uvmap (Box) was sufficient (and then used 3 for values for tiling)

#226

Cinema 4D - and I’m not that experienced with it to be honest. When you apply a basic texture, you just have the choices of UVW, Spherical, Cubic, Cylindrical, Spatial, etc.

Each of them is tiling the crap out of the fireplace - I don’t normally have this problem with model - and even with any of the other models in this scene - just this fireplace…

I’ve thought about going through BodyPaint, but again, not too experienced and right now t’s a bit daunting.

#227

Hey all, one again, great job guys. Looking at the posts are inspiring to be honest.
I used 3ds max 9 with Mental ray as my renderer. My pc is pretty slow, so the render to about 2 hours to complete, perhaps bit more.

I learned about Final Gather yesterday so this is my first time trying to use it in a scene (hope it is not too obvious hehe). Anyhow, to speed up the render I used the multiplier instead of big numbers in other settings.
The bounces helps with making the presents to stand out more.

As for the tree lights, I have no idea how to make them “glow”, since glow (lens effect) is not supported in Mental ray. So, I cheated perhaps; by adding omni lights at the end of every globe and setting the globes to have rays. By doing so, the lights seems to glow…

Other effects I used was volumetric lights for the fire and the moon light from outside. I did not want to over do it though. As for materials, I used standard 3ds max library materials and changed settings to my taste for the scene

 [[img]http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/6788/fg1yh0.jpg[/img]](http://img412.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fg1yh0.jpg)
#228

@jojo1975 - Coming along nicely. Maybe some fresnel falloff for your glossy reflections - they look a little metallic. As is, they read better from the overhead shot than from below. :slight_smile:

@Eugene, I haven’t used mr for a long time, but there used to be a glare shader in the lume library. That might help. Looking good so far.

@Lewis, does C4D have a tiling parameter for the various mapping modes? If so, play with that.

#229

Hello everybody… this is my first post, and my first challenge!!
Great works, really!!
:slight_smile:

#230

second post … waiting for validation
sorry for these unuseful messages:)

#231

Here is a last one. Maya/mental ray.

#232

Great work TR, great work!! :thumbsup:

#233

Wow, that one’s truly amazing! Great work, T-R!

#234

T-R - Wow! That is freakin awsome! You can see some faceting on the nearby pine needles, though, they might need more subdivision for that tight a close-up. I really like your wider shot (post 217 on the previous page) too, although if you do any post work to that I think the brightest part of the fireplace could go less saturated.

eafreak - Nice work. You can add glow as a post effect. I’d do it by rendering the bulbs in a separate layer and screening a blurred copy of that layer over the image, but there are many other approaches to making bright parts of your image glow. For the fire light, see if you can get softer shadows, and make the point sources less obvious. The wood on the floor and panels could use some specularity or reflections. Some of the gifts seem to be almost like light sources, with red that’s brighter than their surroundings and even brightens the floor underneath them.

thundering1 - Your fireplace doesn’t look bad, maybe fewer repeats of the texture would look better. The circle of light above the tree doesn’t look believable to me, see if you can tone that down and soften the light and its shadows a lot. I’m not sure where the illumination on the right is coming from, maybe objects on the dresser could be brighter on the left side if the light is coming from the windows or the fire?

Pooyag - Nice work. I’d like to see more illumination from the tree on the walls around it.

jojo1975 - Nice! You’ve got a great variety of images in that last post. For the first one, there’s something strangely amplified about some of the indirect light, making it brighter than would be motivated by the direct illumination. Look in the lower center of the image at the impression that the gifts are glowing onto the floor for example. Second one the blown-out glare is an OK styliztic choice. The gifts that are facing us should look more back-lit and darker on the front to make that realistic, though. I hope you can do more with the star to make it look reflective or something. Third one same issues as the 2nd. Also, the brick texture looks fine on the chimney but doesn’t fit well with the fireplace, and it would be nice to get softer, warmer light from the fire. Last one is a nice image, maybe the pine needles need more subdivision where the camera is that close.

CryingHorn - That’s great! You’ve got a really magical feeling with the blue light wrapping around the tree, and the white needles in the moonlight. Your textures and background add a lot to the scene. I think the light from the fire and candles could be more contained. Maybe the fire light could fade off with height, so there was a gradient darkening it towards the top of the fireplace? For the candle light, it would be good if only the immediate area near the flames got bright, instead of the whole width of the chimney. Also, the flames themselves could be brighter, to motivate such bright illumination on the stone. See if you can get some rim light or kick light on the right side of the stockings to bring them out better in the moon light. On the right side of the frame, the light on the back wall could be a gradient fading darker towards the right, and the light on the floor could get darker too, especially on the boards closest to the dresser.

suedix - Nice job! I’d like to see more of the scene exposed so I could see something of the walls, the bag or dog in front of the fire, etc. Some parts of it like some of the bows are starting to look really good.

Frances - That looks great! Your texturing is first-rate, even with nice brick work on the fireplace, and a fuzzy looking trim on the stockings. The lighting looks natural and believable overall. I think the fire light could have smooth, soft shadows, instead of stopping at that diagonal line. The front log could cast more of a shadow onto the right side of the stand, too, and less of the fire light could be aimed downwards to the bottom of the fireplace, maybe just some burning embers belong there. In a room filled with natural light, the fire light could look dimmer, too, so it doesn’t overexpose the edge of the hearth.

neoartec - Nice job. Some of the furnature appears to glow a bit too much, I don’t see where that light would come from on the shelves?

-jeremy

#235

Hi everyone, Here’s my attempt with Lightwave, using one area light outside and luxigon point lights for the lightbulbs.

Also a point light for the fireplace.

#236

Wow, thank you guys for the comments:thumbsup:

You can see some faceting on the nearby pine needles…

…brightest part of the fireplace could go less saturated…

Thank you for the suggestions Jeremy. I updated the original posts with the changes.

#237

Thank you so much for the feed back about the fire lighting, and for your other comments Jeremy. I have some ideas about how to implement your suggestions. :slight_smile:

#238

Hi everyone;

Thanx Jeremy for this opportunity. I was checking out the forum and thought I should hook up and join the challenge.

I downloaded the obj files and started lighting the scene in Lightwave. I came up with a simple little theme for my work before I embarked upon lighting the scene which is “Xmas morning” :slight_smile: Every kid looks forward to that certain day of the year to wake up and find nicely wrapped presents under the tree, and in my work I wanted to convey that feeling from the pov of the kid(s) of this house…

To convey that feeling of joy and serenity, I decided that it would be better to use warm colors and earth tones throughout primarily and that I somehow had to accentuate the presents.

I started off by adding a strong key light that shines brightly at a low angle, as it is the wee hours of the morning. I went on from there putting in bounce lights that radiate throughout the interior of the room.

There’s no radiosity or GI enabled in the scene, nor I made use of any third party pixel filter plugins except fprime, without which I’m certain I wouldn’t have been able to convey what I wanted to do quickly and effectively.

It’s always great to aim for drama in your scene other than solely going for realism, and one can maintain better control of the scenic story telling with conventional lighting.

And btw, this scene with over 1.5 mil polys renders in less than 1.5 hours on my silly desktop that has a dual core 2.44 processor with 3 GB of Ram as opposed to what it would if montecarlo or FG was enabled, considering the heavy additional ray tracing that is involved…

The renders I’m posting here are not final cuz I’m still in the process of refining the scene. The crisp shadows of the stockings cast on the front of the fireplace and the rather irritating shadows of the tree on the ceiling will be eventually replaced by highly diffused shadow map shadows that give a better feeling of occlusion shadows cast by intense bounced radiation of light, simply because fprime is a 2.5D raytracer and does not support shadow maps (bugger…) I’m going to render the final output with LW’s default which will hopefully look a whole lot better with volumetric light seeping in and after certain elements are composed and the imaged are color corrected…

But anyhow, hope you guys will like my work. I’ll post screen shots of light placements and more concise explanation of the material setup involved with the lighting of the scene…

Cheers All;

AJ

Image no.1:

Image no.1:

#239

Hi all!!
Here’s my wip… :blush: :)!
I used only maya software and …many many lights (linked lights).
No Ao for the moment
I’d like this work more similar to an illustration, cartoon look.
I had to add more detail especially on the walls and fireplace. I’ll post other upload soon.
…That’s all!

Thanks Jeremy for this opportunity!and for this great model!
looking for receiving your feedbacks… bye!!

#240

Wow, there’s some extremely tasty renderings going on here!
I totally dig your DOF image, T-R, any chance of getting together a breakdown on this, for us mr users? :smiley:

And a Happy New Year everyone!