Hi all,
I really tried to get a wip posted before the 4th of July week, since I will be on holiday:bounce:
The final image will have to be rendered in layers, because there are several things that need work with this render. Comments would be great!
Have a happy 4th eveybody!
hi,
here I’m walking into this thread with 2 propositions, both made with max and Vray.
For the first scene I wanted a dark-Time environement with one light projector, carryed
by something or someone over the boat. The scene was rendered with Caustics and GI.
The main light, from the boat, is a spot light with Decay and volume light… also the BG used is a quite dark pricedural (Gradiant Ramp).
I also used a Home maide Dome light to manage the embiant light.
In the seconde scene I started to transform the fish and weel maps, turned off the main spot light and added a [color=orange]Directional light in order to change into a day-time rendering scene.
Here I kept the same Fug used in the first scene, but used no GI, Caustics or Volume light. The “Fug Background”, checked in the first scene has been unchecked and the procedural Background was tweeked with light-blue and white colors.[/color]
That’s it… I hope you’ll enjoy and forgive all my myssings in English.
regards,
karim
Here’s my shot at it. This certainly was a challenge! Never before have I spent this much effort on lighting a scene.
I know it’s not perfect, but it’s a start! I think I’m stuck though, and I’d like some points for improvement. Sorry the image isn’t very large. I needed to render it in less than an hour.
LightWave 8.5 & 9.0 (BETA)
Photoshop
Hello everyone,
this one is inspired from jeff’s work.I got little time out of my work.so i thought to do this. No textures yet. Done with max and mentalray.
I used Submerge as volume camera shader. and added little much fog.Well i m thinking to make animation of this.Can i allow to make animation(kinda short of animation?)
I m trying to make it dirty and supposed to be in murky water…
Next i will texture it.
C&C r welcome.
hello everybody~
first shot, done with Max and Vray, not completely mapped yet~ C&C welcome
thank you~
hyst -
For the caustic patterns, it looks like you’re projecting a proceedural texture that isn’t working too well. Maybe try one of the bitmaps from this site instead:
http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~stam/reality/Research/PeriodicCaustics/index.html
It has several zip files full of animated, tiling .tif sequences that can make good “fake caustics.”
-jeremy
jigu - Nice! I like the distortion/DOF effects. Maybe it could use a few more dark tones, other than just the inside of the tire, but since you said you were going to try adding murk that might do the trick.
whiteboywithsideburns - The perspective makes it look like a painting or illustration; actually it reminds me of those diaramas you see in museums sometimes. I like how everything’s textured. Maybe that sense of directionality you’ve got with the light beams under the water could be carried more into the lighting above water, and the cylinders could use more shaping with light coming from screen right, the shadows could be cast from the same direction?
karimD - There are things to like about both of your renders, but maybe the 1st one is a more promising start in the lighting, the 2nd one has some better textures.
silvia - That’s a good start! I like the tropical colors and the way you are staging the fish to add some interest and story value! That light looks almost as if the sun were coming right through the dock, and I can’t tell what the diagonal line shadow is, if it’s a shadow of the rope or what?
-jeremy
Shankar - That’s nice! I like the little particles floating in the water; the murk under the dock is really starting to work.
lotaH - Nice, the fake caustics on the ground are coming out well but maybe that cellular texture looks too procedural when you look up and see it on the surface. What’s with that rock (that looks like a human brain leaking yellow onto the ground?)
mbeazley - Nice circle, the clear part is really working, and so is the wavey edge. Maybe the parts of the water that aren’t transparent could use some raytraced reflections (or an environment map or specular highlights or texture or something…) right now it looks kindof blank out there.
-jeremy
Hi MasterZap -
Wow, that last render you posted is looking really good!
I like the “jelly fish” (is the fish made out of jelly a visual pun?) 
Maybe that reflection isn’t getting some of the murk or fill light or color correction that the ground itself is getting, and that’s why there’s more contrast in that reflection than on the ground itself? Also, maybe the ground shadow itself would be filled in more by diffused light underwater, and that’s a part of it?
-jeremy
I’m running some tests on this project myself, and I think the best approach to this project is the opposite of the last challenge.
In the bottle collection, it seemed as if the best way to develop the look was to isolate and rendering 1 bottle by itself, until the glass shader and its illumination, shadows, reflections, and refraction were all worked out.
In this challenge, it seems as if the main thing is to render small, quick images, even if they are just thumbnail-sized, until you have the color scheme and depth-fading looking right. No matter how detailed your scene is, if you don’t get the colors and tones right, it won’t look like we’re underwater. I think I can tell which scenes are working as underwater scenes, and which aren’t, even while squinting or looking from a distance, mostly at how all the colors work together and how they shift with distance through the water.
-jeremy
I took a break for a while, came back and was blown away by some of these posts, so I wanted to give it another shot. This is less “glassy” looking than the first, and I dirtied it up a bit.
Shankar,
I like the blurry feel and the detail in the boat that you were able to keep. I also like the translucency on the fish. Looking at yours against mine I think I just might like blue better than green :shrug: oh well…
Kev
Hi Kev,
Thanks for your Comments. I like the way you dirtied it up in the bottom.
-Shankar
Hi
I’ve not used caustics before so this was a good test for me.
The scene uses an IBL environment node with final gather for the fill light and various rim/bounce lights for the tyre, fish etc. A key spotlight casts light fog and ray-traced shadows.
I used a simple textured volume fog for the environment fog, and a version with the granite texture for the water particles.
The water uses maya’s ocean shader.
All of the above were rendered with mental ray/maya using render layers and comped in after effects (beauty, caustics, light fog, water particles, luminence depth (for DOF etc).
I had a lot of trouble trying to bring these renders into after effects with a zdepth channel, it seems after effects doesn’t like mental rays output but has no problem with maya.
cheers
Stuart.
Thanks for the input Jeremy. The issue with the reflections is the fog is basically stealing all the reflections; so all I am getting is the fog reflecting on the water.
Do any Lightwave users have any ideas to get around this?
-mark
![[color=orange]Directional light](http://www.yboo.net/karimd/directlight.gif){kind=link}