Advice on post production is needed!

Hey-hey!

Here is my new project! :slight_smile: Modelling done in Blender 2.73. Texturing - in Substance Painter and DDo :slight_smile:

I think I am liking the result, but will be more than happy to hear a critique, so I can improve him! But what I am really not strong at is post-production… I want to do it, but I have no idea what sort of effects will do here. May be you could give me an advice? Any advice really - have no idea where to start… Do not be discouraged by the thing I am going to say next - this piece was rendered in Maxwell standalone V3, but I will be doing postprocessing in Blender, since its tools in this regard are much more powerful, than Maxwell’s :)))

UPD:


Here is the model




And there is one interesing angle I’ve tried :slight_smile: May be this one will do for post-production? May be there some mistakes?)))


very nice work!
personally i prefer the last one, which shows much better the detail you put into the metal, all the scratches, the little gizmo the robot is holding.

regarding post-pro, there are so many possibilities, i hardly no where to start. there are a few things people regularly dom and you can also try out, such as vignette.
i also think some of your shadows are to dark, you can try using color balance to fix that.
but again, you can do so much in post.

Maybe something more of a sunset or darker background. I like the last one but their face sort of blends into the clouds and the object in their hand needs a little help to pop out.

Thank you very much :slight_smile: Yeah, I agree - he is still too dark) Though it already has a little bit of gamma correction, I am lucky I’ve saved in 16 bit version:)

Face does blend into the sky behind, i did not norice. I can make the sky darker to fix it, right you are!

How can I make interesting details pop-out? May be some sort of shine? Could you tell me which tool in Blender I can use for that?)

Well, it looks like the visor over his eyes looks like it’s emitting light, so you would add a glare node and tweak some settings until you get a result you like. you might also add a hue correct node to bring out some specific colors better. Depending on the look you’re going for, a vignette might work. And, of course, lens distortion is the one node that I always use.

Thank you! Yes, visor does emit light. So glare node is a way to go? That is a useful tip indeed! :slight_smile: Colours are dark, I see it myslef now (Maxwell render adds 2.2 gamma correction internally and it took me some time to figure out))). What sort of lense distortion you would go for?

Anf thanks for the reply again! :)))

Yep. There are several different types of glare, usually you want to go for something like fog glow. They each have their uses though. If you want a barrel distortion effect, you would increase the distortion field. Make sure to keep “Fit” checked. If you wanted some chromatic aberration, you would increase the dispersion number.

Thank you so much! I will add things you’ve advised:) The main danger for me now is keep it modest and do not over do it :wink:

Haha, yeah, that’s still a challenge for me.:stuck_out_tongue: If you’re going to add some CA, start with something like 0.001, that might be enough. If not increase it by small increments until you get what you want.:slight_smile:

I see… I quess I will need to rerender the picture into EXR and add all the passes, so I will have finer control over these things and, let’s say, background color and depth of field;)

If you want to save some time rendering, you could render with a transparent background and use another image for the background in GIMP (or Photoshop). You can even blur it to fake DOF.

right… i did not get a grasp of Maxwell’s transparent backgound yet. I am always cautious to go with transparent bg in appliacations that are new to me, since I am not sure whether it premultiplies it or not)

I don’t have any experience with Maxwell, so I’m not entirely sure either.

nah, no problem) I will figure it out eventually)))

i played a little (very little) with the image, just as an example of what can be done with color correction:


i did 2 things: used mask to seperate the forearm holding the gizmo, so i could brighten it, and added a relatively light correction to the colors. here is the blend file:
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/36061
i hope it helps somewhat.

i did 2 things: used mask to seperate the forearm holding the gizmo, so i could brighten it, and added a relatively light correction to the colors. here is the blend file:
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/36061
i hope it helps somewhat.

My god! This is so much better. I had a look into the compositor… Thank you so much! Do you mind if I use masking idea and your node setup for the arm?

Thank you for taking time to do that! :)))

of course you can use it! :yes:

Thank you for your trouble! :slight_smile:

All right! Who’s up for update? :slight_smile:

Any thoughts and comments?)))