Decided to do the lighting challenge at CGTalk, and to use BlenderInternal.
I’d love some crits before I submit. I’m really hoping to represent Blender well amongst all the VRay, maxwell, lux renders.
A bigger PNG version here:
http://ocularbl0g.scottmaher.net/hosted/WIP11.png
Thanks in advance
Looks a lot better than my craptactular attempt.
The only thing that really stands out to me is the cord in the foreground where it crosses in front of the robot seems a little too blurry.
Wow, very good! It definitely has the wow factor as weel as the movie still feel to it. I am not sure the blur on the cord is wrong, since the DoF seems to focus on the robot, but given that the cord has such a prominent position, it should probably have a more detailed texture. Perhaps some grime or printet serial numbers or even make it one of those tube with scales, like for use with water taps…
Thanks for your feedback guys.
@Entity I’m having a hard time getting DOF to do what my eye likes, i think it’s gonna take quite a bit of node buggery. btw. sorry to see you bailed on the challenge, but sometimes a project stops being fun, and thats the point i guess.
@yoff I totally agree and that is exactly what i’m working on now, for the hose. I also feel like it should be going way out of focus as it nears the camera, so that might make the textures kindof a waste. It’ll be one or the other for sure.
Render times are approaching stupid long so I’m not sure when I’ll update next.
Have you tried pulling out all the unseen geometry yet?
There is a lot of stuff in that scene…
Mainly the focus seem off because the floor is a lot more in focus than the cord. It doesn’t look bad or anything just a little off.
That weird texture on the cord is throwing me off. It’s probably just from the blur, but it looks like when you have a texture and it needs high OSA sampling, cause it looks buggy. Pretty damn nice entry so far, how much time do you have left?
@entity Yeah I deleted a bunch of stuff for sure. I managed to chop the rendertime down by about 70% using the “FULL OSA” setting for the materials that need it and lowered the main OSA. That was a new trick for me. The focus is getting tricky, I wish i could tilt the focal plane back a bit like a view camera.
@iconoclast Thanks, your very right about the cable, I’ve unwrapped the near part and prettied it up a bunch.
New render on the way.
ok so here’s an update.
1280x800 1.1MB:
http://ocularbl0g.scottmaher.net/hosted/WIP8-1280.png
1680x1050 1.6MB:
http://ocularbl0g.scottmaher.net/hosted/WIP8.png
marvelous!
Are you using radiosity for the lights?
@M@dcow Thanks so much. No radiosity or even AO, set emit and duplifaced area lights. Those lights have very low power and dist settings and neither ray or buff shadows.
I like it but i think the contrast/brightness could be worked on some. Parts of the robot’s outline gets lost in the background because of the similar color to me. Have you tried it with AOO to see what it looks like for shits and giggles?
@linuxpimp : yeah I think you’re right I took a look at the luma scopes and clearly my monitor is whack. I gave AAO a shot and while it wasnt bad looking it was about the same as pumping up the normal lights but with much longer render times. I like AO as minimal way to get a single model looking nice with few lights, but for large darkish scenes it’s not my thing. I’ll post what will be(hopefully) the final update tomorrow. Thanks.
Updated the image at the top of thread.
Amazing! Best of luck for the challenge!
That’s BI!?:eek:
It looks incredible to me, and this with no AO as well.
Hey there, all the shading looks nice, but I think you’re neglecting the compositional aspects. The hero is lost in a sea of detail, and doesn’t have a clear silhouette. There’s not really a clear focal point in the image since it’s all so similar across it. My eyes are first drawn to the small lights at the end of the tunnel, followed by the fan. The character isn’t strong enough in the hierarchy of what you’re looking at.
You need to introduce some contrast, perhaps by blowing out the bright background lights so you can see the character’s silhouette in front, or vice versa, doing it with rim lighting on the character, cranking up the depth of field to separate him that way, whatever it ends up being. I think you just need to take a step back and design the lighting from the point of view of crafting the image, where the light and shade should be in order to communicate clearly, then start adding the details back in.
cheers
btw you can shift the view plane with the shift X and Y controls in the camera buttons.
@Cyborg Dragon: Thanks a lot. I like the zero gravity scenario, don’t have to worry about contact shadows;).
@broken: I see what you mean, I’m gonna try a couple things and see if it helps.
I was definitely getting lost in the technical details. Cant believe I missed the XY shift. As usual, blender can, I just hadn’t learned how yet. Thanks for your consideration.
What is it? I dont get what that picture is showing. Looks cool though.
Updated the image at the top of the thread(again). I’m not sure how far it goes to address broken’s points, but I think it’s an improvment all the same.
@bl33d : It’s spacestation of some kind. In my version the gravity system has failed. Thanks
I think the character is now much better defined and the specularity on the black parts look great. This is on its way of really representing BI at CGTalk.
