Hey Guys…
Heres my latest project ive been working on, just a really simple alley, door and lamps on the walls…could anyone give me some tips on lighting the scene using the lamps?
Also, any recommendations on making the “snow” on the ground more realistic?
Any help would be fantastic!
It looks great, congratulation !
Hm… for the snow, i would just level it up a bit with some extrusion and subsurf after. It looks a bit flat…
And for the ground, i would add relief a bit. I don’t know if the “Nor” button in the texture menu is off but i would turn it on.
Continue, it’s good. I like the grass(?) in the snow.
With the snow, I can help.
http://www.samguzman.com/upload/data/snow.blend
This was made for Yafray, (see my thread http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=70719 for pics)
so you may need to tweek it, but I hope it works for you.
You need to tell me what renderer your using if you want help with the lighting.
EDIT: Oh, yeah. You need to model the snow with a little slope. Here’s an example:
im just using the blender internal
id like to use Yafray, because i have it on my system, but i dont really know what im doing with it…i guess i just have to play a bit
any good tutorials out there for a beginner trying to use yafray?
by the way thanks for the blend file henrymop, im gonna see if i can upload another pic before i leave work today:)
With Yafray, it may be good to just start using it. Some things to remember is that some lamps will show up in Blender brighter than in Yafray, so you need to up the distance, and sometimes you’ll need to put down the Intensity. Also, some thigns Blender has Yafray doesn’t, mainly shading options, like transparent shadows(the “TraShadow” button in the material buttons menu) and translucency. So, use Blender for this one, and after you finish, use Yafray.
Here’s some nice links:
http://wiki.yafray.org/bin/view.pl/UserDoc/WebHome?CGISESSID=797b97a11672a160988a007220486b83
http://wiki.yafray.org/bin/view.pl/UserDoc/ReleaseNotes008 (this is for 0.0.8)
ok heres the last ill upload till tomorrow
couple of signs added…and i put the snow texture on and gave it a little more dimension…but i think it still needs some tweaking, maybe make the snow look a little softer…
UPDATES TOMORROW!!!
so ive been playing with yafray, and theres definately a lot of beneficial options to play with…but i still cant figure out how to use the lamps i modelled as the actual lighting for the scene, ive overheard you need to use a spotlight to do it, but my lamps arent spot light lamps…they need light projecting from all directions…any ideas?
You can’t use goemotry as light sources, yet, unless you use radiocity, which I never realy got to work.
It might sound weird, but I’d use the Liquid Sim of blender to emulate the snow.
I haven’t experimented alot with it yet, but I think that would produce some good results.
For the rest I like the concept, though the lighting suggest the morning of the 1st of January to me.
It’s not quite dark and creepy 
Maybe make the alley longer and narrower and obscure the ending of it?
I usually extrude the snow mesh to give it depth and subsurf it. Your snow looks pretty flat, and the ground texture looks like it could be modeled or displaced.
alright heres an update, i feel like ive worked on it all day, and im bummed now because i feel like i mucked it all up
aside from how bad the snow/salt whatever it is on the ground looks, how does this new render strike you…because im thinking on the down side
kinda small, but heres a different angle
It looks nice.
I would drop specularity of the wall materials and add to their respective material a noise texture mapped on the nor, just .2 - .5 … takes the plastic gloss away…
thanks pikseli
good to hear more positive reinforcement
and thats actually one of my concerns, i have a tendency to have too much gloss in a lot of what i do
Np destroy… Yea, the specular shine and too ‘clean’ or ‘bright’ materials are common CGI art mistakes imho. Reality around is dirty and noisy and patchy…