this is my entry for this weeks WC. the Topic is:“too good to be true”
Pop over to http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=99295 and vote! there are some nice renderin’ action going on over there!
Cheers, (yeah, I’ve been reading too many articles written by Bart…
CGuy
I voted for you, that made my day. It fit the topic perfect. I really like the render, it looks almost real. Sweet.
@Spenn13,
Hey, thanks! it was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the topic. I feel honored to be tied with RobertT right now. that doesn’t happen every day <g>
I saw the links in your signature. the drum is pretty amazing! nice work
everything is hand made except the BP logo. the price plaques are a texture I made in photoshop.
CGuy
It’s a super beautiful piece, CGuy. Great job.
My only one minor critique is about the DOF effect you did (in photoshop if I remember correctly). It looks like you did the blurring before isolating the sign from the background, and it ended up with a halo that’s a little distracting. The halo wouldn’t bother me so much, except that it’s actually detached from the edge of the sign.
Anyway, I’m nitpicking. Excellent work, and well worth the praise it’s garnering. 
@Spectre-7: I did do it in photoshop. the way I did it, you get a halo regardless of what order you do things. I could have rendered two layers separately and then blurred the background, which would have worked just fine. there is a way to do DOF in the composite nodes, but I’m unclear as to how that works. any ideas?
You got my vote too Cguy, good luck 
I find this piece very professionally done, and with a good subject. I honestly hadn’t noticed the halo, and thought that you had done the DOF in blender.
I attach a simplified nodes setup that you can use for the Dof effect in Blender. It was what I used for my entry, but you can make it more “blurry” by adding to the “x” and “y” values in the blur node. I changed the names of my render layers so that you could see where you needed to put your scenes.
edit: I’ve just seen that you can’t really see which kind of nodes they are: the two at the beginning are “render layer” nodes (add->input-> render layer), the second is a blur (add->filter->blur), then there is an alpha over (add->colour->alpha over) and then the composite, which is there by default.
You need to separate your layers (put the sign in one layer and the petrol station in the other), and then make them “scenes” (the second attachment is the part of the screen where you check the render layers that you want in each scene. The two nodes that you see at the beginning of the node setup are “render layers” nodes, it is there that you select your scene. The two layers are rendered separately, one is blurred, then they are joined together at the end.
I don’t think I’m managing to explain this very well. Basically, you’re rendering your scenes separately, doing an effect on one of them, and then joining them together in the end with an “alpha over” node.
It was this page that got me thinking about how to do it, maybe that explains it better:
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-242/render-pipeline/
I hope that helps, and good luck with the WC and hopefully the BWC
Um. maybe i’m crazy but i do DOF all the time in blender with the defocus node. I just go into the cameras edit settings. Set the limit to show. Then drag the DOF thingy until the cross is where i want it focused. Then i put the defocus node in. drag the image and Z to connect. Unclick the No zbuffer button. Move the fStop to like 3 and render. I usually end up cranking the Samples up to like 128 or 256 (the max) as well. This way you don’t need to seperate render layers.
By the way, really nice image. It is very close to life-like
I wish… I’ve looked at that DOF node a couple times, and ended up banging my head against the keyboard both times. One of these days, I’ll hunt down a tutorial. One of these days.
In PS, I assume you duplicated the layer, gaussian blurred and then erased out the sign – Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong… I’m always happy to pick up a new techniques. Instead, I’d recommend a slightly different workflow. Use channels to get a good selection of your foreground element and duplicate it to a second layer. Invert the selection and duplicate the background to another layer, then blur that background layer to your heart’s content. Since you’ve got an original copy of the entire image in the background, it should (hopefully) cover up any little holes or carries that open up.
This is a little rough since I rushed through it, but it works, and no unsightly halo. Of course, it has its own unsightly artifact, but that’s a matter for another day. 
No, It’s me that’s crazy, I had only tried to do the blur in blender this weekend, and that was the only way that I could think of to do it :o. I think your way is probably better, although it would mean that if you had some objects in the foreground they would be blurred also? (That was the problem that I had with Yafray DOF).
Oh well, at least my example serves to show how the render pipeline works XD.
Thanks Crititrozoz, I’ll give that defocus a try in the next render that I do
edit: I can’t get that defocus node to work either 
ok, here’s my attempt with the De-focus node. I couldn’t get it to work with YafRay, so I had to tweak lights in blender internal, so it looks different, but anyways, here’s the result:
Thanks for the comments, all!
Ok, here’s the result of rendering the layers separately, adding blur to the background, and compositing them in Photoshop.
what do y’all think?
IMO, the version composited in PS looks loads better, but the difference in rendering makes it a bit difficult to judge, really. Trying to look past that, the Photoshop blur appears to be the superior effect. Have you toyed around with the Bokeh settings at all? That might improve the look of the blur.
I prefer the second, where the layers are rendered separately, but joined back together in photoshop, but I’m not sure if it is just because it is a Yafray render rather than the Blender internal on the first.
The edge of the sign seems a lot cleaner on the second.
Hey, I won the WC! I totally didn’t see that coming. I was just honored to be tied with RobertT and Goglepox yesterday!
As I look at it again, I almost like the halo… it doesn’t add much, but I think it kind of softens the whole image up just enough.
Yes, I prefer the photoshopped one too because the blurring algorithm(Gaussian) is lots better, and I have much more control over what is blurred and how much each part is blurred. It’s less acurate in the technical sence, but asthetically, it is better(which is the point of art, no?;))
Thanks for the comments, all!
CGuy
Well done Cguy, you deserved to win 
I think you are right about the halo, it accentuates the object of your image.
Did you take a photo and then do your best to copy it? It’s looks nice.
And…I wish gas prices were that low in San Diego.
@ babracadabra: thanks, I really appreciate that. if you need comments or critique on anything, please feel free to PM me.
@Ghost_Train: no, I came up with the idea and drew a concept sketch and followed it loosely. I searched on google images for some references and I used several for modeling and color purposes, but the whole composition is my own idea.
I could scan the concept sketch if anyone would like.
Thanks!
CGuy
I wish our gas prices were that low…
@: watchthis: Back atcha! prices like those would be “too good to be true”, no?
