I have to admit, I was caught off guard by the dark grain under the bird thingy (lol), but after the shock wears off it looks cool. This render makes all the books’ titles readable. The funniest one to me is “Life in the Key of A”, LOL!!! Next is “Play by Numbers”, but ja, all these book covers are so fun to make.
I’ve done a lot of photography over the years and that’s where I get all the source material for these book covers. Some are generated (like the 60’s and the 40’s books), but the most (even the 70’s one) come from photographs.
Still working hard on this scene. Will keep you posted!!
(^^,)
The outside space was tough, because I wanted it to work regardless of angle, so I generated 1 tree, duplicated it a few times, rotating them to look different.
I added 4 walls that look like the concrete walls that are very common over here (without the posts every meter or so), 1 huge tree behind the farthest wall and one big one in the opposite corner inside the yard (with subdivision, otherwise it’s a square tree, LOL). All having the same texture system. I used a veranoi texture, because it looks a lot like bark, especially if you sharpen it and use almost only ‘normal’ influence.
For the grass I added a massive plane and added a few cloud textures with strong normal values to give that roughness between dark and light grass. I’m thinking of giving the grass displacement to just give it a boost of realism (I mean, how many lawns do you know thats 100% level, lol).
There’s also a sun to let those trees’ branches shade into the room.
How did you do the plants for your showroom? I’m thinking of adding something like that in the room next to the couch (in the left corner behind the camera), so that if I make a fly-through video, there’s something there.
wow, thats amazing
and looks absolutely brilliant, the grass was the most confusing part for me (before you explained how you did it) cos it looks as if it was done with the particle systems hair mode, very realistic look, i dont know if adding a disp to the lawn would really be that noticeable from inside the music room, unless your also doing a render looking out the window or sat at the piano with the window to the right of the shot :S
yeah that little bush would look nice
its one long curved tube, with long thin planes coming off it in a rotation all the way to the end of the branch, then duplicate it and resize it as many times as needed untill you have a nice looking bush, then use a uvsphere at default settings and delete all but the top 3 rings, resize then to make the little heap of dirt at the bottom, then… well im sure you dont need to know how the plant pot was made
Thank you! The trees are just too low-poly to go outside and it will ruin the ‘realness’ of the scene, but at least it’ll move right, look cool and the trees throw shadows. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, I don’t know, but I know my PC is already pulling hard on this one, lol. Here’s what the outside looks like (1 sample on every lamp; this the harsh shadows):
I used extrusion from a plane (if I remember correctly) and then used the particle system to make hair that resembled palm leaves. The points were too long at the end of the leaves, but I think overall it looks great. I also used the simple deform to bend the larger one using a curve. Their texturing was terrible though, lol.
just had a look and the leaves on the palm trees do look very nice
yeah so many ways, but thats what i love about blender, theres no ‘one way’ to do things, which means everyone can create their own style that suits them xD
i really love the grass in your scene, the trees do look a little iffy though, but when just viewed from the music room through the window they look fine, maybe try giving the trees a very low ‘emit’ property though, just so that this side (thats black at the moment) has a bit of visible texture, the other way i could think to improve that would be too add a low level lamp to this side with shadow tracing switched off, but of course that doing it that way would then affect the nice shadow coming from the sun so perhaps emit would be the best way here
I tried rendering the room with it, but like you said, it ruined the whole room’s lighting and everything. I did add area lamps instead, making them shine very softly, only lighting up one tree at a time (almost like placing a spotlight at the base of the tree). That means I now have 16 active lights in the scene:
4 for the room (usually 10)
11 for the trees (1 sample only)
1 for the sun (usually 10)
This is what the trees look like with the area lamps added, very subtle, but makes a big difference:
This is what it looks like if you were to stand at the curtain (or kneel, since the camera is lower, lol):
(still looks black through the curtain). Something I do wanna add is a sun as well. I want that lens flair effect with the panning you know, but that’s for way later, lol.
from the outside it does make a noticeable improvement on the trees, shame about the view from the inside, would you add a slight emit to the tree and then render from the inside, not for permanent but so i can see if my theory would work or not :S
i have no idea how you would go about adding lens flare do you?
im sure someone somewhere has put up a tut on how to do that anyway, keep up the fine work marius
The problem is emission doesn’t bring out texture, it’s like a brightness setting, purely fixed on the object’s diffuse or main texture color (whichever defines the surface color under completely black shading); lighting without shading:
The only way to see more of the trees is to increase the light from the area lamps, but that would destroy the effect. An additional cause of the intensity of the shadows is the bright blue of the background. Eyes adjust like (a lot better than) cameras to however much light is coming in. In this case darkening the shadows.
If you still want me to, I’ll render you out a view through the window with emission on.
On the lens flair. Check out my personal FB (signature). You can do it using the Glare node (ghost option), but you have to isolate your light source, otherwise everything with that colour value will glare. You can do that with a separate render layer, masking everything else.
Oh i see, thats ashame i was really hoping i was onto something there lol, ah well thanks anyway
checked out you FB, looks damn awesome xD i’ll have to give that a go when i get round to doing an ext scene.
TBH, the trees look fine from inside, just a bugger that they dont show the texture
Thanx! That scene was a serious challenge. Blender kept crashing because of the high-subsurf the rock generator adds. Once I knew that was the problem, it was an easy fix.
Yeah, it’s a shame, but the detail is inside, so it’s thankfully not the downfall of the project. Trying emission was something I didn’t think of, so at least you were thinking a bit outside the box.
(^^,)
Oh! Started with the top-shelf’s books today! Hopefully will finish tomorrow (the top-shelf, not top project, lol)!
Just saw I also used the landscape generator too. That’s what’s highlighted in edit mode here. The basic structures aren’t high-poly, but the subsurf makes them high. As you can see some are higher than others, but just because I know you like it, here’s a render too:
Jip! That shelf that has I think more books than the bottom shelves combined.
All the book textures were (and are still being) made with fictional titles and older projects.
They are mostly general titles, but entirely fictional. I wouldn’t dare add scans of real books, because it’s infringement. I don’t want trouble, lol.
(most of them are white in response to the texture I made to test the top shelf book’s UV, the green book between two finished books does not count as complete, it’s just shorter and I haven’t made adjustments to the UV for a shorter book, so the rest will be completed first)
I think there’s about 50-60 books on this one, but I’m not sure about the exact number (the numbering at the end of the duplicates is incorrect, because I delete and duplicate the whole time). In total there could be maybe a hundred books or less in the entire bookcase.
Still enjoying the project and still have a few additions to come to the room itself!
Watch this space!! (^^,)
Turns out I can use the same UV for the smaller books in between! I remember that the spine’s UV is stretched vertically when applying. If it get’s crunched down to the level of the shorter books, no font adjustments are needed. Then it’s only the width of the front and back, but that’s easily fixable.
This should add to the realism of the room!! Hahaha! Wow, tired is not the word. At the last 5 I was so tempted to just leave the last few as-is and the design work on the last few isn’t that great either, but wow am I glad this shelf is finished!!!
Now for the rest of the room (not right now, I have other things to do too, lol).
i cant wait to see the bookshelf all finished XD how did you get the outside scene throught the windows btw?
