[scene] Linus into the Dark Realms - Boring work?

Artwork Finished Projects
#1

Here’s my final picture for a french competition, whose goal is to promote the use of Free Softwares for Educational and Graphical purposes.

The white man on the picture is Linus Torvalds, the creator of the famous Linux kernel. I choosed to get it humoristic yet realistic.

Everything is Pure Blender. I only used Gimp to add the texts and the darker areas.

I used MakeHuman 1.80b for all the characters. I used the ethnic targets (black african targets) and also the Age Project targets (child targets) I built for the MakeHuman project. Some sort of Live test.

Rendering times is 23 hours, BTW. AO (12 samples) and OSA (8 samples), render size 75% of 800*600. As I had a deadline for this project, I couldn’t dare rendering the pic at it’s real 100% resolution.

I also used the zblur plugin (it was my very first use of it, BTW - thanks to all who cared to answers to a lot of questions in the forums, searching through Elysiun brought many valuable information).

Thanks to all, also, who brought C&C to help me build this scene the most efficient way.

Enough talking, here’s the pic (403 kb, sorry for the size).

http://olivier.saraja.free.fr/elysiun/Finished/LinusIntoDarkRealms/final.png

#2

Very good work. Looks exceptional.

#3

:smiley: Hahahha lol, well does that girl want that europian man? Or did she just scratshed her leg because a fly was landing on it? Great feeling of humor in a render. Anyways, how can that dude use Linux when the pc isn’t plugged. :stuck_out_tongue:

#4

Have you seen Linus recently? He’s fat! (He swore off all exercise after his military service, or something…)

#5

MusicMan
Thank you very much :slight_smile: Your comments in the WIP section helped a lot

JD-Multi
I’m glad you find it funny, because it’s mid-tone between seriousness and funniness… Doing such was a challenge for me. BTW, I didn’t understood your joke about the black woman and the fly… :expressionless:

fudje
I worked on the base of references, of course, but there were no date on them so perhaps they are already too old. Anyway, I put almost 15% of fat targets on his 3D “clone” to emulate the slight fat-ness he started to have on the reference pics. Perhaps it’s not too easy to see but I made it neither muscular nor slim, like the black man on his right.

Thank you for the comments, all… I hope there will be more :slight_smile:

#6

JD-multi meant that the way the girls arm is possitioned over her leg, and the way the skirt is moved apart in that area looks like the hand is in contact with the skirt and is moving it apart on purpose, also to me it looks like the white guy is looking more at the girl then at the guy he’s talking to :wink:

Very nice picture by the way, it turned out very well.

mystery

#7

mystery00
Thank you for explaining me the joke. In fact, this was not on purpose but it’s true that it could be read like that :smiley:

Thank you for the comments, mystery00 though I’m trying to guess why I have so few feedback on this work. Even simple material tests in the Finished forums get more comments. Is my work uninteresting? Boring? I’d like to know before posting a new work in the forums :expressionless:

#8

honestly i do find this piece abit boring, but makehuman has that effect on me. sry its a great composition it just lacks intrique.

#9

hi… I wouldn’t call it boring… but it does have some problems. that ofcourse doesnt explain why people dont point them out here.
why I didn’t reply is because I don’t really have anything new to say :slight_smile: i think it’s the same for some of the the other people that posted on the wip thread.

the poses are still strange. the makeHumans look very… well, makeHuman like… they are not alive… kind of like those mannequins in the shops you know, for the clothes…

no real expression on their faces… some of them look very scared of astounded, but I dont see how that fits to the scene.

lighting is bland… no shadows, no highlights. what comes to my mind first thing when I think of africa, is “colorful”. I would like to see this piece more colorful too… and that hot sun really coming down…

.b

#10

I have to agree with Basse on this one, on all-points actually.
My guess is that most are too polite to give any “strict” critique
so I’ll add to Basse’s comment’s to help you out.

The characters need life as Basse implies, you could add to this
by manually editing the face meshes. This is of course quite
complicated, but then again…this is a complex image and it
needs your attention. Try watching some fun-family photos
in your family album…look at your sisters & broters or
mates & girlfriend and whatever people you have around and
see for yourself their facial expressions…try to take some
pictures…and study it. Look at some movies…freeze frame
and check out the facials. Learn and study…and Apply!

The anatomy of some of those characters seems a bit
twisted and mis-shaped in various places (eg. the boy
laying on the table working on that computer…try to
fix the defective anatomy…it’ll help the character look
less like a deformed-3d-doll :slight_smile:

Mr. Linus looks good though, some deformations on his
clothes (especially the upper arm section) doesn’t look
convincing.

And for the light…and textures…they go hand in hand
so the first thing I personally noticed was the bright-white
computer…

Believe…if you placed a computer monitor like that out in
the African plains…you’d mess up the bright-white in less
than 10 minutes. It’ll be dirty, scratchy and the reflections
of the sun/weather and enviroment MUST match colorwise.
You don’t have to use slow raytracing & radiosity to do this
you can do this by planning your textures properly. Color
the textures FOR the enviroment you’re planning to use
them in :wink:

More contrast would seriously help this somewhat plain
and dull image. It’s not a dull image per say…but the
light actually MAKES the image dull. You’ve worked hard
on this image - give it the final extras it deserves!

Now that you’d have to swallow all that harsh critique
I’ll add the friendliness last :wink:

I do like:

  • The concrete table/bay. Excellent concrete and shading
    Very beliveable.
  • The African pottery! Nice detailing on the big pot.
  • The grass looks dirty and thick! NICE! This is actually how it
    looks in real life there. I hope this doesn’t change when you
    change the lighting…if so…try to keep the quality of
    the ground and grass - it looks REALLY nice.

Good luck and work on it!

/JoOngle

#11

As an overall I’d give this scene 8 out of 10.

I thibk the main problem is the expressions or rather the lack of expression on peoples faces, they all look so stunned. Also their poses are little stiff. they lack of life.

But i do like texturing and overall idea of scene. Pretty good work.

#12

I would make the monitor beige instead of bright white.
I would tone down the white of Linus’ T-shirt (it looks whiter than white, almost self illuminated). In other words, those two items don’t enjoy the overall pastel coloring that’s nice in the rest of the picture (maybe that was the objective to draw the attention of the viewer??).

I don’t know what to make of the face of the guy talking to Linus, but I’m not sure he looks pleased/ happy /satisftied or whatever (assuming that would be the case). Touching up that face will be difficult, no doubt. Good luck, et bon courage.

Arnaud

#13

Awesome!

but it’s that lighting now… it’s blinding me!!

-0 and that hot chick just compliments the picture so well 0-

#14

Thank you for the different feedbacks I got about the “boringness” of this work, now I know what to do in order to improve this picture: work on basic expressions, lighting scheme and de-saturate white colors that hurts eyes :smiley:

Unfortunately, I won’t have time to blend for the next month (at least) because I just bought a house that needs a lot of work and reparations. I even lost (for the moment) my high speed internet connection for no more connection at all except at work.

Of course, the deadline of the challenge this pic has been made for is now far away in the past, so the modifications that will be done on this pic will be done only for my pleasure (and yours, I hope :wink: )

See you soon, within a few weeks I guess…