meestaplu
As regards the glass spheres Iām going to try them in curved paths and see how that looks. Thanks, Iāll add some light coming off the explosion, and experiment with the path also.
robdollar
Youāre right about not realistically being able to see the sky, the camera angle is too harsh, I was just trying to mimic the concept. Still, Iāll make it realistic and extend the sea out and map the sky to the world like you suggested. Youāre right, the skymap was mapped to a plane at 90 degrees to the water, well spotted.
I tried making the sea stretch further out, but because of the more uniform colour it made the caustics on the globes look plain and less shiny, so I put the sky back. While not as realistic, I think it looks nicer and improves the composition so Iām going to leave it.
I tried to emulate a yellow glow effect from the explosion with some lamps using quad and sphere on, what do you think? Should it be brighter?
Also applied bevelling to the building, and changed the spheres path from straight to curved.
Interesting effects. Seems to be coming along nicely. On a side note, since this is a rather sci-fi concept, why not give the ocean some more curve and call it a planet much smaller around than Earth? Just an idea.
Thanks for the idea. I quickly modelled your suggestion, but I felt it didnāt fit somehow, and it caused problems with the sky texture not fitting, as the white line on the horizon was out of place.
You did make me think more about the ocean perspective though, and Iām going to try lowering the camera and changing the angle, so itās less looking down on the scene.
The thing that bothers me the most is the sky-plane. It makes the whole scene look like a 5th graders diaramma (sp?). Try using your skymap on a spherical object, not just a perpendicular plane.
Another strange thing is that you have this brightly lit, and energy filled object, and yet all of the shadows are pointing towards the ocean, whereas they should be radiating from the glassy object.
Also, I just want to say I was hoping you were going to add more detail to the building. At least bevel the thing to add some detail.
Despite all of my negativity, I do like the colorful object you created, even though it justs seems to keep all of its components floating without any explanation. I would imagine it would have some reinforcement to hold it up.
Well, hopefully my 2 cents will give you something to think about before you submit it āfinished works,ā because i think with another hour or two, your could dramatically improve the scene.
Yeah, the skyplane is an issue I guess. Iāll try mapping it differently, and if I get some success Iāll re render.
hmmā¦ the reason for the brightly lit sphere not causing much shadows is because the lamps have āsphereā setting applied, so they donāt cast light outside the specified area. I did this to create a local pool of light around the glass sphere and give a nice effect. All those lamps have raytracing turned on, and if you look carefully (at top of building) some are casting shadows. Thereās not much else I can do about that.
Bevelling already has been applied, if you look really carefully you can tell on the main edges and where the vents go in on the side of the building itās bevelled. I tried to do it to a realistic physical degree, rather than overly bevelling just so you could tell from the camera. Itād show up in a bigger render I guess.
Iāll try adding some more detail to the building though, by modelling some more complexity to it. I guess it is a bit simple.
The glass sphere doesnāt have reinforcement because I wanted it to seem beyond our current scientific level. So forces could be working to hold it up, rather than structural support.
Again, the sky-on-a-plane idea just isnāt working at all.
Map it to the world, and if you want the sky to be visible, you will have to angle your point of view to be more horizontal.
Also, I woiuld say that the little glass spheres coming out of the main one look like they are just there for the hell of it. Perhaps if they were moving, and you used motion blur to emphasise that movement it would look better. Also randomizing theyāre position would look better in my opinion.
Anyway, nice to see this coming along, I like the glowy lighting.
Yeah, youāre right, the sky does look too wrong. Iāll change it.
Hmmā¦ I thought the glass spheres added something to the scene, but I like your idea of motion blur. How do you apply motion blur to a selected object in the scene (the little spheres)? Do you need to animate them or something?
Thanks, I like the lighting too. I was surpised I could get such an effect with just lamps, Iād always thought they were a bit redundant before.
Iām donāt know much about animations, but Iāve used motion blur quite a lot.
Heres a basic explanation.
Basically lets say at frame 1 your sphere is at point A. Select youāre sphere and hit āIā then select āLocā. This locks it at that location at that frame. Press the up arrow to move a few frames ahead, lets say 30. Now move your object to another position and hit āIā then click āLocā again. You can see this animation by going to frame 0 and pressing Alt A. Your 3d view will show the movement.
Now, skip to frame 20, go to render buttons and make sure mblur is turned on. Now render.
Be wary that motion blur ups the render time by a LOT. Mblur affects anything that is moving in that particular frame. As I said I really donāt know a huge amount about animations, but Iām sure there are others that can explain how to decrease this time by perhaps sectioning off the parts that are actually moving, or there may be other ways of doing this, by using image manipulation apps. Also check out the documentation at www.blender.org .
Hope that helps
By the way, I didnāt mean that the little glass orbs look totally out of place, I just think that done in a different way they would look much better.
Thanks very much for the information. From what you said about motion blur upping the render time a lot, it doesnāt look like Iāll be able to use mblur, as my scene is already pushing a good few hours to render at this res, due to the caustics, ao and raytracing. Iāll have a go at rendering just the small spheres in a seperate scene, then blurring and compositing in gimp.
