backyard scene WIP

[posterus]

hello,
i'll be teaching a vray class next month and this is the scene that will go along with the exterior scene instruction. still lots of detail to add. i'm going to add a row of detailed houses behind the fence, plants, trees, and more backyard clutter if i have time. any comments so far?
thanks,
-joe

[Aldaryn]

Feels like you've got three suns in there. One in front of the camera, with a pronounced flare effect added, (although, it might just be a cloud, but it's hard to tell), an actual light source sun, with an off screen position assuming from the direction of the shadows, and another one behind the camera, but visible in the reflection on the bbq.

Best regards,
A.

[Jonferimonic]

Nothing stands out to me, but it will be a much more interesting scene to learn from once you've added the extra details mentioned.
What type of people will you be teaching, new to 3d or advanced?

[Neilg]

but visible in the reflection on the bbq.

I assumed that was a lock/catch of some sort. You are right about the BG/lighting suns not lining up though.

Looks pretty solid. The textures are well balanced, mapping isn't noticable, materials look fairly tight. As a scene the lack of detail makes it look weaker, but technically it looks pretty good so far.

You may find you need to tweak the lighting levels as you add the buildings though - the shadows are already very dark and while you get away with it now, you may not with more light blocked.

[posterus]

thanks for the comments. i didnt notice the sun reflection in the bbq, good call. i'm using an hdr for reflections only. i like the hdr but i'll have to remove the sun from it. as far as the bg goes, i have a sky mapped to a plane. the sky jpg has a sun in it and i moved the sun in max to be in the middle of the sun on the jpeg. the shadows look odd now that you mention it. maybe i need to pull the max sun back much farther.
btw, this class is for beginners. i want to add alot of nice detail but i'm already at 250k polys and am worried that they will have issues using the scene.
best,
-joe

[EricCamper]

Nice grass...what technique did you use....

[posterus]

nothing special for the grass...just some simple displacement. here are the maps if you want em

http://www.3dspeedmachine.com/misc/grass01.jpg
http://www.3dspeedmachine.com/misc/grass01D.jpg

[Aldaryn]

(...) but i'll have to remove the sun from it. as far as the bg goes, i have a sky mapped to a plane. the sky jpg has a sun in it and i moved the sun in max to be in the middle of the sun on the jpeg. (...)

Just rotate the hdri (if its a pano,) to match your sun's position. And keep in mind also, that the Sun is projected almost into infinity, so the position where you see the helper node, isn't really meaningful unless you move the node far away from your scene.

Best regards,
A.

[stupendousman_dk]

Comment so far

The Grill looks Archmodels-ish, other than that pretty good look to teach students. You properly dont want to reveal your deepest secrets (like color mapping and super fast GI settings).

Grass is pretty good, little too much saturated for my taste =)