Light Study

[J_Bug]

I was just playing around with this file to see how it looked with different lighting conditions. C&C are welcome.


Morning

Noon

Sunset

Night
Thanks,
--Jon

[cocolas]

over all looks good Jon, especially the water and grass!!
the only odd thing is the background trees...something in their prespective looks weird...it makes it feel like a 2d backdrop to the foreground scene.
I think it's mostly the hill in the background perspecive and the trees on that kinda piling up on each other.....maybe you can blur that background (if 2d) to give it some sense of deepth/distance...

good texturing on the castle hill as well.

paul.

[jacksc02]

I WANT YOUR WATER!!!!!
can you share??

Chris Jackson
cj@arcad.co.nz
www.arcad.co.nz

[J_Bug]

Paul:
Thanks, that's exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for. I'm really not happy with much in this rendering but what you've said should help allot. The trees are mapped planes and I may end up forking out some cash for a 3D tree generating app in the future. I think I'm going to start by reworking the hill so that there is more depth to it and then I can stagger the distance between tree clumps. Are you referring to the grass material or the modeled grass up front? What do you think about the large water grass (I guess it's suppose to be something like cat tails ) Thanks much

Chris:
Sure, no problem
Some of it's a little haphazard and could be refined but here it is...







It's based on the Dreamscape water Vlado posted a while back but I use a free plugin called VectorNoise for the bump and there is a little perturbation to the geometry. I really wish I could get this level of realism for the rest of the scene. Some of these materials are getting pretty complex while trying to make them look as natural as I can. This is actually one of the most basic materials thanks to VRay Would you mind giving a little critique. I'm trying to focus on making it as natural and cohesive as I can.

Thanks,
--Jon

Oh, I forgot two other things...
Don't cast shadows with the water geometry and...
The branch is colored with a Mix of two versions of the texture (one wet and one dry). The Mix is then controlled by a Gradient Ramp...
Just to let you know it's not the water thats making it darker.

[KenKoala]

Love the sunset lighting. Great.
I agree with cocolas regarding the background.

This is what I have always wanted to do but had no time to produce. That is create different lighting conditions for a scene (interior or exterior) and fade/composite them together.

Thanks for sharing the water.
Ken

[zaki79]

Hi!

nice images but I think there is sth. wrong with the camera (or these towers are like the one i Piza ?) It looks as if they were falling away from the main part of the castle.

[percydaman]

yea Im liking that lighting study. takes a good hand at lighting to acheive what you have. Might try a camera modifier on your camera to straighten out the lines.


percy

[jacksc02]

Thanks for that J Bug, what are your BRDF settings?

[RErender]

The water and the shoreline look excellent.

I think something that could help is some fog or at least some color shift it is a very deep shot ...

Also the short grass in the front does not look random enough.

Lastly, I would expect more discoloration in the ruins especially at the base.

[cocolas]

I like the water grass...it looks natural..especially in the night shot...and the first one.

I was refering to the model of the background hill:
right now it feels like you (the viewer) is looking slightly down at the castle in ruins, then all of a sudden the bacground hill pops up with the same clarity as the hill on which the ruins are sittin in the middle ground.
I would lower the hill in the back to show some sky..I think that's the key.
then you can rearrange the trees more spread out and some more in the distance to give a feel for deepth......but I think seeing some horizon/background sky would help a lot in ging it a sense of distance.
I like the plants/grass in the foreground....very detailed and natural.....maybe if you keep the branch, I would make it a bit more rough with nodes...if that makes sense....but I guess that's just being really picky

for the castle: I agree w/ rerender...there needs to be some variation in the texture....ispecially on the bottom (grime) and on top....whitening of the texture becuase of corrosion of rain/water and stuff.....
I think these small changes together w/ the back hill and trees resetting will make it really ecxellent!!!

thanks for the water setup, btw!

paul.

[J_Bug]

Ken:
I always have the most luck with sunset lighting . I've been reading a book called Painting with Light, John Alton 1949 and it's my current inspiration

zaki79:
Though I am having trouble with my perspective, what you're seeing is in the geometry from a Taper modifier. I wanted to give a feeling of top heavy but I think I'll try it in the opposite direction.

Percy:
I feel I could do so much more with the lighting but your comment is very supportive. One of the lighting issues I've been trying to focus on is to fake the absurdly minute glossy reflections, like on the castle, with selective diffuse lighting and falloff maps. I've got allot more tweaking to do but you can kinda see it in the shadow areas of the castle.

Jack:
BRDF is set to Blinn with no Anisotropy. I just wanted the water to act as a mask with its Fog and also reflect the environment so I've excluded the geometry from all lights and it doesn't generate or receive any GI either. Not sure but I don't think the BRDF even matters in this case. Hmmm, actually I guess it would affect the reflections in reality but I wonder if VRay handles it this way.

Eric:
There is some fog but maybe not enough. I once saw a plugin that changes the saturation of a material as it's farther from the camera. I think I'll look into this because the trees are self illuminated and don't react to the fog as well as I thought they should. You're absolutely right though, this shot is so deep but I haven't been able to nail it yet. Here is the photo I'm using for ref.


As you can see I've taken quite a few liberties because I wanted to get to the lighting aspect sooner but I should rethink the depth issues.

Paul:
All the geometry grass is from a plugin called Grass-O-matic. It's pretty cool and it even simulates wind. Thanks for the elaboration, perspective is what's killing me. I was trying to simplify the size and fake it like a movie set but it's obvious now that this isn't working so well. You can see from the photo what I was going for but I think you have some excellent points. A little sky could really add much more to it and still allow me to cut out the horizon with the large background hill.

Thanks very much to all and I guess I can say you're welcome for the water but I wouldn't have known how to create it without Vlado and VRay

--Jon

[J_Bug]

Just an update,
How's the depth look now?



--Jon

[timmatron]

Everything looks great as far as the scene & water, etc.

But what really gets me is the proportion of the far side of the image doesn't match with the proportion of the foreground. I mean it looks like you only have to walk about 20 feet to get to the other side of the pond and then the castle itself is only 10 high or so. Same with the cliff on the other side. It looks great, but comparing it to the foreground, you would think its only a couple feet high.

[cocolas]

ohh yeah!!!!!!....

it's looking great, man!!

I think the sky and the bluring/softening of the background hills plus the scatering of the trees really brings it home.

it looks really great, Jon.

paul.

[TutanMark]

Hey Jooooon!! .. How are u?

It Looks really Great!!!!! every "bit" of the scene.

Congrats!!
Marco