Hello all -
Following Yves' suggestion I'm continuing this discussion from the WIP forum. To catch you all up to speed, i've decided to spend more time in understanding lighting as it is just one of my many weaknesses in this 3D adventure of mine.

So, attached you will see the 3rd attempt at lighting an outdoor scene (sometime in the afternoon). If you wish to follow the progress from the original post go here ... lighting study from WIP section

Changes to the current version (based on suggestions) - Upped ray traced shadows to "5" from "1". Lowered shadow darkness setting from 80% to 60%. Added a yellow fill that is meant to bounce from the block to the character. Upped front fill light a tad to bring out detail on character more.

Thanks for any more comments. Once I feel i've gotten some success with this setting, i'll change the time of day ad nauseum. Then move indoors, etc.

Doug

wow.

without further artistic intent to be discussed about this shot, I say move on. Good job! You really took what was said and made it work!

Noted:
Yellow block is focus- darn subtley done!
Conteurs of man are nice- defining.
Heat of the day is fel- direction of light is clear with extra lights to add details where needed
Shadows are anchored and not overpowering
Highlights are in control
Overall balance white to black seems good

May be better to try another simple shot now with some intended artistic ideas behind it and see about getting them accomplished. I think getting lost in overly fussy details at this point will detract from learning more about the subject. Just MHO.

Doug,

That looks good. Can you post the choreography wire so we can see how you positioned the lights?

Thanks,

Scott

Soory, I was already OGG for the week-end when you replied to my post. Otherwise I would have moved it to here at your request.

Much better lighting here.

There is one aspect of the lighting that is still a bit odd though. The shadow under the, let's call it "man", 's head is too dark for the rest of the scene. As lit, right now, the scene receives a lot of ambiant light from all around. But not from the ground itself. You might want to place a light under the ground to fill that spot and bring the shadow to a darkness consistent with the rest of the scene.

More tweak to go.

Thanks for the thoughts you all.

Peter, I'm unsure what you meant by this comment,

I meant the range of luminance

Hey Doug,

What time of day is this meant to be? I think you said late afternoon, is the sun starting to get oranger as it heads to sunset or is it still fairly up and bright?

In my painting training I've often been taught that a quick cheat is to have shadows the opposite temperature of your light source. So for an outside almost sunset light the main light (sun) is going to be pretty hot in temperature, the shadows will be lit by ambient light, basically the light bouncing off of the blue sky, so will be much cooler.

Shadow crispness also depends on what time and kind of day and what kind of flim affect your trying to imitate. Hazy days make hazy shadows. High noon high sun could have harsh shadows, except when there's lots of ambient light bouncing around.

To sum up, I don't really know what I'm talking about, but maybe something I said is close to reality.

-Alonso

Here's another attempt. I've tried to make the shadows more uniform and soft. I added a fill light that was slightly fleshy colored and a by product (nice one I think) is that it adds a touch of realism to the area that implies a face. I think the overall look of this render is better but still I'm open to your thoughts.

Alonso, thanks for your reply. I'll have to read that again and again.

Yves, thanks for the explanation of bounced light and the ray traced render. That just explained to me what all the rage of radiosity rendering is all about, besides that it looks different than a normal ray traced render. Sometimes I have to read things more than once for them to sink in.

Doug

With that much bounce from below you need a rim, IMO.

I'd tone down the bounce light a little anyway.... distracting shade line across his face.

There is something funny going on there with the different parts of the scene. The head have its shadows much darker than the other parts of the scene. Did you check the ambiance setting for all pieces of all your models? I'd sweare there is some ambiance on some of those surfaces.

A quick way to see if that is the case is to deactivate all lights in your chor and render. If you still see your objects then you have some ambiance somewhere.

Yves - indeed there was some ambiance on the body of the character (15%). I changed that and attached is another render.

Doug

PHASE 2.

Okay all who are interested. I've decided to move ahead (unless of course anyone cares to still comment on phase 1).

This next one I wish to create a setting that is early morning. Sun just coming up. The attached is just to give a starting point. This lighting i am not happy with and will continue from this point. Thanks for the interest.

Doug

In this case I would first decide where I want the sun to be. At what angle? In front of the worm, to one of his sides?

Due to the angle of this shot, I wouldn't, probably, have decidede to place it where it appears it is- somewhat in front of him. I would instead place where I want the viewer to think the sun is to one of his sides. Both would work well, I think.

Note, this doesn't mean the strongest light will have to be to that side, just the coloration and indication of the sun.

Also, in this shot, regardless of where you place the sun, if it's morning and strong light is low on the horizon, strong shadows below his eyes won't work.

Dearmad (et al) -
Thanks for your suggestions. I haven't forgotten about this subject I've just had a tough time with my scene. It seems to have been corrupted somehow. When I hit 'render' it just seems to take forever (unsure if it's actually hanging or not, I suspect not, I think some setting has been changed by me or gotten changed some other way that is boosting render times).

Anyhow, I'll be back when I get this sorted.

*update* Got the render issue solved.

The attached is another progression. I'm not totally pleased with the lighting on his face, need a fill there. But wanted to post for thoughts on the 'morning' light. Also, can't figure out why one of the petals is showing that yellow bit. I'll solve it.

Doug

Back with an update.

Updates to this render are:
Fixed petals, moved ground plane a bit, added fill light for worm's face, messed around with intensity on sunlight and key light for better indication of sun direction (still need to play with this I think). I think that's it for now.

..d

Greetings lighters - please pardon this bump but I'm still looking for pointed critiques. Hopefully we all can learn a thing or two from my struggles with this and your help.

Doug

my only critiqe is that there seems to be a light coming from the left of the image, that looks more intense than the sun, and it seems to be white or slightly yellow.

I would suggest toning it down some, and giving it the slightest green tint.

Or if you really want to, you can make about 5 suns setup facing inwards toward the character, all at about 5% intensity, casting differant colors, on and off.

Nice job though

Ben

I'm by no means an authority on lighting - but I would say that the difficulty I have with your image is figuring out what time of day you are trying to recreate, as well as where you want the sun to come from.

Its also hard to critique as there is confusion as to wheither you are aiming at realism or creating your own "reality" since the image uses toony-type-colors.

Assuming you are going for some mix of reality & toon (getting into subjective & artistic choice land), and going for early morning - I would say the petals are way way too white - they need some sort of variation in color. I would introduce some yellow-orange tones, either by lighting or texturing to fit more with the apple texturing (see real daffodil image in the movie section calling for trees, rocks etc).
http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...ndpost&p=117813

The light appears to be coming from the left on the stems, yet from the right on the apple. I would make the shadows more dark navy and more intense from one side (pick a side for the whole image).

The sky color is neither intense or fakey enough for toon, nor varied enough for real (need some gradient from horizon). The clouds could also use some variation in color (again lit from below for early morning with orangy-blue variations). Ground color is great for toon.

For an absolute excellent article on light in general, and describing light coloring for different times of day from photographers viewpoint, see:

http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm

As for recreating time of day using A:M, and faking radiosity - I would start considering light lists - but here is where I don't know "nuthin about birthing no babies, Miss Scarlet" - so I bow to the master Yves (or others) to jump in.

Thanks for being the guinea pig for us all to learn from.

Thanks to you both. This is the kind of stuff I'm looking for, more stuff to work on.

..d

Hi again - Finally finding the time to get back to working on this. After working through Yves lighting tutorial I decided to take a step back, make it easier on myself and try something indoors. Attached is my still very simple scene. I plan on adding more details to this room and to make it as realistic as I can. At some point I will then move on to an outdoor scene for my study.

My time spent with Yve's "Lighting Tutorial" was well spent ! If you haven't done so I recommend working through it for yourself.

Comments on the attached are appreciated.

..d

btw done in version 10.5r

Update.

Hi again - Not that I've mastered the previous scene, i'm just using it for something else now.

So to continue with my study i have started the attached scene. My main goal is to improve and discover better lighting and to go for more "realism" (note - I didn't say photoreal).

I will put this scene through a couple times of day and perhaps add to it a bit here and there. Please feel welcome to comment as I go.

..d

Hi people -
In the previous post and pic, the reflectivity on the mug seems okay. However the scene is too dark. When I up the light intensity the mug gets all washed out. I have been playing with light falloff but haven't gotten it yet. Suggestions?

There are two lights in this scene - One ceiling light (consisting of five bulb lights) and a light outside the window to simulate sun.

version 10.5r

Thanks for any help.

..d

Check your reflective blend attribute on your mug.

Yves - still unable to find any "relfective blends" option. I'm using version 10.5r. Perhaps it's a version 11 option?

Thanks for the color tip for the mug. Attached is an update.

..d

Yes. This a v11 feature. Sorry.

Without that Reflection Blend feature, it will be hard to achieve a natural look. You will need to find a compromise.

If your cup material is designed to be transparent, then making it white is a bad choice. Choose a dark color instead. Since reflections are additive without reflection blending, using a light color will result in reflected images that are brighter than the image being reflected. Look for example at the reflection of the table beside the color of the table itself.

Also find a balance between reflection and transparency. A material cannot be 100% rflective and 100% transparent at the same time. Don't forget IOR for transparent materials too.

If your material is not designed to be transparent and the color is light, then you should lower the reflectivity.

The difficulty in achieving a good transparent material look is finding the proper balance between color, reflectivity, tansparency and IOR. Without knowing it, you've set yourself a difficult goal to achieve by using a subject with transparent glass. It is an achievable goal though. Others have done it in the past.

But if you allow me for a shameless plug, V11 also added "Fresnel reflectivity" and "reflection filters". Two additional surface property which, with "reflection blend" would greatly help you with such a subject.

Thanks again Yves. I actually have version 11 but for some reason doesn't play well with my current system. I have inherited a newer computer that I've yet to have time to properly set up. When I get that done I will run this scene through with all of v11's newer features that you mentioned.

Update - trying for the proper balance between reflectivity and transparency. As you can see I still haven't found it. And the gray diffuse is now more prominent than I want it to be.

..d

Check your IOR (Index of Refraction) on your transparent object. It should be greater than 1. For instance, glass have an IOR of about 1.5.

For the glass, you want an index of refractin of around 1.5, and make the glass transparancy 96%, reflectancy 4%, translucency 96%, and I think the color should be black. For the water, the color needs to be white, and the index of refraction needs to be 1.33. I believe that the transparancy and translucency of water are the same as glass, but I'm goign to have to check my charts again. Where's my physics professor when I need him???

The reason for white, If I can remember, was because of the visible spectrum through an entire wavelenght of a photon. You'd start losing all of the visible colors. Though I could be wrong. I've made a simulated glass filled with water before. Oh and make sure that the water isn't getting inside of the glass. That can cause visual messups when rendering.

Thanks for the input guys. I think I'm starting to get somewhere. Here's an update. Lighting is still too dark but I think I'm making headway.

Matt - as you can see there is no liquid in the cup. I haven't a clue how I would do that.

..d

I think you lowered your cup surface color a little too much. Here is a way to manually handle reflective blending. The idea is to lower the surface color brightness in relation to the reflectivity. Lets say you have a surface color of 200, 200, 200 and a reflectivity of 20%. So 20% of 200 = 40. You subtract that 40 from 200 and get a new surface color of 160, 160, 160. So the more reflective is your surface, the darker must be your surface color.

Thanks again Yves. Your posts are very helpful. Here's another update.

..d

It's starting to look good. All ya need now is some caustics and some texturing for a wall.

BTW: How'd you get the glass to not have a very dark shadow? When ever i try to make 1.52 IOR glass it always creates a very dark, almost black shadow... even though the glass itself is a very bright color and is very transparent, 96%.

Keep up the good work.

--DB

Hi again all - Finally had some time to modify this scene some more. The attached uses the following settings for the mug. Hopefully this will help you some Dan. I am really new to this so the results are very much trial and error.

Transparency - 96%
IOR - 1.5
Translucency - 96%
Reflectivity - 4%

The color settings for the mug are now 235,235,235.
Let me know what you all think.

Dan, as far as caustics go, I don't really have a clue what they are. I guess I'll look that up.

..d

Caustics are what make the world go 'round. lol I've added an example of some very interesting caustics. You should realy consider putting them in if you want to add another level of believability to your render.

Also i included what my objects doing. Are you using 100% darkness shadows?

Doug

I think the last one looks great - this has been a wonderful study for me to learn from.

I haven't done any caustics either, I would love to see - There must be a tutorial around - not sure if this deals with caustics:

http://www.babbagepatch.com/tuts.htm

Maybe Dan can point you (us) to a tut?

can i get a copy of your project so i can see exactly what's goin on, and how you set up your lights and property settings please? I just cant get it to look right. I used the property settings you used... but i'm still getting near black shadows.

Sure Dan I'll send to your email as I don't think I can post .prj files here.



Great! This big long thread has been of some use then. I'm thrilled.


..d

That's right you can't load .pjr files. But you can load .zip files, and since they're smaller than the normal file size, it would be best to put them in there anyway. Just make sure to archive them with "Best" quality. Otherwise, the file will get changed slightly.

Okay, here ya go. The zipped choreography and associated models. The coffee table is from the A:M cd, very slightly modified.

Hope it's useful to answering your shadow questions.

..d

You might want to start here:

A:M Photon Mapping tutorial including caustics.

Yikes - of course, Yves - Thanks - I woke up this morning thinking I must check out Yves site - I'll bet there's an in depth explanation of caustics there. What was I thinking? (more like not thinking).

You are so amazing.

Thanks modern house, i just now downloaded the choreography... i was out doin my thing and couldnt get it downloaded sooner. But i noticed you didnt include RoomA and the Sky models. Did you include them? or did they just not come over on the download... well, i'll put it in a background of my own anyhow. Thanks again.

I looked at your choreography and it seems you did a lot of fake outs with the lighting system you had riged up. Like lights all around the table to give an impression of radiosity. No wonder you mugs shadow wasnt so dark. lol But it still looks good.

Dan - as you said I'm trying to give the impression of realistic lighting without going the radiosity route, for a couple of reasons.

1) I don't have the computer resources to do radiosity well. I can't tie up my computer so much.
2) I am so new to lighting that I want to start with basic lighting and learn from that and then add more complex lighting schemes and so on.

I can send you those other file if you wish, sorry forgot to include them.

..doug

Ya, you had a pretty good looking render without it, and it does take quite a substantial time to do radiosity renders... however, it adds an incredible amount of detail and believability to your renders.

Render Changes: (hope you dont mind me playing around with your work, i dont plan on taking credit for your models)
I took your spoon and gave it spectrality (where previously there was none) as well as gave it all beveled edges; i added a wood texture to the table top; and i created a simple room, a painting, a window frame, and outside scene.

Like you pointed out... yes, rendering with radiosity takes quite a long time, this one... took approximately 17:45:32 to go through all 16 passes; however the main portion of render time was not the radiosity, rather the very refractive/reflective glass, the reflective table top, and silver portions of the spoon.. Just to progressive render anywhere near the glass or the reflective surfaces causes extreme slowdowns.. You sertainly wouldnt want to do this type of render if you were going to be making any sort of lengthy production, but for things like portfolio stills... you might want to considered beefing up your work.

BTW: i normaly set these to render and go to bed... and then school... and if its not done then.. i'll read a book. lol

here's the project file as well

Okay Dan - now you must send me your project file! Terriffic render and a nice scene (sort of where I was headed with mine but much much faster work).

Things I'm curious as to how you did -
1) Table texture.
2) Outside the window - haven't tried to do this yet and it was on my list for this project.

I like how you -
1) Beveled edges on the spoon, nice and the jagginess on mine was bugging me.
2) Added the painting, nice touch.

I am going to take mine in this direction but a tad different. Great stuff!

..doug