I've been reluctant (and too busy) to play with v13 until I upgraded. Well, my birthday came by so I upgraded. Last night (while waiting for my new shiny A:M disk to arrive) I decided to download v13.

It ran beautifully. I looked around for something to do some testing on AO, and found it...Iron Man. When the OSX version was in it's infancy I started to remodel Iron Man to what his current armor is. At some point I left it and now it's in this wierd state...but anyway...straight out of v11 into v13.

Followed Yves tutorial on AO and whammo...literally 5 minutes of loading and posing, then hitting the render button:



Now, there are plenty of things I need to do to Iron Man, but dangit Hash, when I asked for a "Make it look pretty" button, I WAS KIDDING!

Good job Hash guys!

- pjc

Oh please. That is obviously a photo of the real Iron Man.

Man that's what the next Extra disk needs....an AO folder with all the settings done already. Just hit render and vola, a cool image.

Nice work Patrick. (I thought you were re-designing the Community Window...)

It's funny, my 8 year old was saw the render and said "That looks like a toy! Can I have it?"


...and yeah, I was supposed to work on the community thing, but I got this new job at Sony Online Entertainment and man, I've had NO time...and the 15 heading home from San Diego is a PITA!

- pjc

So, I really have no time for this properly, but I'm lovin the new AO so much that I scavanged around my hard-drive to throw some things in with Iron Man. Boy, I hate those pipes! But I love the shadow pools...

I so need to carve out some time to put a "real" image together with this. Ohhh Displacement maps...yeah....But for now enjoy:
(5 hours @ 800 X 1200, Multi-pass, 16 passes)



- pjc

That sure does look nice! I think Yves has a hit, that feature is going to be used a lot.

Cool render Patrick. So simple but so nice.

I see you are enjoying playing with AO feature. What about HDRI? I think using and HDRI environment map for the reflections on this character would do wonders. I know Matt and Dan Bradbury have done some exploration work with that technique. You should be able to find the related topics in the Radiosity and WIP threads.

And then, if your computer still have some spare render time, you may want to try soft reflection.

Just to keep you busy. I know you have ample spare time.

This render makes me happy.



Ben

AHHH! Oh yeah!

I found the threads, but the problem is that I can't convert Uffizi to an Open EXR. I downloaded HDRShop v1 and it doesn't save Open EXR. Crap...

- pjc

A:M v13 can read HDR files produced by HDRShop.

And you can also convert the HDR file to OpenEXR with the hdr2exr utility.

tried the .hdr image in v13 and it loaded fine, but it showed up as blank....so I converted to .exr.

Turned off some stuff and applied to my sky sphere as an environment map.

CLICK! Render...22 Minutes later:



Ohhh, how I hate being at work...

I need to try it as an environment map on the Iron Man model so I can mix it with the real environment.

Or could I make my own HDRI image of the environment in A:M and then use it like Uffizi?

- pjc

Looks even better. Although your mapping type is not quite right. That pinching in the back. Or is this a bug?

You could do that but that will require a lot of setup time and experimentation. There are other HDR environment maps on the Web though.

Lunch break...

Rendered it bigger....

I need to fix the enviro-sphere, the map is all screwed up and stretched all weird.



hopefully more tonight...


[edit] Yves- That's my fault...I just loaded in the EXR to a projection map real quick and hit render...it's user error.


- pjc

Right...problem was my sphere wasn't at 0, 0, 0 so the map was all funky...I then decided to turn on IBL instead of AO...and here's a screen grab....



Time to set up a proper render and go to bed.

- pjc

Is that a realtime screengrab? If not, why's the background pixelated and the specularity all funky?

That's a screen grab of a Progressive Render....just squint and you can see what it looks like...or take a look at this:




I did add a little bloom to this one. IBL with an added Key light (Uffizi is a bit dark) to pop the reds.

5 hours on my Dell Inspiron 9300 (2 GHZ Pentium M with 2 GB RAM and an nVidia GeForce Go 6800) at 800 X 1200, Multipass Renderiing (25 passes).


- pjc

That's a cool guy there Patrick, and it's nice to see people actually using the stuff we came up with a wile back. Just remember, the IBL setting uses AO, but unlike the tests Matt did, which used a physical dome and several hundred lights, the IBL setting has no raytracing, so color will penetrate even through patches. Still, that's one awesome render.

Patrick,
First... gotta say... its great to see you posting again.

The look is really improving. He's looking a lot more metalic where he had a bit more plastic toy look before.

Go... PJC!

Nicer look as it evolves.

I think I would play with the soft reflection appearance difference between the red part and the gold part. I would let the red part as it is but would enlarge the specular size on the gold part to get a brushed metal softer reflection.

Wow! great looking images!

How does he blow his nose?

Awesome looking. How did you get the all black background, and a floor, and still have it reflect your IBL? Don't you need a shpere around the object?

Oh, that!

It has the Uffizi background, but I rendered out a separate pass with just Iron Man and the floor (no shadows, AO, reflections, etc) for an alpha and then used Photoshop to clip out the background.

Actually it's kind of in there...I didn't want a totally black environment, but it's pushed back really far.

I've been modeling on and off today (I just got Metriod for the DS and it's AWESOME!!) and should have some updates sometime this week with some cool stuff (displacement maps and maybe even some soft reflections as Yves pointed out).

Unfortunately, that darn work gets in the way (how many days til E3???)

- pjc

I suggest not using AO with displacement. If you have the real v13, you'll have to correct me. When you use AO with displacement maps, you get an incredable amount of black dots (not noise) over the entire displacement map surface.

Did some work last night on the boots to bring them up to my interpretation of the modern look. I like the chunky soles!

I also increased the specular on the gold to 267% to really soften it. I might knock it back a bit to bring out a little more reflection, but it was a good call Yves.

I have displacements on the kneecaps, the hip-pods, belt, shoulderpads and head, and I think I'm getting some funky stuff (the right shoulderpad on the front) but dangit, displacements are the one thing i've missed from when i have to work in Cinema 4D. I hope some of these little issues can be worked out, cuz I like the new implementation!



Next up, new gloves, some underwear work and some back work. I'm still debating on changing to the new helmet design, I'm not quite sure I like it...

- pjc

iron man looks freaking sickified(witch in my book is realy realy good) .i want the new A:M!!!!!!!!.

One thing I would suggest is to add a fresnel effect to the paintjob, so that it's more reflective at oblique angles than it is when facing the camera directly. You can do this using a simple gradient with edge threshold, or use one of the plug-in fresnel shaders that have cropped up over the years.

Hey Brian!

It "should" have a simple gradient fresnel on it, but since this model was last seen in v10 that may have gotten screwed up going to v13...I will check on it. I may just have to redo the entire material...

but you are right, I need to add fresnel reflections.

....and t_b_m, I'm glad "sickified" is good!

- pjc

Whoa. Nice update Patrick!
All of it... the whole thing... is fantastic but I keep thinking... that gold is just entirely too spot on.
Really love the lighting effects too.

Now if the comic book could only look as good.

Attached is a comparison that shows you've been really into the details since you first posted. Nice!

Since v11, Fresnel is part of the equation when rendering reflective surfaces. But you can always force it a little more with a gradient material.

I did have a nice gradient material for reflections, but I guess it needed some tweaks.

I also switched back to AO Global Color instead of IBL. I think my reds are a little too reflective on both the edge and the front, but I am liking the contrast between the gold being "gold" and the red being "car paint".

Also noticed that going to AO, now I have some black blocks that appeared...is this what you were talking about Matt?

Too many nights staying up til 1 AM...I'm old...



need to do some more modeling...those gloves are bugging me.

- pjc

Very nice! I also like the nice contrast btw the real gold with soft reflections and the shiny "car paint" red! That's really cool that now Fresnel is built in, saves me the trouble of having to add it each time. I'm sure I'm not the only one looking forward to more pinups of this new armor! Come on Patrick, you know you want to re-render your old poster pinups with this new armor...or have you already done so in secret?

Thanks, Mr. Weasel!

My motto "Never revisit the past" That's so untrue! I had thought of just re-rendering some of the stuff I've done before, but I think I want to do a brand new one.

I don't know if anyone has seen the VERY cool DC Heroes Posters that Alex Ross did:

http://www.alexrossart.com/archives.html


But I think my first image with the new armor will be a version like this. Probably not on white, but who knows...

Mr. Weasel, Shouldn't you be working on x-23??

- pjc

Patrick, I have never seen black squares like the one in your render. I have seen black spots in a pattern due to the mixture of AO and displacement maps. I should probably get v13 and do some quick tests with it.

I will render one tonight with IBL again to see if it disappears... it looks like it just didn't render those sections.

I will also check my normals

- pjc

Those black spots are from the IBL. It is a bug that I need to track down.

Hm... I've also seen these black dots before in version 12 when rendering radiosity. Could it be an even bigger problem that stems beyond AO?

Wait, I remember something. When Dan was making his retro, he had the retro reflecting the environment. He had a sphere with a sky texture on it, and when he revolved around the car, there was a black square that was floating in the air.

[attachmentid=15558]

Maybe it's a problem with reflections.

On another note, I wanted to ask you about some odd feature in the reflections. There seems to be some sort of red splotch of intensity on your Uffizi environment map.

[attachmentid=15559]

The green arrows point to the features I'm talking about.

You might want to check those out. There shouldn't be any sort of brightness at that particular point.

That's a specular on the red.

I was playing with soft reflections which read off the specular size. I wanted a slightly fuzzy reflection, but can't get it (that I know of) without having a specular highlight.

- pjc

Though that was a problem with the retro renders, it is not the example i was thinking of. I encountered dots just like that back when i was new to photon sampling. At the time i thought it was a problem with jittering, but i know now that it was not the problem. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18463

Specular size will control the reflectivity softness to match the specular size. But if you don't want light specularity, you only need to turn specular intensity down. Specular intensity does not affect soft reflectivity.

Oh...I was just not putting in a value "Not Set" for Specular Intensity. I thought this would ignore the Intensity for some reason...I'll just turn Intensity down to zero then if I don't want a specular...

Thanks Yves.

"Not set" means that the specular intensity is taken from either the object Surface specular Intensity value or from a former group surface specular intensity setting.

I think I'm liking the materials now...so on to some more modeling and then a good pose:



Oh, I photoshopped out the black specks in this one...

- pjc

WOW!!!

Hey Patrick,

He's looking awesome. Only one or two nitpicks...

His hands seem to small for the rest of the model. They could be bigger in relation to the size of the arms. And the second thing it there is a patch not covered by the bump map on his crotch.

great stuff. Keep it up.

C

ditto on the hands
and
ditto on the "Wow cool"!

Later
Mike Fitz
www.3dartz.com

The one thing i notice ( GREAT IMAGE BTW ) is that there is nothing in his helmet.

He looks kinda light headed

Ben

yes, his hands are a bit small right now...The gauntlets are next on my list to work on and they will beef up the hand area, but you guys are right.

I didn't want to do eyes behind the helmet, so I have "sunglasses" in the eyeslots...I'll have to do a render close up to show what I did there...but now back to modeling! And then work on a better, more "iconic" pose.

- pjc

Iron Man, like Batman, works best with opaque eye holes.

As I am modeling the updated "new" armor, I decided to get my classic armor out of the mothballs and do a quick pose with a similar AO method. This time I used a point light where the repulsor ray would be and lit it with a turned down AO and HDRI environment. Man, this stuff is quick and easy.

I need to work on the repulsor beam, but when I added a transparency map to the beam (a simple cylinder) it cancelled the glow effect. Has anyone seen this happen before?

Anyway, here's the classic armor with AO. Can't wait to show the new pose with the updated armor. Soon...soon:



- pjc