Reflections 1:

[attachmentid=22201]

Oh! You meant reflections off tin!

I have been watching the amazing texturing and lighting tests that Nancy,Colin, Kevin, Yves et al have been working on and, as I have found an old version 12 Tinman on my hard drive, I thought that I might play too.

What I thought I might experiment with, rather than the colours and reflections, is the engraving and embossing. Nothing done yet but I'll update this thread when/if I produce something worth looking at.

This is more for a bit of fun than anything so don't you folks stop the great progress that you are making!

Have your fun, mais oui, bien sur.

However, FYI: there is embossing and engraving on the tinman that I've been doing (shoulder pads, heart insert, chest, face, crown, boots) some that I like and others that I'm still in process of playing with.

Oh, I'll have my fun alright, mon petit fleur.

Nothing to worry about though, Nancy, I have other things on the boil that will keep me from offering any kind of a challenge to you and your kaleidoscopic universe. Rave on!

It sounds like you have been busy!

How long did that take to render? I mean; was it raytracing? Reflection maps? Projected?

I didn't note precise details of that render because it doesn't have the textures or lighting setup properly yet but it took about 20 to 30 minutes for 96 frames. I will do another before I start trying out more interesting textures.

Simple, cylindrically mapped decal to give some variation to the tin.
Quality - Final
Multipass - OFF
Shadows - ON
Reflections - ON
Everything else - OFF
Resolution - Low (320x240)
Alpha buffer ON
Default lights but with rim light set to raytrace with a single ray, moved closer to yellow and intensity increased to 50%.

I'm just rendering a few frames to see what they render at and they are coming out at an average of 18 seconds per frame so that would be about 28 minutes in total. I'll increase the resolution to DV size and watch the render times multiply.
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I've just rendered a couple of frames at DV res and the times were:
Frame 1 - 01:05
Frame 2 - 01:04
The key light seemed too bright so I am rendering again with intensity at 50%. I'll put a render up in a minute

These two stills use the same settings except that I turned the key light's intensity down to 45% in the second image.

[attachmentid=22214]
01:03

[attachmentid=22215]
00:59

Now a couple of examples of multipass at DV resolution:

[attachmentid=22216]
5 pass = 01:43

[attachmentid=22217]
16 pass = 05:35

Okay, no more of these until I have done some bumpmaps.

I find it strange that the columns don't cast shadows on the ground. They seem to float over the floor. Yu use ray-traced shadow?

Yes. It looks pretty bad doesn't it? I just used a single ray from a single klieg light. The columns are just poking through the floor so there is no bevelled edge there and the base of the columns are not capped. Would capping them help?

I'm going to change the shape at the very bottom of the columns, which may also help, but if there is another method I would really like to know what it is. Perhaps the bump map on the floor is also interfering as it simply b/w and no greyscale.

Would using 2 rays help? I must try...

The column geometry is not in cause. At least not if you are using ray-traced shadows. But if you used z-buffer shadows for the columns, then you have to make sure the floor is set to cast shadow too.

Thanks for taking a look, Yves.

I had just one klieg light casting ray traced shadows and I think that the angle of the light was too steep to catch even the closest pillars. I tried moving the light to various positions inside and outside the room, testing different intensities, but just couldn't get the pillars to look solidly planted.

Example:
[attachmentid=22227]
This one uses a klieg that I increased the width of to 200cm. Shadows are still not convincing.

I then decided to turn off the klieg and bring in a bulb light to create the radiating shadows from an overhead light source and the results are much better:
[attachmentid=22228]
Multipass = OFF
Render Time = 00:47

[attachmentid=22229]
Mutipass = 5 passes
Render Time = 01:42

Once I have remodel the base of the columns, improved the room's textures and set up bounce lighting I will be ready to get back to the Tinman.

Here is a low res 360 with the current lighting:

[attachmentid=22230]

I need to lower the intensity of the bulb light, add some bounce lights and light Tinman.

What I observe in the 360° is that the environment is much more contrasty than TinMan. The range of contrast on TinMan is very low and he is almost uniformly gray. It looks like TinMan was lit from a different light setup and was post-composited there.

Yes, Tinman is like a black hole at the moment. Even simulating bounced light, from directly below him doesn't seem to do much to help. I will need to check that his surface properties are set up correctly. Also I need to adjust the falloff of the bulb light.

I guess when I start playing with Tinman's surface properties and textures that will help add some contrast.

I am going to go through your lighting tutorial, Yves. That will hopefully switch a few lights on in my head.
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Edit:

Oh boy! Am I stupid? Yes I am!
I had the bounce light set to inactive

If I keep banging away at this I'll get somewhere eventually...

Getting a little better but Tinman needs work now.

I rendered from the wrong camera in this one. Oh well, it flies past Tinman at the end so it is possible to get a closer look at his current dark mood.

[attachmentid=22234]

I thought that I would just try a test of Tinman with a painted face, to help with making it readable in all scenes. This is only a very subdued attempt, nothing 'Nancified' yet, and the bump maps aren't really there yet either.

[attachmentid=22319]

This old Tinman has an early version of the squetch rig which is incomplete. I couldn't work out the hand controls, hence the mangled claw, and there are no blinks or facial expressions, so the animation sucks, as does the edit and compression, but it is just meant to show another possibility.

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This was rendered in two halves.
The first half was rendered to VGA res at approximately 4 minutes per frame for 5 passes.
The second half was rendered to Low res, at approximately 30 seconds per frame, with multipass set to Off.
They were composited together in After Effects and exported as a low res QT movie. The artifacts are a result of the compositing, and compression, and nothing to do with A:M.

I actually can not tell where the change in rendering method occurs - was that your point? I would have to look much harder to find it. Like with nose against the screen.

Was the other point that compression will eventually obscure most everything ?

Is the intermittent blurring of the ground textures because of the actual textures? or post processing with AE?

Interesting.

(the difficulty with dealing with tinman's hand - some think a refresh problem? - sometimes goes away in latest versions of him if you restart A:M - sometimes not - It's a difficult problem - hard to know what's causing it)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the reflections look too slick for "tin". Too "wet".

More like a glass surface rather than a metal one.

Well, you can actually see a little jump at exactly the half way point where I must have nudged the camera. Because the cieling is present in the first half but missing in the second half the reflection also changes on Tinman's back. Also I moved two of the arches, between rendering part 1 and part2, so where the two shots are joined together you will see an arch suddenly jump to the left.


Uhmm...yeah. Well, no. But it certainly does.

Is
That is probably the textures and could be overcome by both improving the maps and by adding more passes.


Well I think this was just the fact that I don't know the rig yet. I am more accustomed to TSM2 and haven't played with the Squetch rig enough to discover the best way to use it. With TSM2, or my own rigs, I usually set up all my hand poses with a pose slider and that gives me quick access to a basic pose. I then animate over the top of that where neccessary. With this early version of the squetch rig I am finding it difficult to uncurl the fingers or curl them in the way that I wish. Remember that this version must be nearly a year old and things have been modified and improved in that time. I am sorry to hear that the hands are still troublesome in the latest version though. On the whole the rig feels amazing.

Sorry, Robert, I missed your last post.

I agree completely with your comment on the tin. The tin looks far too glossy and the decal seems to have vanished. I'll check what happened there. I want to try a variety of patinated and painted finishes, some with laquer, and this glossiness might fit with laquered areas.

These are just experiments on the tintoy theme. (Not Pixar...A:MC)

Thanks for the comments!