BRYCE RENDER CHALLENGE ♦♦♦♦♦.SUMMER EDITION ♦♦♦♦♦ "Beatiing the Heat" ~~~~~ WIP THREAD

Trish

Jay; your sky looks wonderful now!!!
Entry #2 If you want to beat the heat come to Atlantis City ..the city half in and half out of the water.....I made everything except the water material.

mermaid010

TheSavage64 said:

No you haven't missed much mermaid... It's because I couldn't get the person who took the photo I've used as a background to retake it when the sun was in the right direction to exactly match the ideal lighting setup for my foreground. [insert cheeky grin emoticon]...

But between other things I'm on with at the moment, I am also trying to alter the lighting to try and find a setup where the light matches better. In the photo, the sun is actually directly overhead, the shadows looking like they're coming at the camera is down to the trees leaning slightly.

I think the solution may be to set up a radial light in roughly the same position as where the sun would be in the photograph background and set its influence to only affect the table top. Then it's light will reduce the shadows behind my objects to virtually nothing and introduce shadows in the correct place to match the background, and all without it affecting the lighting which is at present lighting up the actual objects... I hope.

Of course adding a radial light will also increase the render time considerably so it may take a while to get around to that part.

Thanks for the detailed explanation on how you intent to sort the shadows out. I got an idea for my dolphin render, maybe I could make the radial include only the right mountain.

mermaid010

Lovely renders by everyone, the Jay's breeze and Trish's Atlantis City

Dave Savage

mermaid010 said:

Thanks for the detailed explanation on how you intent to sort the shadows out. I got an idea for my dolphin render, maybe I could make the radial include only the right mountain.

The 'Include' and 'Exclude' influence options in the light lab are an invaluable tool sometimes when selective lighting is required.
Bear in mind when using them, that the 'influence' option will not recognise grouped objects. They still show in the list of what's available to include and exclude, but ticking them will have no effect

Hope this helps. :+)

Jamahoney

Cheers, Mermaid and Bullit...love the Atlantis skyscape also - that central building with the torusus (torii???) on it looks very futuristic (those Atlantians were way ahead of us).

Cheers, Savage, too for the 'influence' add-info...didn't know that - learning all the time.

Jay

Dave Savage

It's a pleasure Jay and may I say I love your towels, I think you've got the 'breeze' effect good in that render.

Also another note about light influence options:
If your scene is lit with HDR, the HDR tab in the SkyLab also has influence options like the light lab does.
Again, it will not recognise grouped objects but it is very handy to exclude any volumetric or transparent materials where possible because it'll decrease the rendering time significantly.

mermaid010

Thanks Dave for all the additional info.

One question -- I used a hdri for the dolphin render; should I exclude the right mountain from the radial influence and the volumetric clouds from the hdri influence.

I tried a few options but still not happy with the lighting for that render

Dave Savage

As long as excluding the clouds doesn't make them look too dark (something that you can alter by lightening up the global ambient colour though), I would exclude the volumetric clouds from the HDR if it's actually lighting up the scene. Keep the HDR influencing the mountains though otherwise you may find the shadows turn too black.

Another tip I use a lot and I've mentioned on the forum before if rendering using TA is to always render volumetric clouds at low RPP.
Increasing the rays bouncing around the volumetric material makes little to no difference to quality but adds considerably to the render time just the same.

What I usually do is render the sky at low RPP (4 is usually enough) and then hide the cloud slab and re render the scene using high RPP (64 upwards), then render a very quick object mask and comp the low and high RPP renders together in a photo editor using the object mask to automate cutting and slicing them together. You can shave hours off render times doing it this way.

LordHardDriven

TheSavage64 said:

LordHardDriven said:

Much better although now with the color on the JD improved the kind of washed out appearance of the lemon slice seems more noticeable.

Hopefully that'll get sorted out when I do the final tweaks to the lighting.
The problem is that a lemon slice is semi transparent in the segments and I'm using a short cut of just applying a photo to a 2D disc so can't get the absolute correct effect. Again it may be that I have to apply a yellow light just to the slice to try and saturate it's colour more.

Ah okay I didn't realize it was just an image on a disc. That would explain the way it looked off, the light fix you propose sounds interesting but seems like a lot of trouble just to have JD with a twist. : )

LordHardDriven

Jamahoney said:

Okay, was able to change the sky...simply by creating a huge, flat-faced mirror to hide all the grey clouds (from the horizon upwards). Tilting the mirror forward by ~ 30 degrees, it now is reflecting the aquamarine colour of the water (some transparency applied to the mirror to leave some grey sky come through).

Added in some islands, too, for extra depth, and, finally, softened the shadows. Mirror reflections etc., caused the render time to up several times the previous. In the end, work looks better, I think, and it’s got a more balmy, Caribbean look to it.

Yeah...Jack Daniels really is a gorgeous whisky...and packs a punch, too. But damn, it's dear ~ Euro 28.00 over here (about Dollars 36.00).

Jay

Much improved *thumbsup* : )

LordHardDriven

TheSavage64 said:

mermaid010 said:

Thanks for the detailed explanation on how you intent to sort the shadows out. I got an idea for my dolphin render, maybe I could make the radial include only the right mountain.

The 'Include' and 'Exclude' influence options in the light lab are an invaluable tool sometimes when selective lighting is required.
Bear in mind when using them, that the 'influence' option will not recognise grouped objects. They still show in the list of what's available to include and exclude, but ticking them will have no effect

Hope this helps. :+)

Thanks I didn't know that, guess I missed it or haven't got to the right tutorial yet.? : ) That would certainly explain certain problems I've experienced in the past trying to use the include, exclude options.

mermaid010

TheSavage64 said:

As long as excluding the clouds doesn't make them look too dark (something that you can alter by lightening up the global ambient colour though), I would exclude the volumetric clouds from the HDR if it's actually lighting up the scene. Keep the HDR influencing the mountains though otherwise you may find the shadows turn too black.

Another tip I use a lot and I've mentioned on the forum before if rendering using TA is to always render volumetric clouds at low RPP.
Increasing the rays bouncing around the volumetric material makes little to no difference to quality but adds considerably to the render time just the same.

What I usually do is render the sky at low RPP (4 is usually enough) and then hide the cloud slab and re render the scene using high RPP (64 upwards), then render a very quick object mask and comp the low and high RPP renders together in a photo editor using the object mask to automate cutting and slicing them together. You can shave hours off render times doing it this way.

Thanks Dave, I really appreciate the addition info.

Kyricus

Not done with this yet, but here's what I've come up with so far.. Honestly, it looks more like at this point, the Heat is beating her, rather than the other way around..

adbc

A cool drink to beat the heat ... if the little man reaches the top of the ladder.

Chohole

NAE

A good way of beating the heat is to go swimming, especially if you can dive down to investigate an old wreck in shallow water. But beware, you never know what is lurking down there, it may look very pretty, but there are predators about

Trish

Kyricus; Very good

adbc; good concept! I hope he makes it...LOL

Chohole; Wow!! Beautiful so much to look at !!

mermaid010

Lovely work from everyone

Chohole -absolutely beautiful.

GussNemo

Renders are looking mighty good.

Dino Gramps

Chohole - Beautiful. Your renders are like what I want to be able to do, eventually.

Rareth

ok Here is my submission.. no metaballs were harmed in the making of this scene..

GussNemo

@Rareth: Meatball may not have been harmed, but that surfer is about to understand the meaning of down draft. Nice job.

Jamahoney

Not really an entry or WIP...but just seeing if ice cream was possible to produce (can't achieve that frosty look). Maybe some other entrants can have a go?

Jay

Dave Savage

Jamahoney said:

Not really an entry or WIP...but just seeing if ice cream was possible to produce (can't achieve that frosty look). Maybe some other entrants can have a go?

When I was doing my metaball mushrooms, I did get a few shapes that I thought would make good Mr Whippy icecream swirls.
Though Mr Whippy doesn't look frosty, it usually has a glossy appearance... I may get chance to do another entry before the end of the month, If I do I'll see if I can make metaball icecream.

Jamahoney

Savage...I chanced putting a slightly larger-sized copy of the ice-cream obj on top of the original ice-cream obj, and then changed its mat to one from the Atmospheric cloud mats (gave it some transarancy, too) but it really didn't work.

I think David did something along these lines some time back, but can't source it. Best of luck with the ice-cream (or slushie)...I've had mine for now...SSSLLLUUURRRPPP (:))

Jay

Chohole

TheSavage64 said:

Jamahoney said:

Not really an entry or WIP...but just seeing if ice cream was possible to produce (can't achieve that frosty look). Maybe some other entrants can have a go?

When I was doing my metaball mushrooms, I did get a few shapes that I thought would make good Mr Whippy icecream swirls.
Though Mr Whippy doesn't look frosty, it usually has a glossy appearance... I may get chance to do another entry before the end of the month, If I do I'll see if I can make metaball icecream.

With maybe a flake like you made the gills of the mushrooms, so you can have a 99 as well :)

Jamahoney

...so you can have a 88 as well...

...we call 'em 99's over here. Btw, never really knew why they were called 99's..until just now. Ya learn something new every day.

Jay

Chohole

lol I swear the keys jump around on my keyboard when I am not looking. :)

Rareth

Ice Cream?

Jamahoney

Chohole "I swear the keys jump around on my keyboard" ...guessed as much (was thinking initially it was a Welsh cone version (:)). I once posted to a professor that "your research tits very intersting". Unfortunatly, after realising the mistake in the sent mail, I couldn't re-edit it (as you can do with Bryce). So embarrassing!

Rareth...love it...a classical ice-cream cone...hope you're feeling cooler (:))

Jay

GussNemo

@Jay: Your ice cream looks more like a slushy, a rainbow one. It was always better asking for a rainbow slushy because there was more syrup at the bottom of the cup after the ice was eaten.

@Rareth: That looks like a soft serve ice cream, one that has to be eaten quickly or you'll end up drinking it.