Instead of raising the camera you could just tilt it upward and get a similar reframing, though I don't know if that would make sense in context of the story. (What is the context of the shot anyway, it might be easier to give more pointed advice if I knew.)
Also, it's fine to still have those little lights, but you're probably not going to want them to be included in the GI calculation because they're having so little effect lighting up surrounding areas anyways. Put in some big lights and calculate GI on that instead to act as your main light, and the little ones just serve as nice detail window dressing. Keeps the rendering time down, gives you more obvious control over the scene by just dealing with the big lights. You could also probably save some rendering time if you can get away with not having shadows on the little lights as well.
I think the complimentary color thing is a good idea, just not being put forward quite so strongly as it is now. If instead of just being this huge pink line, you had it the same red as the red sign, then had it as thin neon tubing on the edges of the arch as two parallel lines, or possibly a series of horizontal neon lights (though this might also end up being too intense/Vegas), I think it could work.
But again, it's a matter of context: if the pivotal information in the scene is the door that that arch leads up to, such a huge line could be just what it needs. In that case, it should actually be pushed further by lighting the street underneath it and area of the building by the door a similar color, with the door itself being more brightly lit with contrasting yellow/white lighting. Then the rest of the scene's lights should be played back more so it's obvious what the important part of the scene is.
I don't know if you're working from a book in class or anything, but you might want to check out Digital Lighting and Rendering at some point. A lot of it is either very basic or so minutely practical that if you need to know it you probably don't need a book to tell you how to do your job at that point, but it does have a pretty good chapter covering lighting architecture that might be worth checking out. Probably not worth buying the book for, maybe flip through it at a bookstore though.
Using Maya for this, but have been taught softimageXSI and 3dsMax.
I didn't even consider taking them out of the GI calculation, what, just doing a seperate pass or something for them? Because right now even this crap is rendering at like 10 minutes so it's a pain in the ass, sitting and reading comics inbetween render tests. I'm totally changing the doorway/arch to the same colour, it's just too distracting to have both. And yeah, I could totally work some thin tubing in there to make it less obnoxious. I especially like the.. scaffolding? Is that the right word? Near the top. Totally wanna do some of that. It's so grungy and rrr I love it. And no, I think the main point of focus when you're moving along the street will be the blue.. phasey.. science arch (It got totally blown out in that last render I threw up, as did the pavement) and i'll try to have the eye pulled towards there, as well as have it be the lightest point. I actually had the door under the red writing be illuminated too, but it was too distracting and I crushed it. The glowing tubes/lighting is already a pain, because I was told to just ramp up the colour value which makes it super saturated in order to give it that sort of jedi white in the middle look.
And the context is that it's from the POV of an anonymous object, sitting on the shelf in shot one. It's picked up, never see who is carrying it, carring out of the room, through the alley, onto the street where it's dropped and consumed by a dog from a behind angle so that all you see is teeth closing over you. Done to avoid animation as I hates it, and no character modeling as I hates it even more, and to show an interior, an exterior, and an alley. Will probably be doing more plantlife inside of the tub.
I'm totally checking with our resources chick for that book. Chances are we have it somewhere. Seriously, you have no idea how much I appreciate this. This is so useful. Auugghh.
Well, unless the Maya Software renderer has been upgraded since 7.0 so you don't have to use Mental Ray to use GI, (or maybe I've totally missed something in the render options list somewhere along the line), all you should have to do is uncheck "emit photons" on the mental ray options for the light, so it doesn't calculate GI for that light source.
Or if you hadn't turned on emit photons in the first place, GI isn't being calculated for anything and it's just going slow because MR is slow as hell on the best of days, and especially slow when tons of lights/shadows are involved.
You could try to fake the small lights with some texturing tricks, or before you do your final animation render you could bake all the textures in the scene and save a lot of render time...it sounds like your animation won't have much in the way of shadows or lights moving around, so if you can probably get away with it for a lot of the scene. (but now I can't actually remember if MR does this/works with this in the first place or if it's just the software renderer, uh. Consult your help file for more information!)
And you might want to do some redesigning of the 'blue science arch' to be more prominent/readable, because I had no idea what that was. I was guessing a flying car (apparently invisible?) with the two headlamps casting an intense blue volumetric light onto the street or something, so I thought the shot might have been about "flying car flys down the street"...again, I've got Blade Runner on the brain here. :P
And yeah, the pink line definitely needs to be redesigned in order for the blue arch to be more prominent, because it breaks the flow of all those green glow tubes that point towards the arch, by sending the eye off in a totally other direction when it reaches the line.
You might want to design elements of the scene to reinforce those sorts of lines pointing down the street towards it, and remove/redesign those tubes that point beyond it into the distance- you could either make the arch higher so the tubes run into it visually, or replace them with a vertical element like a sign so you'd have a line pointing down to it.
haha, thanks WCK! i've seen an episode of the UK version and I was put off by the hard to understand accents, though i've always been meaning to watch more of it anyway
Asamof the Horrible on
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MustangArbiter of Unpopular OpinionsRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
BTW, I hate the show! UK OFFICE MUCH BETTER!
Not trying to piss on your hate parade here WCK, but everytime I hear this I find out the hater has watched one to zero episodes of the US version. It honestly is really very good, granted the first season was a little lacklustre but it really hit a stride in the second season and is quite honestly one of the best sitcoms I've seen.
Asamof, I recognized who that is and i've never even seen that show.
Angel_of_Bacon: The little emit photons box was not ticked. I will tick it and see what happens. Also gonna try using surface shaders for my blue glowy lights and some highlights, didn't realize those existed. Totally gonna bake so much crap in. I figured out that my 'blue science arch' was duplicated for some idiotic reason, hense why it was all blown out and uaruauagh. Looks fine now. Very sciency. Threw in some down pointings signs and. Looks so much better.
And uh I've never seen Blade Runner but i'm gonna rent it now.
It looks so much better. I'll post another render when I've got it more to my liking. For seriously, thanks so much, your critique is all saved in a notepad and its open on my second monitor
The little emit photons box was not ticked. I will tick it and see what happens.
Well, first thing that's going to happen is your render is going to slow way down. Then, since the default settings for it are kind of useless for final renders, you'll probably see a lot of weird splotchy dots of light over everywhere. Then you'll probably have to dial up the number of photons and spend a lot of time tweaking the GI settings in the Mental Ray Render Options, and then it'll take even longer to render.
It's fine if you're going to bake all the lighting info into texture anyways at the end, but if you were going to use GI straight up in an animation, you'd better have either a lot of time or a lot of computing power on your hands.
And uh I've never seen Blade Runner but i'm gonna rent it now.
Yes.
It looks so much better. I'll post another render when I've got it more to my liking. For seriously, thanks so much, your critique is all saved in a notepad and its open on my second monitor
attempted portrait of rainn wilson. got the proportions all wrong (made his head chubbier!)
I knew who it was right away, and i've hardly seen the US Office! So i think you captured his likeness pretty well.
BTW, I hate the show! UK OFFICE MUCH BETTER!
Nice rendering, but the reason he's recognizable is because what you've done here is a really believable "Rainn Wilson if he put on 30 pounds." I think some creative resizing could fix this.
quick sketch, playing around with composition. over an hour in so far, done in corel painter, stuck with two types of pens on the guy, used thick and thin pen, acrylics, and airbrush on the face behind him.
earl wip
updated, trying to change up the face without it being derivative of reference. still lots more to do
Mykonos on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"I was born; six gun in my hand; behind the gun; I make my final stand"~Bad Company
Looks really good Mykonos, I'd leave as is, maybe clean that empty hand up a bit. Otherwise you have some nice sketchy lines working on this one, at least IMO.
quick sketch, playing around with composition. over an hour in so far, done in corel painter, stuck with two types of pens on the guy, used thick and thin pen, acrylics, and airbrush on the face behind him.
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Instead of raising the camera you could just tilt it upward and get a similar reframing, though I don't know if that would make sense in context of the story. (What is the context of the shot anyway, it might be easier to give more pointed advice if I knew.)
Also, it's fine to still have those little lights, but you're probably not going to want them to be included in the GI calculation because they're having so little effect lighting up surrounding areas anyways. Put in some big lights and calculate GI on that instead to act as your main light, and the little ones just serve as nice detail window dressing. Keeps the rendering time down, gives you more obvious control over the scene by just dealing with the big lights. You could also probably save some rendering time if you can get away with not having shadows on the little lights as well.
I think the complimentary color thing is a good idea, just not being put forward quite so strongly as it is now. If instead of just being this huge pink line, you had it the same red as the red sign, then had it as thin neon tubing on the edges of the arch as two parallel lines, or possibly a series of horizontal neon lights (though this might also end up being too intense/Vegas), I think it could work.
But again, it's a matter of context: if the pivotal information in the scene is the door that that arch leads up to, such a huge line could be just what it needs. In that case, it should actually be pushed further by lighting the street underneath it and area of the building by the door a similar color, with the door itself being more brightly lit with contrasting yellow/white lighting. Then the rest of the scene's lights should be played back more so it's obvious what the important part of the scene is.
I don't know if you're working from a book in class or anything, but you might want to check out Digital Lighting and Rendering at some point. A lot of it is either very basic or so minutely practical that if you need to know it you probably don't need a book to tell you how to do your job at that point, but it does have a pretty good chapter covering lighting architecture that might be worth checking out. Probably not worth buying the book for, maybe flip through it at a bookstore though.
What program/renderer are you using BTW?
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I didn't even consider taking them out of the GI calculation, what, just doing a seperate pass or something for them? Because right now even this crap is rendering at like 10 minutes so it's a pain in the ass, sitting and reading comics inbetween render tests. I'm totally changing the doorway/arch to the same colour, it's just too distracting to have both. And yeah, I could totally work some thin tubing in there to make it less obnoxious. I especially like the.. scaffolding? Is that the right word? Near the top. Totally wanna do some of that. It's so grungy and rrr I love it. And no, I think the main point of focus when you're moving along the street will be the blue.. phasey.. science arch (It got totally blown out in that last render I threw up, as did the pavement) and i'll try to have the eye pulled towards there, as well as have it be the lightest point. I actually had the door under the red writing be illuminated too, but it was too distracting and I crushed it. The glowing tubes/lighting is already a pain, because I was told to just ramp up the colour value which makes it super saturated in order to give it that sort of jedi white in the middle look.
And the context is that it's from the POV of an anonymous object, sitting on the shelf in shot one. It's picked up, never see who is carrying it, carring out of the room, through the alley, onto the street where it's dropped and consumed by a dog from a behind angle so that all you see is teeth closing over you. Done to avoid animation as I hates it, and no character modeling as I hates it even more, and to show an interior, an exterior, and an alley. Will probably be doing more plantlife inside of the tub.
I'm totally checking with our resources chick for that book. Chances are we have it somewhere. Seriously, you have no idea how much I appreciate this. This is so useful. Auugghh.
Or if you hadn't turned on emit photons in the first place, GI isn't being calculated for anything and it's just going slow because MR is slow as hell on the best of days, and especially slow when tons of lights/shadows are involved.
You could try to fake the small lights with some texturing tricks, or before you do your final animation render you could bake all the textures in the scene and save a lot of render time...it sounds like your animation won't have much in the way of shadows or lights moving around, so if you can probably get away with it for a lot of the scene. (but now I can't actually remember if MR does this/works with this in the first place or if it's just the software renderer, uh. Consult your help file for more information!)
And you might want to do some redesigning of the 'blue science arch' to be more prominent/readable, because I had no idea what that was. I was guessing a flying car (apparently invisible?) with the two headlamps casting an intense blue volumetric light onto the street or something, so I thought the shot might have been about "flying car flys down the street"...again, I've got Blade Runner on the brain here. :P
And yeah, the pink line definitely needs to be redesigned in order for the blue arch to be more prominent, because it breaks the flow of all those green glow tubes that point towards the arch, by sending the eye off in a totally other direction when it reaches the line.
You might want to design elements of the scene to reinforce those sorts of lines pointing down the street towards it, and remove/redesign those tubes that point beyond it into the distance- you could either make the arch higher so the tubes run into it visually, or replace them with a vertical element like a sign so you'd have a line pointing down to it.
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Kind of reminds me of the adults in Rugrats
Go to hell
Love,
Metalbourne
take me on
TAAAAAAAKKKKKKEEEEE ONNNNNNNNN MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Pipe Wrench Fight!
I'm not exactly sure why, but this amuses me quite a bit.
These days, that would be Robocop. Why not? I'd follow him. On a unicorn? Hell, I'd follow him twice.
That is, until he decided to get involved in a land war in Asia. Or go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
EDIT: I'm sorry for my transgression against history. : d
attempted portrait of rainn wilson. got the proportions all wrong (made his head chubbier!)
http://i40.tinypic.com/b7goz5.jpg <-- ref
goofing around with rendering
I knew who it was right away, and i've hardly seen the US Office! So i think you captured his likeness pretty well.
Not trying to piss on your hate parade here WCK, but everytime I hear this I find out the hater has watched one to zero episodes of the US version. It honestly is really very good, granted the first season was a little lacklustre but it really hit a stride in the second season and is quite honestly one of the best sitcoms I've seen.
Angel_of_Bacon: The little emit photons box was not ticked. I will tick it and see what happens. Also gonna try using surface shaders for my blue glowy lights and some highlights, didn't realize those existed. Totally gonna bake so much crap in. I figured out that my 'blue science arch' was duplicated for some idiotic reason, hense why it was all blown out and uaruauagh. Looks fine now. Very sciency. Threw in some down pointings signs and. Looks so much better.
And uh I've never seen Blade Runner but i'm gonna rent it now.
It looks so much better. I'll post another render when I've got it more to my liking. For seriously, thanks so much, your critique is all saved in a notepad and its open on my second monitor
Oh...my...god.
There are things I can abide, but not having seen Blade Runner is not one of them.
Bonus round: The worst comic I've ever drawn.
It's fine if you're going to bake all the lighting info into texture anyways at the end, but if you were going to use GI straight up in an animation, you'd better have either a lot of time or a lot of computing power on your hands.
Yes.
Glad it's working out for you.
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Nice rendering, but the reason he's recognizable is because what you've done here is a really believable "Rainn Wilson if he put on 30 pounds." I think some creative resizing could fix this.
DVD cover? Michael J. Fox fan art? Puffy vest propaganda? Condensed Helvetica erotica? All of the above?
earl wip
updated, trying to change up the face without it being derivative of reference. still lots more to do
"I was born; six gun in my hand; behind the gun; I make my final stand"~Bad Company
Nice work. Are you planning on colouring it?
?
Rent THE FINAL CUT. Or just buy the five-disc set.
NSFW:
http://www.f.oceansend.com/study_one.gif
bomb edit: link those boobies dude, it's in the OP