Okay, this time I'll go about things a little different than with the last image I posted. This time I'm looking for sustains and improves. Sustains as in things that are working/look cool, and improves as in how a particular aspect could be improved. I always appreciate constructive input! Clicky for full size render. Sustains: 1. I really like how the corrugated steel wall turned out and how the light reflects off of it, despite it turning out looking a bit more like aluminum. 2. The composition is much more effective than my last image. I actually employed such practices as the rule of 3rds. 3. I like the overall lighting/look of the image. It has a soft, almost painted quality. Improves: 1. The large photons really splotched on the sliding door on the right. Dropping photon sizes considerably on the light source hitting that wall would help a lot. 2. My glass is a bit too see through. It needs to be dirtied up a bit to look more natural. 3. The point light inside of the computer wound up WAY too intense, which completely flashed out the glass dome it is contained within. The intensity needs to be lowered and the transparency of the dome lowered and/or the internal reflectivity of the glass dome needs to be increased. Time spent on the image: 2 hours pulling out quotes from source and arranging image on paper. 6 hours modeling (not including sword). 3 hours texturing. 5 hours doing various renderings. Kudos for anyone who can figure out what the picture is a render of.

Nice image. For the most part this is some pretty convincing modeling and light rendering. I especially like the specular above the bench.

Some small things:
I think the swords should cast a bit more of a shadow on the table. Right now I'm not sure if they look actually on there.

Also you have something pretty close to a line of tangency between the table and the bench cushion. I'd want to get rid of that if it were me. My preference would be to not make the table perfectly parallel to the bench. I would have the table overlap the cushion at some point.

Looks great! My only improve is that it looks a little shiny?

I'm not sure what you are going for, but as it is, a casual observer finding this scene in real life would probably think, "what the hell, who gave that pallet eight coats of varnish?"

I think the chair material works at that reflective level, not so much with the bricks. I can't really make out what on the table with the swords.

Overall it needs more work with the shadows. It looks like you have an Ambient Occlusion (or is that just from Global Illumination or Final Gather?). But you need some real Area Shadows or Adv Ray Tracing or whatever your program calls it... there needs to be stronger shadows around the contact points (cinder blocks, chair legs, swords). Also, could use with some self shadows, such as the chair on itself, the palette throwing bands of light on the lower half of the palette, etc. I don't know where the light source is coming from, right now it looks very diffused... shadows would help this, as would increasing your Photon count (so they are not noticable, like you know already) to make bright photos less 'specular' looking.

Overall, I like it, and I think its a good image to learn how to render with. The materials are nice, the composition is nice (I agree with AP about the couch and table, though), and the modelling is nice. Just work on your lighting and rendering.

Quote: I especially like the specular above the bench.

Thanks. Like I said, I really dig how that turned out, too.

Quote: I think the swords should cast a bit more of a shadow on the table. Right now I'm not sure if they look actually on there.

Yeah, I recognized that problem as well, on multiple parts of the image, and tried to fix it, but when I tried to apply final gathering (which would have fixed the problem), it kept crashing Maya repeatedly on the computer I was working with. I don't know what I was doing wrong, but I'm going to have to play around with final gathering a bit more in the future and get a better grasp of how it operates in Maya.

Quote: Also you have something pretty close to a line of tangency between the table and the bench cushion. I'd want to get rid of that if it were me. My preference would be to not make the table perfectly parallel to the bench. I would have the table overlap the cushion at some point.

In hindsight, yeah, you're right. I didn't really think about it before. I placed a reasonable distance between the two for someone's legs and yet for them to still be able to reach the table, but I didn't think to shift the table a bit so it wasn't so perfectly (and thus unnaturally) lined up with the futon.

Quote: I'm not sure what you are going for, but as it is, a casual observer finding this scene in real life would probably think, "what the hell, who gave that pallet eight coats of varnish?"

The funny thing is that I actually used a lambert shader on the pallet, so it isn't emitting any specularity. It is actually just getting washed out from the intense lights.

Quote: I think the chair material works at that reflective level, not so much with the bricks. I can't really make out what on the table with the swords.

Again, I used a lambert shader on the CMU blocks as well, but the lighting makes them look shinier than they're supposed to. If you look at the larger version of the image you'll see an ashtray (entirely too transparent) and that there is a cigarette, cigarette box, and that weird shiny black thing is a computer. I do appreciate you pointing it out though, it shows that it is something that I need to work on more.

Quote: Overall it needs more work with the shadows. It looks like you have an Ambient Occlusion (or is that just from Global Illumination or Final Gather?). But you need some real Area Shadows or Adv Ray Tracing or whatever your program calls it... there needs to be stronger shadows around the contact points (cinder blocks, chair legs, swords). Also, could use with some self shadows, such as the chair on itself, the palette throwing bands of light on the lower half of the palette, etc. I don't know where the light source is coming from, right now it looks very diffused... shadows would help this, as would increasing your Photon count (so they are not noticable, like you know already) to make bright photos less 'specular' looking.

Like I said, I couldn't get final gathering to work right. It kept crashing Maya. I'm going to have to play around with it a bit more.

Thanks for everyone's input. I appreciate it a lot!

Really like the background above the bench, and love the corrugated steel for the handles. Just like the others, my only suggestion would be the specularity on the pallet and cinder blocks. I'd also like to see you try a slightly rougher texture on the cinder blocks. I do love the total composition though.

the modelling is great but i think you could improve the image quality a lot by changing the lightning and surface parameters.

- There is no direct lighning going on, why?
- The photons really need tweaking it's all *very* noisy(there's a good tutorial
on global illumation on learning-maya.com)
- The objects look extremly shiny, the specular is a little strong i think.

those are the things that are most important. If you got the tweaking right, you culd also make the objects a little dirtier. bumpmaps for example add a lot of realism. Often the greyscale of the color texture as a bumpmap works ok.


regards,
m4gnus

As far as "style" here is concerned, I think the pallet on the cinder blocks should be a little more un-even. It looks almost too perfect the way it's sitting.
Just a thought. :D