3Drendezvous with RisaA…

deg3D

Ah, Risa… 'nuff said.

Hope you enjoy it.

deg

It's only a model. - Patsy, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

[URL=" http://deg3d.biz/posts/deg3D_TOS.5_G7_RWR_1956.jpg "] [/URL]

cazman101

Very nice Deg. Is it possible to desaturate the colours a little and boost the contrast. don't get me wrong I think the pic is awesome but i think it looks a little rich in tone.

deg3D

Thanks, dude!

Oh sure it's possible, but I'm happy with it as is. In my TOS.5 universe, there is a reason the warning/attention-getting lines/markings are bright on the flight-deck, so as to, well, get one's attention, eh. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it, anywho.

deg

cazman101

Your happy with it that's the main thing. like i said it looks great

Freak

Another great Pic deg.

Kmpr´rak

It looks right like it is! Cool art, thanx for posting!

RAF-MX

Awesome job !... I especially love the amera angle ... fantastic!....17 hours? wow ( and that is a big wow!!)
Gran trabajo Deg!!

deg3D

Thanks much, my friends! Glad you enjoy the shot.

deg

korborak

Love the render!!
Tones are rich but everything is well balanced. I like it better this way than when dead boring flat gray tones are used...

deg3D

Thanks, my friend! Glad you like it.

deg

TrekMD

Oh, that looks very nice! :thumb:

tobiasrichter

Looks great! - but 17 hours ?

deg3D

Thanks, my friends!

Tobias, the higher render times in my bay are due to three main things:

a.) It's an interior (always seems to take more time, with me anywho).
b.) Slight blurred reflection goin' on all over, though that's a post process rendering effect.
c.) There are like 40+ Area Lights in my bay. Main culprit, I suspect.

I'm on a 3.0 Quad-Core Intel Mac. 4G of RAM, but only two gigs are accessed (as I understand it anywho) with LW 32-bit on Mac.

Been a while back with the bay, and at the time I just real-world lit it, using an Area Light in front of every flood or ceiling light I have in the bay. I'm not overly concerned with it as is, as I usually just let long-running stuff render overnight (but was kinda surprised she was still goin' the next morning (for even still so long), LOL), and I have no plans to do any animations with it or anything. If the time ever comes that I do, I will work out a much more efficient lighting-scheme for it. This was just an early-on in my lighting days balls-out ham-fisted real-world set-up. Took a uber-super amount of time to render (to my surprise as well), but I do like its results, eh.

deg

tobiasrichter

I see, yeah blurred reflecs and arealights tend to be on the bad side of render times But still, 17 hours is pretty hefty. But perfectly fine if you donA’t plan to do an animation...

deg3D

Yeah, my friend, but there does seem to be something amiss, as even when I did my F-104 in the same bay, with all it's own silver-bird blurred reflection surface, it only took like 6 hours at the same size, 1956 x 948. I suspect some kind of render snag at this point. There are times I have hit render after doing a lot of operations, and the render just crawled. I then would abort, quit LightWave and reload and hit render and it goes normal and fine. That may be the case of what happened, as 17 hours is waaaay-wonky. Come morning, I just let it keep going to be done with it. Lazy basically.

deg

IRML

I'd say ditch the area lights - no need for them when you can use radiosity instead, I did a render of tobian's pluto station for 3D world magazine which was 5339 x 3626 pixels, a 7.5 million poly model, multi bounce radiosity, gaussian reflections, uber tight AA settings, and it only took 22 hours - so you can see how crazy 17 hours is for your image, 40 area lights is surely playing a part in that

but that's technical stuff, on an artistic level I'd try and do something with the planet to make it look less like a nasa image ripped from google, it doesn't quite seem to integrate with the scene right now and it looks a bit dark and lifeless, when you use a jpeg background plate like that what you might not realise is you've lost all the range from the original image, so something like this would be better I think, trying to simulate the larger dynamic range that the original would have had if you were exposing for the shuttlebay, also there's a little bit of contrast added to help hide the bare walls

deg-retouch.jpg

(excuse the quick touchup, just wanted an example of what I meant)

tobian

Yeah, it's quite a cool start for an image, but there's something seriously wrong if it's taking 17 hours on that Spec of a machine!

I'm not a big fan of the glows you added to the engines, so I did a more subtle layered gamma modified version, which I think looks a lot better.

Perhaps the image would look a little better if you introduced energy conserving shaders, and reflection blurs. Spec kind of fails for very small lights close to the surface, it looks somewhat silly, especially in LW, and a reflection-blur based shader would look much nicer.

mattc

IRML wrote: »

when you use a jpeg background plate

I'm pretty sure that's the one that ships with LW for one of the deault space scenes from 5.0 days.

deg3D

Hey, thanks a ton, guys!

I will revisit the image given time, based on your excellent tips. Esp. now that I see your guys' versions. And yeah, the render time is whack.

IRML, if I may, what are gaussian reflections? I am using the Soften Reflections post filter for the inside of the bay, not sure what you are referring to...

How did you achieve this look, and would it have to be done all in post like you did, or how could it be achieved in LW per an animation? Did you use Gamma or Exposure adjustments in Photoshop to get it looking like that then? BTW, it didn't look anything like that as I got it originally. I actually did brighten it up just a touch. No prob on the image, thanks for the sample.

tobain, What exactly did you do to get the engines like that? Did you just retouch out the over-flow glow? And, how could I get that look right out of LW, just turn down the post glow spread?

And "energy conserving shaders;" as in? Excuse me, I'm not as savvy with rendering as I am with modeling/painting, and with LW's render tricks in general as you guys are. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to help me out in this area. BTW, waiting for your guys' April 3D World mag to arrive. I guess the Aï¿¡20 s/h fee was a mistake, so it did end up only costing me Aï¿¡10 total.

mattc wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that's the one that ships with LW for one of the deault space scenes from 5.0 days.

LOL, no never, Matt. Oh God perish the thought, the thought of it makes me cringe. All my space shots are SUPER-SUPER hi-rez mission shots that I got from NASA, which of note, I (or any American) can use royalty and credit free any way one wishes to as I paid for them with my taxes.

Thanks again, guys! I appreciate the time and help!

deg

IRML

gaussian reflections is a plugin node that does more realistic reflection blurs but is very slow, basically I was using it as an example of why 17 hours is so wrong, like you're using post process blurs and I'm using real blur that's even slower than LW's default blurs and I still got a similar render time with that and all the other features of the render

if you want to sort out glows try using corona instead of glow, glow sucks really

tobian

yeah to get good glows, sadly it's almost always in post. Never do 'Glow' inside LW, and if you do, do it to the image once you have saved it out, load it into a blank scene, as a backgroun and then do it using something like corona, which you can key to luminous brightness or something. That way it takes seconds to test it out and see if it looks good: There's nothing worse than doing a render, waiting 17 hours, then discovering your glows suck, which are about 30 seconds at the end of the process, and your image is undo-ably written-on then!

I don't go into how the glows are done in the 3D world magazine, but I do go into how to do 'advanced' surfaces properly, so hopefully you can get something out of the video. It explains how you do Gamma adjustment to your model, and final render, to get it to look good. and yeah it's almost impossible to get good lighting in interiors without gamma adjustment, but it's tricky, so enjoy the tutorial video

As for the glows, I used the fact you had basically a black area round the grilles, quickly masked it out using the polygon lasso tool in Photoshop, duplicated out the luminous element, duplicating it, progressively blurring it, and applying them using screen mode (The file size is a lot smaller if you did it in AE ). I can send you the PS element of the bit I did, if you're interested, to see what I did?:D

The 'gaussian' reflection method is WAY more realistic than the default LW blurry reflections, but it's slower, as IRML says. The new DP nodes reflection blurs are also the most superior and realistic (sadly, currently offline if you don't have a copy, due to a copyright issue over on NT forums, but back soon I believe), but also way slower than the native ones' (and that's saying something!!!!) Blurring reflections using a softening filter or anything that involves post-processing always leads to a pile of fail!

deg3D

Thanks again, guys, for the follow-up.

So the GB node, this is something in LW or a 3rd party plug-in? That I can recall, I am only familiar with the post effect and the Reflection Blurring option in the Environment tab...

And the new DP(?) nodes reflection blurs....? I do believe I DL'ed a bunch of DP stuff (that's all those lighting kit stuff that one guy wrote, correct? Forgive me newbie ignorant lack of savvy, savvy) the minute I read about it (can't recall where), but I have yet to even look at it...

Such a noob me, come this render stuff. But, the only cure for ignorance is knowledge, eh. No shame in that. Just plain stupid or arrogant, that's another case. And I ani't either of those.

Thanks yet again, dudes!

deg

mattc

deg3D wrote: »

LOL, no never, Matt. Oh God perish the thought, the thought of it makes me cringe. All my space shots are SUPER-SUPER hi-rez mission shots that I got from NASA, which of note, I (or any American) can use royalty and credit free any way one wishes to as I paid for them with my taxes.

Thanks again, guys! I appreciate the time and help!

deg

Well, whatever. It looks awful.

As for energy conserving shaders, you need to make sure that the diffuse, specularity and glossiness percentages add up to 100%. Not all that hard really. My reference here is a Guide to Rendering:Mental Ray, pg 342, paragraph 3 which defines an energy conserving shader as:

Energy-conserving shaders are shaders that limit the total reflected light (Radiance exitance) not to exceed the total incidence (Irradiance) flux.

i.e the amount of output light of a surface should not exceed the maximum input (which is why you limit it to 100% in LW). Or if you're lazy, just use the delta material node. This actually applies across Max, XSI, Maya, C4D, Blender, Modo and LW btw (unbiased physically-based renderers like Maxwell or Fryrender handle this stuff automatically). Unless a surface is providing illumination into a scene, it can't/shouldn't be brighter than the lighting applied to it.

It's not a LW render trick, but more an understanding of how real materials act physically. This is an important concept for everyone to grasp. It's easy to ruin an image by not understanding these key concepts. These days, there's no real excuse as there is plenty of material around to explain how it works.

My observation is that whilst the modelling is excellent, the surfacing and lighting leaves a lot to be desired and takes a lot away from any realism the scene may have had. i.e. it becomes just another poor quality render.

As for the glows, set all the surfaces with a non-glow to black, render out that pass and composite in your favourite package (i.e. import a as layer in PS over your base image, set to 'screen', and Gaussian blur as desired or something along those lines). The in built LW glows are awful and as Dave mentioned, Corona is probably a better idea if you want to go down that route.

Anyway, Dave and Andrew are far more into the end results, where as I just have an interest from a real world physics point of view. 3 years of university physics and 15 years as a optical engineer will do that.

M.

tobian

The Gaussian reflection blur node, is part of the Pomm's nodes pack http://www.db-w.com/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,84/func,select/id,13/ available as freeware. Yes the DP reflections node is part of his DPKIT but it's from the absolutely newest version, so if you don't have that, you won't have it in the kit. (the version I have is dated March 19th, 2010). I can't send it to you though, as that's part of the reason why they are offline now! Like any 'replacement' reflections mode, you simply do with it exactly what you do with LW reflections: Plug it into the 'reflection shading', red input, and then apply your blur amount to it, instead of the reflection blurring input of the base material blurring amount. Otherwise you do exactly what you do in my video on setting up the energy conserving shaded materials.

and BTW, Deg, using LCS isn't really about post-processing your image gamma and colours AT ALL, (That's just what we did to help tweak the final render) Using LCS is, as Matt says, about producing physically accurate lighting, which is a separate issue to tone-mapping your final image to match the look of film etc (though again using LCS helps a lot in this arena!)

Delta is also not the be-all and end all of making energy conserving shaders either, it's just a way of slapping your hand and making you stop using diffuse as anything other than the inverse of the 'spec' input, which is why you need to get to know how to use a Fresnel response curve. (and I am not even going to go into the issue of the broken Cook-Torrence shader model in all of the materials! )

deg3D

mattc wrote: »

As for energy conserving shaders, you need to make sure that the diffuse, specularity and glossiness percentages add up to 100%. Not all that hard really. My reference here is a Guide to Rendering:Mental Ray, pg 342, paragraph 3 which defines an energy conserving shader as:

Energy-conserving shaders are shaders that limit the total reflected light (Radiance exitance) not to exceed the total incidence (Irradiance) flux.

i.e the amount of output light of a surface should not exceed the maximum input (which is why you limit it to 100% in LW). Or if you're lazy, just use the delta material node. This actually applies across Max, XSI, Maya, C4D, Blender, Modo and LW btw (unbiased physically-based renderers like Maxwell or Fryrender handle this stuff automatically). Unless a surface is providing illumination into a scene, it can't/shouldn't be brighter than the lighting applied to it.

It's not a LW render trick, but more an understanding of how real materials act physically. This is an important concept for everyone to grasp. It's easy to ruin an image by not understanding these key concepts. These days, there's no real excuse as there is plenty of material around to explain how it works.

My observation is that whilst the modelling is excellent, the surfacing and lighting leaves a lot to be desired and takes a lot away from any realism the scene may have had. i.e. it becomes just another poor quality render.

As for the glows, set all the surfaces with a non-glow to black, render out that pass and composite in your favourite package (i.e. import a as layer in PS over your base image, set to 'screen', and Gaussian blur as desired or something along those lines). The in built LW glows are awful and as Dave mentioned, Corona is probably a better idea if you want to go down that route.

Thanks, dude, for all that info.

deg

deg3D

tobian wrote: »

The Gaussian reflection blur node, is part of the Pomm's nodes pack http://www.db-w.com/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,84/func,select/id,13/ available as freeware. Yes the DP reflections node is part of his DPKIT but it's from the absolutely newest version, so if you don't have that, you won't have it in the kit. (the version I have is dated March 19th, 2010). I can't send it to you though, as that's part of the reason why they are offline now! Like any 'replacement' reflections mode, you simply do with it exactly what you do with LW reflections: Plug it into the 'reflection shading', red input, and then apply your blur amount to it, instead of the reflection blurring input of the base material blurring amount. Otherwise you do exactly what you do in my video on setting up the energy conserving shaded materials.

and BTW, Deg, using LCS isn't really about post-processing your image gamma and colours AT ALL, (That's just what we did to help tweak the final render) Using LCS is, as Matt says, about producing physically accurate lighting, which is a separate issue to tone-mapping your final image to match the look of film etc (though again using LCS helps a lot in this arena!)

Delta is also not the be-all and end all of making energy conserving shaders either, it's just a way of slapping your hand and making you stop using diffuse as anything other than the inverse of the 'spec' input, which is why you need to get to know how to use a Fresnel response curve. (and I am not even going to go into the issue of the broken Cook-Torrence shader model in all of the materials! )

OMG, dude, you're making my head spin. In a good way mind you. Perhaps some day I'll get up to speed with all you just shared with me. I'll keep at it.

Firing up Google...

Thanks, my friend. Can't wait to get your tut and mag.

deg

deg3D

tobian wrote: »

The Gaussian reflection blur node, is part of the Pomm's nodes pack http://www.db-w.com/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,84/func,select/id,13/ available as freeware. Yes the DP reflections node is part of his DPKIT but it's from the absolutely newest version, so if you don't have that, you won't have it in the kit. (the version I have is dated March 19th, 2010). I can't send it to you though, as that's part of the reason why they are offline now! Like any 'replacement' reflections mode, you simply do with it exactly what you do with LW reflections: Plug it into the 'reflection shading', red input, and then apply your blur amount to it, instead of the reflection blurring input of the base material blurring amount. Otherwise you do exactly what you do in my video on setting up the energy conserving shaded materials.

and BTW, Deg, using LCS isn't really about post-processing your image gamma and colours AT ALL, (That's just what we did to help tweak the final render) Using LCS is, as Matt says, about producing physically accurate lighting, which is a separate issue to tone-mapping your final image to match the look of film etc (though again using LCS helps a lot in this arena!)

Delta is also not the be-all and end all of making energy conserving shaders either, it's just a way of slapping your hand and making you stop using diffuse as anything other than the inverse of the 'spec' input, which is why you need to get to know how to use a Fresnel response curve. (and I am not even going to go into the issue of the broken Cook-Torrence shader model in all of the materials! )

tobain, just a quick Q or two based on what you shared, DPKIT? Wasn't that stuff free-ware (IIRC), so I don't get what the deal is with sharing it about. Not asking for it mind you, just curious as to what the ta-do is all about (if it was free-ware).

Also, you say it will be coming back, any time when, ya know? As I know my version is not that new. Got it like two months or so ago.

And, (and again, excuse me noob-ness), LCS? I'm sure that is in ref to what you have already been speaking to me about, but what does it stand for? Maybe I am missing something obvious due to me head-spinning factor.

Thanks again, mate.

deg

tobian

NP. Making an energy conserving shader is like 30 seconds work! You will see me doing one, and you can see it's not complex. Making a model and render into LCS is NOT hard, technically, again, it takes me only a few minutes to showcase how it's working. The hard part is to get your mind around WHY you are doing it, and what are the important settings to tweak, and what's irrelevant. Specularity is like a bad drug you have to wean yourself off. Sometimes useful for a quick fix, but if you do to much of it and it'll make your world go wrong LW 9.x doesn't correctly do a realistic BSDF for specular, nor correct reflections, so it's best to ditch both if you can!

and working in LCS will blow your mind, you'll suddenly find your images are full of a tonne of light AND you won't get horrible light-burn from overcompensating lights. As Matt says it's not a 'trick' it's about understanding how light and our eyes work!

LCS is a shorthand term for 'linear colour space' which otherwise is about setting up your renders to have a Gamma response of 1.0 (which is a straight line - linear) as opposed to a Gamma modified PC display ( usually around 2.2 or 1.8 on old mac's, Snow Leopard uses 2.2) which looks like a curve, if you've ever looked at Gamma curves in Photoshop!

*I* Didn't share DP Kit LOL, basically someone on the NT forum uploaded a version of the DPkit textures to the NT forum, because the download wasn't working properly, but Denis got upset about this, as a condition of his DP kit, and other shared works, is you do not re-distribute. That's his copyright. So he pulled down his site. I do believe he's putting it back up, but I have no idea when. The point I was making is don't ask for people to share you his works, as that is what got us into this mess!

Don't get it into your head you won't get it. It's just tools. Some tools are easier to get than others. It's pretty simple to pick up a hammer and use it, but then it's also time-taking to learn how to use it RIGHT. Some tools are a lot scarier and more intimidating to pick up, like say a nail gun, but once you're going with it and you get how to use it, you can't imagine not using it, and how it enables you to do things you couldn't do without it. Don't give up before you've started! The thing about all of this energy conserving/LCS stuff is it affects everything, as Matt says, You really need to get it for all software, to get the best renders out!

deg3D

Dude, you're such a gent, and then some!

And, oh d'oh!, sure sire on LCS! *smacks head* I have been wanting to learn more about it since it started popping up to my notice. Just never seems to be enough hours in the day(s), eh. Then it slips me mind, and I forget altogether to persue it. Thanks for the remind!

And no worries, I'm not the shrinking-violet imitated type, eh, tools or ortherwise, so no prob there. I live to learn new and better ways of doing stuff, and like I said, you are a pure gent in the way you graiously share all your advanced knowledge. You've always been good that way, as long as I can remember, and this day is no exception.

I didn't bookmark my thread as I never do, but I will now, given all you have filled me in on. Primed the pump anywho. Can't wait for that April issue to get here, eh.

Thanks again, brother! I know it takes time to compose and type all that stuff out, so double-thanks to ya!

deg

deg3D

Oh, and yeah, I totally get Denis' right and call for no re-distribution. I honor that, 100% I never use pirated anything of any kind. Doesn't jive with me for me. I have NP waiting for him to make his stuff available again, if he does. I would appreciate a heads-up on when and if he does though, as you seem to be/keep more abreast of these things than I, eh.

deg

deg3D

Hey T, one other thing, do you go into LCS in your tuts, or if not and even so, do you have a particular webpage that breaks down the work-flow. I have found some, just be interested in seeing any you approve of, eh.

deg