Very nice! I think you could do with either less or more key lighting, to either send everything into shadows, or get some more bounce? Either way very cool new details!
I added an HDRI environment for the last two renders, but its effect was pretty much nullified in the tone mapping; I'll play around with the lighting balance for the next set. It's a good look for a final scene but not so good for seeing all the thynges!
Been detailing various areas, trying to get this thing a bit closer to completion. Sorted most of the issues with the lighting from the last set of renders (was a spurious curves adjustment where it shouldn't have been), but was being plagued by blotches initially. I have those largely under control now.
v1 of the impulse engine effect I am quite liking. I have a few minor modifications lined up, and I also need to make them render faster - they're a massive time sink at the moment.
I apologise in advance for the crapness added by the forum software. Shall probably stop uploading here soon as it is a bit ridiculous. Will host the images on my own server instead.
[Edit: Replacing images with ones on my server to get around the crapness.]
Cheers guys. OK, done with attachments. They suck. Renders hosted on my server from now on.
Yeah you have to be under 488kB or it re-sizes it down 1 or 2 pixels and compresses it to hell with a very crappy and old version of jpeg. Even at the same level of compression psp7 produces cleaner jpgs. I forget the max rez but it is much higher than 1920X****.
Liking the impulse grills. Worth the time to render.
Liking the impulse grills. Worth the time to render.
They're currently a mixture of blurry transparency, some blurry reflection and SSS. To be fair, they were actually rendering reasonably fast when I was testing the settings, so presumably I managed to increase the time by an order of magnitude when I was fiddling with improving the general render settings a bit later. Planning some changes to the lighting setup next time around to further reduce the blotches and I will try and make them faster then. I don't really want to lose the effect I've got there anyway
Somehow managing to keep going on this at the moment! Tackled the robot under the saucer - tried not to let it look too much like the thing it really is... probably failed there. Weird detail.
Also I have dealt with the aft bulkhead. I was leaving this for as long as possible, in the hope that I would find a decent reference for it. That piece is removable on the studio model, and the mounting arm usually goes in through the hole it leaves, so you don't get to see it in any of the model shots. There were a couple of blurry stills available from TNG episodes, but they didn't help. Fortunately, the Blu-Ray remastering has brought about a semi-decent high-res shot of that area (one scene seems to have been lost and replaced with a very innacurate 3D model, but another must have been intact), so what I have done in that area is fairly accurate. I couldn't quite make out exactly what was going on there, but it's way closer than I could have managed from anything that was available before.
Added the phaser turrets and the saucer thrusters, plus some small details on top rear saucer area. There are still a few more details to go in there, but I find doing those really small greebles a bit of a bore, so I'm trying to spread them out a bit.
That's looking great. The robot is definitely a funky bit. At least Greg Jein sunk it into the hull. I've never seen that part on the ready room model, but the robot is reportedly just glued on there. For some silly reason, Rick Sternbach and Andy Probert thought that was a good idea.
I'm glad I have to type this out, since... well, you can't hear me. And even if you could, it is very hard to understand someone's praise when their mouth is fully agape.
The render settings are fairly straight forward really. Just using c4d's physical camera/renderer, no particularly fancy effects apart from a touch of barrel distortion. I just noticed that the vignetting doesn't seem to be working very well at the moment so I'll investigate that for next time. The lighting setup is one single infinite light, and currently a uniformly lit skydome around the whole scene for some fill light. I'm ditching the skydome for next time as it doesn't make any sense in space, and shall be using a reflector (probably with a picture of Earth mapped to it) instead. Shall see how that goes. Output is OpenEXR.
In post I'm just applying some chromatic aberration to make it look like I'm using a **** lens, adding some subtle grain, some subtle bloom... there's a dust layer and I've been tinkering with my flares setup lately as well. Tobian helped out a lot since he has quite a lot of experience arsing about in AE now The final step really is to tone map everything. It's gradually approaching what I'm after... need to work on improving the lighting as I said. Blotches are still present but much less noticeable now, although that's come at the expense of a serious delay when rendering the impulse engines - those are currently not even remotely optimised so I will be putting some effort into improving them soon.
The render settings are fairly straight forward really. Just using c4d's physical camera/renderer, no particularly fancy effects apart from a touch of barrel distortion. I just noticed that the vignetting doesn't seem to be working very well at the moment so I'll investigate that for next time. The lighting setup is one single infinite light, and currently a uniformly lit skydome around the whole scene for some fill light. I'm ditching the skydome for next time as it doesn't make any sense in space, and shall be using a reflector (probably with a picture of Earth mapped to it) instead. Shall see how that goes. Output is OpenEXR.
This all sounds pretty straight-forward.
In post I'm just applying some chromatic aberration to make it look like I'm using a **** lens, adding some subtle grain, some subtle bloom... there's a dust layer and I've been tinkering with my flares setup lately as well. Tobian helped out a lot since he has quite a lot of experience arsing about in AE now The final step really is to tone map everything.
This is probably what I'm responding to most. The tone-mapping is giving your images a really lovely luminiscent quality. Any chance you could go into more detail on what sort of tone mapping you're doing, or point me toward resources where I could learn more and try stuff out?
Here's a comparison between the 'raw' output from cinema (that is to say, how it appears with an exposure setting of 0.0, and reduced to 8 bits/channel for jpeg... of course the original image has a lot more information in it than can be represented at any one time on a standard monitor), and the final post-processed image.
Before:
... and after:
[Edit]: haha, just noticed I totally screwed up the date on that... Talk about living in the past!
SO I was working my way around the saucer rim, and I kid you not, I just fell in through a big hole. Since I appeared to be trapped inside, I starting wasting as much time as possible, by doing this.
Nothing in this scene is finalised. The material (yeah, there is only one ) is still very much in development, because frankly it looks a bit crud at the moment. Also there's still a fair bit of modelling to do - I haven't bevelled any edges yet. I'm also wondering why the hell I'm doing all this, since you can't even see down this bit of corridor from inside the shuttlebay, never mind from outside, looking in. Still...
Posts
Seriously, that's stellar work. :thumb:
v1 of the impulse engine effect I am quite liking. I have a few minor modifications lined up, and I also need to make them render faster - they're a massive time sink at the moment.
I apologise in advance for the crapness added by the forum software. Shall probably stop uploading here soon as it is a bit ridiculous. Will host the images on my own server instead.
[Edit: Replacing images with ones on my server to get around the crapness.]
[Full Size]
[Full Size]
[Full Size]
[Full Size]
"A bit closer to completion."
Yeah, that's how you have to view it when working on this beast. The level of detail is insane for a Trek ship.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
Yeah you have to be under 488kB or it re-sizes it down 1 or 2 pixels and compresses it to hell with a very crappy and old version of jpeg. Even at the same level of compression psp7 produces cleaner jpgs. I forget the max rez but it is much higher than 1920X****.
Liking the impulse grills. Worth the time to render.
It's all about the details.
They're currently a mixture of blurry transparency, some blurry reflection and SSS. To be fair, they were actually rendering reasonably fast when I was testing the settings, so presumably I managed to increase the time by an order of magnitude when I was fiddling with improving the general render settings a bit later. Planning some changes to the lighting setup next time around to further reduce the blotches and I will try and make them faster then. I don't really want to lose the effect I've got there anyway
Also I have dealt with the aft bulkhead. I was leaving this for as long as possible, in the hope that I would find a decent reference for it. That piece is removable on the studio model, and the mounting arm usually goes in through the hole it leaves, so you don't get to see it in any of the model shots. There were a couple of blurry stills available from TNG episodes, but they didn't help. Fortunately, the Blu-Ray remastering has brought about a semi-decent high-res shot of that area (one scene seems to have been lost and replaced with a very innacurate 3D model, but another must have been intact), so what I have done in that area is fairly accurate. I couldn't quite make out exactly what was going on there, but it's way closer than I could have managed from anything that was available before.
Added the phaser turrets and the saucer thrusters, plus some small details on top rear saucer area. There are still a few more details to go in there, but I find doing those really small greebles a bit of a bore, so I'm trying to spread them out a bit.
[Full Size]
[Full Size]
[Full Size]
[Full Size]
[Full Size]
[Full Size]
Still need to tweak those render settings - I forgot and did another render of those impulse engines. Clever man!
I really love your lighting and your post effects. Have I already asked what you're doing there? If not...what are your lighting/post settings like?
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
I'm glad I have to type this out, since... well, you can't hear me. And even if you could, it is very hard to understand someone's praise when their mouth is fully agape.
BEAUTIFUL work dude!
In post I'm just applying some chromatic aberration to make it look like I'm using a **** lens, adding some subtle grain, some subtle bloom... there's a dust layer and I've been tinkering with my flares setup lately as well. Tobian helped out a lot since he has quite a lot of experience arsing about in AE now
This is probably what I'm responding to most. The tone-mapping is giving your images a really lovely luminiscent quality. Any chance you could go into more detail on what sort of tone mapping you're doing, or point me toward resources where I could learn more and try stuff out?
Thanks for the info!
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
Here's a comparison between the 'raw' output from cinema (that is to say, how it appears with an exposure setting of 0.0, and reduced to 8 bits/channel for jpeg... of course the original image has a lot more information in it than can be represented at any one time on a standard monitor), and the final post-processed image.
Before:
... and after:
[Edit]: haha, just noticed I totally screwed up the date on that...
Nothing in this scene is finalised. The material (yeah, there is only one
Great job!