3DCustom ships in the sunset - comp experiment

IgnusFast

Pure Lightwave render, no post work. All of the ships are mine; the sunset image is just something bought from Shutterstock...

Got an error trying to upload a jpg - unsure if it worked or not.

WideFoot

This is great work! I love the lighting and the way it makes the scene seem comfortable and alive.

Was the little shadow on the clouds at the very bottom of the station part of the image, or did you somehow add that yourself? (I'm guessing the latter) It really grounds the models in reality seeing those shadows on the clouds and makes it look like the station is just barely touching them.

I would note that the way the station and that large docked cargo ship are angled compared to the background image makes it appear as if they are leaning toward the camera. The vanishing point is somewhere around the height of the sun. It would look more natural at the horizon.

And, we are all having issues uploading images.

MKF gives some good advice for at least making images appear in posts, if not on the thumbnail.

evil_genius_180

That's some really solid work. I really like the models, great work on those. The shadow on the clouds is indeed a good way of blending things together.

IgnusFast

Thanks, guys! I'll tweak the angle and see how it looks. The shadow is a simple plane surfaced with the Shadow Catcher node, but set to about 65%.

IgnusFast

Here it is with the angle changed and the bloom knocked back a little...

evil_genius_180

That angle fix looks better.

Rokket

Nice job of using motion blur on the two ships. It gives the image a sense of movement and brings reality to the scene. I agree with the other comments on the shadow angle.

IRML

if I may make some suggestions

take your colour cues from the clouds, as they are neutral you can trust the colours that are hitting them - so I think your key light needs to be less yellow and more orange, and your shadows/fill need to be more blue

IgnusFast

I actually don't even have a fill light - it's purely a sphere light for the sun (which I'll play with making more orange) and background filling in with GI. I'll play with the color though, and upload a new image.

IgnusFast

Changes:
Rotated the station a little
Changed sun color and pushed it back to correct the shadow angle
Updated the Cruiser model with new engine glow

Samurai

There's some really nice detail in this scene, but its hidden slightly by some of the lighting settings.

IRML makes good suggestions, and I can see further improvement in your latest image. Continue playing with this and refining your colour selections.

Another suggestion may be to consider the shadowed areas- especially on the station, and explore a slight increase in contrast between the highlights (where the sun hits the metal/plastic/material especially) and the shadows (the joints between some of the box-sections facing us as we look at it). I really like the fact that there's some "bleed" from the red lights on the surfaces of the station, but it's almost lost in the ambient light as it is.

IgnusFast

Part of the lack of contrast was caused by fog. Here's another render with the fog removed. The difference is minimal, though...
Ambient light is actually completely off - all of the light (outside of that from the sun) is coming from GI off the background image.

IRML

what is actually the background image? is it a full 360 or just what we see here?

Samurai

Good explanation- thanks. I may be off with my advice here, and others will be able to provide more specific help, but you could try lowering the intensity of the GI and adding a directional light to mimic the star in the distance?

As I said, I may be way off- I was never much of a lighter/texturer/renderer (those with long memories will recall I wasn't much of a modeller either, heh... :shiner: )

Comco

I agree - If you look at the darkest shadows on the clouds - a good example to the left of the station - the station's surface facing away from the sun/star should be close to that level of illumination. The ambient light/GI is a little too bright at present. I'd also cut down the amount of illumination inside the station as well. At the moment it doesn't look like there's any glass in those windows (if they are, in fact windows?). If there is a transparent texture in there, I'd darken it up but 15% or something similar to properly sell it being there.

Personally, I'd go for sharper shadows as well, but then, I've always been a Raytraced shadows guy myself.

IgnusFast

Here's another tweak - this one has the GI level reduced. I also shrunk the sun a little to sharpen the shadows. I realize that it's a matter of personal taste, but now it's just too dark for me...



Edit: lol Son?

Comco

Agreed. A little too dark. You want to aim to not go any darker than the darkest shadow you see in the background image. I think you went too far the other way. This is super quick and nasty in Photoshop, but here's my take on it for you to compare. As you said, it's getting down into personal preference here, so feel free to disregard. To my eye, this blends better with your background plate.

IRML

the problem is that it needs to be resonably dark facing away from the sun, but the glare from the sun will compensate for that, you can't see it over the background image because it's mostly bright and this will hide it if you're using the correct gamma, but where you've added the ships and things you would get a glare that washes over the dark parts

publiusr

Has that TTA look to it.

IgnusFast

IRML wrote: »

the problem is that it needs to be resonably dark facing away from the sun, but the glare from the sun will compensate for that, you can't see it over the background image because it's mostly bright and this will hide it if you're using the correct gamma, but where you've added the ships and things you would get a glare that washes over the dark parts

Wouldn't that depend on the F-Stop and a lot of other options, if this were camera optics?

publiusr wrote: »

Has that TTA look to it.

Tri-State Transit Authority?

IRML

IgnusFast wrote: »

Wouldn't that depend on the F-Stop and a lot of other options, if this were camera optics?

did you render the background image with f-stop and a lot of other settings?

IgnusFast

IRML wrote: »

did you render the background image with f-stop and a lot of other settings?

I sense sarcasm, but yes. The simulated camera in Lightwave does all of those things. I guess I can check the background to see if it contains those settings; I think Lightwave will use them.

IRML

I suppose it was sarcasm, but not meant to cause offence, my point being glare happens, why start worrying about lens optics for that when they already play no part in your image

f-stop is only used in lightwave for depth of field, there are no other camera lens effects unless you are using the real lens camera, which only does distortion and vignette

so if you want any lens effects you have to do them yourself

IgnusFast

Gotcha - I am using the Real Lens camera; I thought it took more into account than that, but it's easily possible I'm wrong.