My first "public" image... (how exciting...)

[madcoo]

Hi everyone!

I'm only a newbie in 3D, thus my level is far below what you can see in the "Images" section, but I thought I'd give it a go, take courage, and show you the latest scene I've produced...

I discovered 3D with Blender about 6 months ago, and started using Indigo about 2-3 months ago.

All comments are welcome - I want to learn as much as possible!!!

(Ideally, if you post a "negative" comment, it'd be great if you could give me a tip that would help me solve the problem)

Thanks a lot, keep having fun guys!

[zeitmeister]

Nice one!

[WytRaven]

Composition is good. Colour continuity is good. The only thing I would pick on is that the sofa and footstool/coffee table looks like it is made from concrete slabs both in design and texture ...then again is that actually the idea? If so then it worked

As far as first images go this one is not bad at all so you shouldn't be embarrassed by it

[Polinalkrimizei]

Really nice! Makes me feel relaxed immediately as I am watching it in the office...
One crit: The sofa looks a little like it is made of concrete Could you share your mat settings?
And the orange juice has a strange color, if it is orange juice. You could use a mat from the liquid test forum. Or just tell me what kind of juice it is

[CTZn]

looks like it is made from concrete slabs both in design and texture ...then again is that actually the idea? If so then it worked

true, the lack of details there is contrasting a big deal with the wood texture, wich is nicely laid out that said.

Give the set a colourfull texture, while watching its saturation though.

[madcoo]

Thanks for you replies !

I started writing this message, and it turned out to become a proper short-story!!! So I've divided it into chapters!

Chapter I - The Mystery of the Concrete Sofa...
I totally agree with you : the fabric for the sofa is not realistic at all.
In fact it is "home-made"
- I took a (close-up) picture of some fabric
- then I photoshopped it into grey levels so I could get a bump map from it
I then chose a white matt material, added no albedo at all and only used the bump map
(I just wanted to use the white color, not the original color of the fabric I had photographed)

(color set to R: 0.8 ; G: 0.8 ; B: 0.8 since I've seen in other topics that you should always use "an 80% white" or "an 80% black" and never use pure white or pure black - I think it means you should never go further than RGB values set to 0.8 for White, and never below RGB values set to 0.2 for Black - or maybe I'm mistaken...)
Hence the grey color...

The problem is also that i should have resized my sofa's UVMap, so that the details of the fabric really show.

So I think that this "concrete effect" is the result of the combination of :
- a somewhat grey-ish material (because I didn't use a pure white color)
- a tiny size for the fabric details
- and also the effect of image compression (as a result of uploading it), which adds darker hues and more"fireflies" than the original image I've got at home (I've got smoother shadow transitions on the faces that are in the shade)

Chapter II - The Dark Orange Juice...
Indeed, I've had some problems with making the orange juice.
No offense for the person who made the orange juice in the mats DB, but I think it's too "dull" and translucid compared with real orange juice.
I tried to play with transparency and SSS for hours, but couldn't get a nice nearly-opaque orange juice...
So I cheated (yes i admit!) - I used a glossy mat, no transparency here at all!
If someone's got a tip here, you're more than welcome!

Chapter III - Questions that need Answering...
Well... all in all, I've got three questions:
- how do you get a proper WHITE colour without pushing R/G/B values all the way to 1 ?
- any advice for my orange juice mat?
- any advice for my coffee-table ? Polinalkrimizei > you seem to think it looks like concrete too, but I used a "white-ish wood" picture as a basis for it, maybe I should have used another kind of wood (darker maybe)?

1) Thanks for reading this huge post till the end !!!
2) Thanks for your comments
3) Thanks in advance for your replies !


Have fun!

Mad.

[Polinalkrimizei]

No, the wood is ok, it doesn't look like concrete. The uv maps at the legs are a little streched maybe...

[madcoo]

Yep, actually it's due to the part of the wood picture I used for the legs...
Next time I'll use the part of the picture that shows more "eyes" in the wood (sorry if this is bad English - I hope you understand what I mean)

Maybe low resolution (800x600) doesn't help either...

When I have enough money I might buy the Professional Indigo version.


And... anyone's got any tips for the questions I asked?
Thanks!

[CTZn]

So I think that this "concrete effect" is the result of the combination of :
- a somewhat grey-ish material (because I didn't use a pure white color)
- a tiny size for the fabric details
- and also the effect of image compression (as a result of uploading it), which adds darker hues and more"fireflies" than the original image I've got at home (I've got smoother shadow transitions on the faces that are in the shade)

You missed what I believe has the greater impact at the scale of the image: planarity. Give the mattresses a few strokes of a sculpting brush and they will also look less like a construction material (j/k ).

White is reached around the value of 0.85, but camera white balance, a bit, and tonemapping, essentially, are playing a role here.

[madcoo]

Thanks for your reply Ctzn!

Yeah, I tried to minimize this "concrete block" effect by pushing upwards and downwards some vertices, but because the sun hits the faces directly, the desired "matress" effect doesn't show.

I need to subdivide my meshes si I get more vertices, and I'll try your tip with Blender's Sculpt Mode - a brilliant idea!!!

I'm not quite sure about what you said about the White color though:
- I understand the "0.85" value, no problem with this - thanks! (if i want white color, i push the R,G, and B values up to 0.85)
- but the difference between "camera white balance" and "tonemapping" is a bit obscure to me...

"Camera white balance" corresponds the "A/B/C/D65,etc" values, doesn't it?
And "Tonemapping" corresponds to the more "fine" settings you can tune, right?

So if I understand well, you mean that I should:
- first select the camera white balance that gives me the best "overall white" result, so to speak.
- then tweak the result by fine-tuning the Tonemapping settings so I get a proper white result.

Am I right?

(sorry if I'm a bit "slow" to understand things...)

And many thanks for your help, that's just great!

[CTZn]

You don't seem to be slow at understanding. All the contrary to me, you described what I was meaning.

Indeed white balance only concerns the tint of the image, colder/warmer. Tonemapping deals with image luminosity, or film sensity. So, roughly said, all you need is to make the object "to be white" of a brighter colour than any non emitting object in the scene. But that's a bit of a hack, it is best to use physically correct albedo values in first instance.

So, to stay in the topic of your scene, you may want to darken the wood textures rebuce their b parameter. Note that after a proper tonemapping they may look the very same as now, only that the sofa will be brighter, by contrast.

Q:
- how do you get a proper WHITE colour without pushing R/G/B values all the way to 1 ?

A:
- lower other colors.

if I got your question right...

PS: dangit, use plain white ! It's really ressources consuming for interiors but not in your present case !

[madcoo]

Brilliant!
Thanks for everything!

I'll follow your advice, and as soon as I've re-worked on this scene I'll post the newer version of it!

See ya!

[madcoo]

Hi all !

I haven't worked again on the first image yet, but I've made another one : I wanted to try out some of your tips.

I think the "mattress" on this one is much more realistic - widely thanks to the Sculpt Mode, and I finally achieved getting proper WHITE walls - THAAAANKS !

Please let me know about anything that doesn't look right...
(If you find an original photo of this seat, you'll see that the mattress is thicker)

Keep having fun guys!

[zeitmeister]

Stunning leather material!
Is it from the material database or did you do that by yourself?

[madcoo]

Thanks!

Did it by myself...

Still the same method:
- took a close-up picture of leather (from the web this time)
- re-worked it in Photoshop so it is tileable
- changed it into greyscale to get the bumpmap

And there we go!

I was thinking of posting it into the MatDb...
In order to get it as proper Material, I took the "BlackAsh Material" in the MatDb, had a look at the .igm file, and simply replaced the image files the code refers to.
That's a bit of cheating but it works...