Oscar's rendering thread

[Voytech]

Are you using aperture diffraction? Looks good.

[Oscar J]

Thanks guys.

The process involves rendering out two layers, and then mix them together in PS. First I render the car hanging in the air with Backplate/HDR behind it. Then, I render the car standing on a white plane, on which the HDR casts the shadow. Then I copy and paste this image onto the first image in Photoshop, and change the layer type to "Multiply". This will create a shadow under the car. Lastly I erase the car from layer 2, so that the car paint in layer 1 won't be affected.

Try this technique yourself if you want to, and let me know if it works for you.

Here is another render, C&C are welcome.

[CoolColJ]

needs more reflections on the body IMO

[ninopiamonte]

Thanks guys.

The process involves rendering out two layers, and then mix them together in PS. First I render the car hanging in the air with Backplate/HDR behind it. Then, I render the car standing on a white plane, on which the HDR casts the shadow. Then I copy and paste this image onto the first image in Photoshop, and change the layer type to "Multiply". This will create a shadow under the car. Lastly I erase the car from layer 2, so that the car paint in layer 1 won't be affected.

Try this technique yourself if you want to, and let me know if it works for you.

Here is another render, C&C are welcome.

Thanks for those tips, I never heard that before!

[CTZn]

Quite some time ago, Zom-B exposed a somewhat more complex, although very similar method: www.indigorenderer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3550

[Zom-B]

Quite some time ago, Zom-B exposed a somewhat more complex, although very similar method: http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... php?t=3550

If you take a look at the car you clearly see the drawbacks of that "3D Object floating in a HDRI Sphere" scenario!
The area under the car is way to much lit!
The floating car should stay on a plane, but doing so it gets reflected to on the carpaint
Doing some camera Projection of the HDRI on that floor "could" help here, but I don't think it would be that good.

A Shadow Catcher is on my top 5 wanted features for Indigo list...

[zeitmeister]

Agree, shadow catcher option on background material model or emitting material is really necessary!

[CTZn]

I would not contest the feature request, but an alternative might be to transform the hdr projection into something projectable onto the white plane. I mean, transform the environment coordinates so the pavement can be used as texture for the ground. Question mark.

[Oscar J]

This can be done, but will make the process of blending the layers in PS much harder, no? If I can't use the multiply tool (I can't when the plane under the car isn't white), I will have to erase the car as well as the ground outside of the shadow manually to get the look of the original background image. That would have been very time consuming and difficult.

As the guys said; a shadow catcher for background images as featured in Vray or Mental Ray would have been great, but maybe it doesn't belong in an unbiased renderer like Indigo.

[Oscar J]

Quite some time ago, Zom-B exposed a somewhat more complex, although very similar method: http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... php?t=3550

If you take a look at the car you clearly see the drawbacks of that "3D Object floating in a HDRI Sphere" scenario!
The area under the car is way to much lit!
The floating car should stay on a plane, but doing so it gets reflected to on the carpaint
Doing some camera Projection of the HDRI on that floor "could" help here, but I don't think it would be that good.

A Shadow Catcher is on my top 5 wanted features for Indigo list...

I actually tried to compensate that by drawing a few "Color burn" lines with a brush at the lowest parts of the car, that is pointing downwards. I guess it wasn't enough

[CTZn]

This can be done, but will make the process of blending the layers in PS much harder, no? If I can't use the multiply tool (I can't when the plane under the car isn't white), I will have to erase the car as well as the ground outside of the shadow manually to get the look of the original background image. That would have been very time consuming and difficult.

Indeed that was much less practical from me.

I'd imagine a different request: Have an Environment Material option where the part below the horizon is not considered as infinitely distant but an albedo (phong ?**) map flattened at the world center height (adjustable ?)*. Anything below ROND from there would crash Indigo
* an height offset to figure the real lens height might help defining the horizon.
** with a Winter-derivable exponent.

[Oscar J]

This is a scene I did for a client. I tried to use an IES profile for the lights, but I had some problems with it, so the light profiles aren't great. Tell me what you think!

[Zom-B]

Tell me what you think!

A good starting point, with some room for improvements:

the Bookshelf to the left is quite... disturbing ^^
Its work the pain to get some proper models & textures for that,
since you can "recycle" it for many ArchViz projects...

The iMac aluminum doesn't look very nice to me, maybe try some al.nk with low exponent @ 8 to 16

The iMac screens should emit light too, based on a phong material with IOR @ 1.52 and exponent of not less then 2048.

The wood looks to repeating to me

Keybord + mouse seem tinny little to big regarding the seat size

Try some leather texture for bump & exponent, seats look like out of plastic atm.

[Oscar J]

Thanks, I was a bit lazy with the bookshelf. I had only about 6 hours to do the scene, and it was supposed to be a "simple" visualization, mostly to show the wood module in the middle. It was OK to use a texture as bookshelf, but indeed better a model and better textures would look much better.

The iMac is not supposed to be the newer aluminium one, but the old white one.
http://www.freewebs.com/tedwinder/iMac%20G5.jpg
Lazy as I am, the whole iMac is just a simple mesh with this texture on it. I'll try to do it better next time.

You're right about the KB&Mouse as well as the chair material. Thanks for helping me improving!

Edit: Oh, you meant the iMac foot? I agree, it doesn't look great. What is al.nk? Is it available in the exporter, or in Indigo only?

[Zom-B]

What is al.nk? Is it available in the exporter, or in Indigo only?

its the measured NK file for aluminum, should be available for Phong materials (I'm not familiar with Blender so no further hints from me here ^^ )