Art Under The Bridge
I’m still thinking about what to put in the foreground. A ladder with some cans surrounding it where the artist was working until he or she decided to take the picture that you see? A cyclist going by on the cycle path. I need some traffic still. I’m not sure about the buildings on the right hand side, they don’t have the authenticity of the ones on the left. I am really happy with the way the scaffolding has turned out on the left.
Southbank Centre Skatepark Photoshoot
A gallery of the shots taken has been created. See the links on the right or click : http://gdma.wordpress.com/london-embankment-photoshoot/
Under the bridge
This is a test render for the bridge scene that I am currently working on. This image took 7hours (overnight) to render due to a high Depth of field sample setting and unfortunately the aperture is badly set. I wanted the background to be blurred but not the foreground where you should be able to see the roof where I am trying to capture the weight and strength of the concrete blocks.
[update] – It turns out that the displacement mapping on the ground material really slows down rendering. A flick of a global switch in vRay turns this off and returns things to normality. The displacement mapping on the floor was looking pretty good and I will finalise a good setting for this towards the end of the scene development. Below is the same scene without displacement mapping and DOF. (2 minute render!)
Road furniture next, development of background scenery, then a few cars from Turbosquid. I’ve just looked at an Alfa Romeo Brera on Turbosquid. It looked great, just what I need and free too. Then I saw 900,000 polygons! Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
[Original image of space]
Final Street Scene
This is the final street scene with an appropriate level of DOF, masked AO and the odd touch up.
I am really happy with the results now.
Depth Of Field tests
V-Ray makes depth of field really easy if you use the render dialog with a standard target camera to measure the depth. You can alter the aperture to adjust the effect. Below are my small test renders I carried out today to find out what measurement would be suitable for the final render. These are interesting on their own, I really like the DOF effect. I’ve just found out about the Bokeh effect but which I’m excited about but that will have to wait for a while I think.
The file names indicate the Aperture size used in each case. eg: AP7_5 has an aperture of 7.5
Nottingham Mutability Scene virtually finished
Only final touches and camera positioning needed. I have corrected the overlapping materials on the steps that can been seen in the plant pot balcony test render and the positioning of the CCTV sign has been altered too.
Enter Mutability
Using the photo montage of an earlier post as a guide post I am developing the scene further so it illustrates the change that the old Victorian factory has gone through to become a dwelling place.
Current work
I want this piece to encompass all the elements that I have focused on. Age, Occupation, Repetition & difference, dirt, mutability etc.
Staircase with Array Balustrades
This evening I managed to get the Array tool to work successfully. I used the Staircase tool in Max for the main structure which is kind of cheating, but it was really useful for figuring out the numbers involved. I won’t say I enjoyed it, but it was interesting to do. I need to texture it and a few other things before this bit can be called completed.
I have managed to recover from yesterdays disk failure, I have a backup mechanism in place now and its working and as reliable as I can make it.
Nottingham Back Alley Montages
These images are montages created in PS from the images taken in Nottingham the other day. I am really happy with the way these have come out. Photoshops Photomerge feature does a great job of stitching images together and takes far less time than it would take to get the same results by hand. You could argue that the blending is a bit rough in places but its saved me hours of time.
Shadows on Flats
This morning I used a High Dynamic Range image to light a scene, it was just simple coloured primitives on a plane but it looked really nice. The HDR image was providing luminance information to the scene through Global Illumination.
After this I altered two of my old materials in PS using a simple Drop Shadow effect on a selection to create the effect that some of the bricks were further forward than others. I then painted a shadow line using the Luminosity blending mode on the material used here as the floor. I have observed this technique used in game engines where poly counts need to be kept low but without sacrificing effect. I think it works well. I can imagine using this technique to provide depth to building features that aren’t the main focus of the scene but still need shadows to give them believability in the scene such as drainpipe detail, shutters, fencing etc.
The Image above are the HDR image (7/Feb/2010, Paul Debevec Home Page, http://www.debevec.org) that I plan to use in my street scene and an example of the materials with shading (rather too quickly) applied to them. Rendered with VRay.
I have the Demo of VRay installed and I am going to use it throughout this last project. The quality of the output that it creates is high and this will aid believabilty in my scenes. With the techniques I have learnt and the promise of high quality output I am really excited.
Renders for current project (updated)
I started using Layers to organise the main model, the second row of buildings and then the background flats and the occupation signifiers in the scene. It made it much easier to manage the scene and considering that I use layers in all the other apps I know I’m not sure why I didn’t think to look for them earlier. I think my attention got diverted by the way you can spin a model around in max. Layers fundamentally is the same but feels more like a way to hide things you don’t need right now in order to simplify what you’re looking at rather than the central core of object management like in Photoshop. I really need to get another monitor the layers palette is a pain in the rear. You need it fat more often than you think and its not just like the Materials and Render dialogs that you can open up as and when you need them because of the function they provide.
This render took two days to organise but now thats done the next ones are coming along far quicker (see further down the post.)
This last one ^^^^ has an Ambient Occlusion pass applied to it in Overlay mode, but the Fill level has been reduced in order to balance the result correctly.
Shot List
I’m a little behind on my schedule but I’m hoping to make up for it over the weekend. This evening I have planned the shots that I am going to render for the shanty scene. I have used the list of technical devices found on pg.116 (see below) of Narrative And Media (Fulton.H., 2005) as a basis for justifying the shots that I’m planning. Its been very useful because I feel like I can both understand and justify the reasons for my camera placement now. I’m finding “diegetics” confusing though, however I’m feeling convinced that its not as important for static images as it is for film.
Pop-up book city
I have loaded last nights renders & opacity maps onto planes and uses the Orientation Constraint to get the planes to follow the camera as it turns. This is really useful as the planes don’t actually move position, but rotate on the spot to face the camera as it moves.
These are the results from this evenings investigation into using this technique in my scene composition.
I have realised that using entire rows of buildings isn’t going to cut it, so I have rendered a set of individual buildings to use instead (see above gallery). I have found that while the Orientation Constraint is great, my opacity maps aren’t and need to hide everything but the building itself. I initially thought that I should leave the ground in view (not sure why, it just felt right) and leaving the buildings shadow in view seemed the right decision too.
Tonight’s work has shown me that the opacity sillhouette of the buildings cast good shadows – even from a plane. I have also learnt that having the ground in view on the background buildings just doesn’t work. I’m going to have to change that.
Currently…
I am rendering a balcony scene that shows signals of occupation. I’m going to run an Ambient Occlusion pass and overlay it in Photoshop. On top of this I’m going to add a photo background in the very small areas left that show the rest of the world. This will be one of the final renders will be shown at the presentation.
Occupational Signals : Models
These are the models that I will use to indicate occupation in the scenes. Some of these items I have created, some I have used (under a free licence for use) from the websites artist-3d.com and turbosquid.com. If I have used your model, please accept my gratitude.
Memory issue solved
After going through all the materials used in the most recent file that I thought was corrupt and altering them to either 1024² or 2048² as appropriate; the scene renders like a dream. It looks like buying the additional RAM was still a good idea, but at least the file actually renders instead of crashing out.
Lesson learnt.
Mock up for tutorial
With the mr Ambient Occlusion light shader applied (just to see what it does).
and without it.
With the AO light shader applied the scene looks like it belongs in a computer game and is far less realistic. Although I can imagine that Ambient Occlusion is very useful for evening scenes.
Things I have down to do but are not yet done:
Write up my research on Balchelard.
Write up how it applies to my work by linking it to the current piece in progress.
Make a Cyclorama for the background.
Add dirt and more detail (several rounds of this).
Write up the list of occupancy signals and check that they are all applied to the scene.
Write up the lists of common building materials found in India.
Write up the analysis of my research images.
Write up the analysis of proximity of the different buildings in the images I have.
Use photoshop to place people into the scene in appropriate places to bring the scene to life and suggest occupancy in the strongest way possible.
Find an appropriate HDR image to get the very best out of the scene once complete.
Also I need to adjust my proposal hopefully to get more time to complete this as I think the end of September is pushing it now.
