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.
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
Final touches to street scene
I have closed the ground floor curtains to reflect the fact that there is reduced privacy at this level. I’ve added graffiti which adds to the feel of the scene. Volume light has been used to add atmosphere at the windows. This really works and has significantly reduced the flat feeling that I was getting from the main brick wall. I’ve modified the galvanized materials. The balconies now have slight rusting and the main rails are significantly aged, possibly too much. I’ve reduced the bump level of the brick material. I’ve added moss to the main window texture and it looks far more aged now. I have also used an ambient occlusion pass to dirty up the scene and the results are pretty cool. I am really happy. The only thing I need to do is sort out the Depth of Field settings with the vRay Physical Camera. I’ve read up on it a few minutes ago and I have been mixing up Focal Length and Film Gate; resulting in slight DOF effect and long render times of a couple of hours, disappointing but I know what I need to do next to fix it.
Current street scene. This is the composite of the render and the ambient occlusion pass with a bit of Photoshop masking to reveal some details that the AO pass was hiding.
Petrol Stations
Petrol Stations are the queens of non-places. Second only to the Airport that wins because part of its land (between the plane and the immigration desk) is technically neither in the country nor out.
I went out this evening and I was gratefully amazed how easy it was to get permission to take photographs of petrol stations. The staff didn’t mind at all (as long as they weren’t in the shots).
I managed to get several shots that will allow me to fake the interior of my shop. I also found that there are many items occupying the space, not just the shop and the pumps. Many of the shots are for texturing purposes.
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.
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.
