Bertrand Benoit (BBB3)

[tolas]

I'm following your progress almost everyday and I must say it's looking really impressive.

Especially interior shots. Materials are balanced well. Models are great.

I'm a bit confused about exterior though. Rocks are looking better and better, trees are nice, but I have a feeling that it's not as good as interior. Mostly because of lighting I guess. It's too reddish for my taste.

Besides that the house material blends with environment and makes the whole image flat.
May I request a quick preview with different sun position?

Anyway, you're showing a very solid work here. If I'll ever find time to start this project it will be extremely hard to reach this level.

Keep up posting!

[sharis01]

will ya plz. quit this competition 4 da sake of all of us
just kidding

BBB3 you have really great attention & detail to your 3d ... its really nice to see your thread every time ....

IMO the exterior is mixing with rocks maybe a little wood/Environment color variation or you want to do it that way ? ... BTW its still very nice

[brodie_geers]

Interiors are lovely as has been mentioned. Here are my thoughts on potential ways it may be possible to improve the exterior. I think right now the flatness is mainly coming from the 200mm lens. It's most noticeable on the front overhang which only looks to be about as deep as the bedroom balcony rather than the dramatic element it is. To that end maybe a wider angle lens might help.

The red is throwing me off too. I think you're going for a morning shot but the red cast seems too dramatic. Maybe some reference photos would help. Or if you're looking at a reference photo maybe you could post it to give us an idea of the lighting scheme you're after.

With regards to the house blending into the background, it doesn't personally bother me a great deal if that's your concept but I don't recall you mentioning that in your posts. Either way it's always going to be a more dramatic image if the building pops out at you. If you like the building materials though and you like the rocks (and there's a lot to like about both), then maybe You add some more green in between the back of the house and the cliff beyond to break up the color. I'm thinking some trees back there certainly but maybe other details on the rock; moss, small clingy trees, dirt, water deposits, anything that might break up the color enough to make the house stand out more.

The grass btw, is looking absolutely fantastic. It fits really well with your scene.

-Brodie

[phr0stbyte]

Looking awesome, as usual. I really do agree about the exterior shots though - too red. I realize that this effect is undoubtedly the lighting, but it gives the effect that the textures themselves are over-saturated (hopefully, that's not it, as I am sure you would have seen that right off). Maybe throw some ambient lights around with some different orange, violet, and blue hues?

[futuregeist]

this is looking great! I'll be watching this thread . One note maybe you need a bit more contrast overall. Just being picky

[BBB3]

Thanks a lot for the feedback, guys.

This really helps a lot and it gives me all sorts of ideas.

You're definitelly all right about the excessive red in the exterior image and the general flatness. I think they're a combination of poor post work, POV (front-lit is never a good ideas), and as Brodie wrote, the 200mm lense, which crushes everything. I am indeed going for an early morning or sunset image, but ideally with a nice balance of pink light and deep blue shadows. One problem here is that there are practically no shadows because of the sun/camera position.

I think part of the problem will just be solved by changing the POV and being a little more sensible with the post-prod. But I may tweak my light colours quite a bit.

I kind of want the house to blend in the background, because I think that's probably what an architect building something in such a location would want. But I will try to pick a POV showing the house with some sky in the background in order to highlight its silhouette. (More along the lines of the exterior shot I showed a few posts ago).

In the meantime, here's a reference shot that shows very nicely the kind of light I'm aiming for (photo by "Marina", found on the web). I think the difficulty there is to keep a pretty strong saturation in the oranges and the blues while not overpowering the image and retaining a certain softness in the light.

[BBB3]

... Only one update today.
I've started setting up my night scene. I'm really struggling with containers and the size of the scene right now so everything is very slow. Really got to get more ram.

Only thing that's new there, really, is the much more detailed wild-grass proxy I'm using, which is more suitable for close-ups. You can compare with the old, rougher proxy that remains, directly to the right of the exterior light in the foreground.

PS2: The sky is a placeholder. I'll replace it with a cleaner plate in the final.
PS3: The POV is not final. This is just a lighting test.

EDIT: Replaced image with a better one with fewer jpg artefacts.

[brodie_geers]

Very nice. I think you're right on about the mix of red's and blues. I think you've put your finger on the problem. One little photoshop trick I use sometimes is to add a Color Balance adjustment layer. Click the Shadows box and up the blue values and then click the Highlights box and up the red/orange values. Those cooler colored shadows should do the trick.

What are you using to scatter your grass, btw?

-Brodie

[BBB3]

Thanks Brodie,
Yes, the colour balance tool is great.
I use VrayScatter to scatter the short grass and AdvancedPainter for the bigger weeds (gives more control and is dead easy to use).

Boy, this last image is really horrible. I'll replace it with a less compressed on asap.

[phr0stbyte]

Yes, but that first one is really kick @ss!!!

[BBB3]

Yeah, it is, but it's a photo - and not even mine :-(

EDIT: uploaded a better-quality version of the night image above.

Below, an experiment for a wet-window shader for my rainy-day scene.

This is just a bump map applied to one of the faces of a glass pane. I'm also attaching a crop of the map.

To do this, I sprayed lots of instances of drop objects onto a plane and rendered it using an orthographic camera. The bump map is essentially a ZDepth pass with a little additional work in 2d.

The renders show two versions of the map, with different densities. Not sure yet which I prefer.

[phr0stbyte]

LOL - i didn't see the word "reference" there...