I was out wondering the streets with my digital camera the other week, looking for textures, reference and inspiration. A couple of blokes cycled past, and I just caught one of them say "...me mate's sister's bike...". I have no idea what the remark was about (they were round the corner by the time I looked up), but the snippet, combined with a recent download, did provide me with an idea for a picture. Anyway, the real purpose was to start to explore True Ambience as a tool for 'photo-realistic' lighting, moving it beyond marbles, statuettes and mere loony experiments. This scene is lit by just one parallel light; all the other illumination (which has realistic 'bounce' and fall off to complete darkness where appropriate) is due to True Ambience. This is a straight, unretouched render at 64 thingies per thingie, which completed in a time of just under six and a half hours (P4 2.53Ghz). This is pretty reasonable, since blurry reflections (for various chrome parts on the bike) and soft shadows were also enabled, and (despite initial appearances) the scene contains lots of meshes and booleans. The render time is easily favourable with light dome alternatives, and you do get the 'radiosity' effect of light and colour bounce (the latter not in obvious evidence here, unfortunately). Credits: The bike is by Zippo, available in the freestuff here (I smoothed it in "Hi-Res" and adapted it a bit, including replacing the tyres with Bryce torii). The wall texture is from one of the online texture download sites (my digicam isn't very exciting, and not up to taking a whole wall at a big enough file size). Some of the plants are from 3DCafe (others generated in Plant Studio). BTW, the image is above the 200k limit here so it's hosted offsite. If all you get is the dreaded red x in a white box, it probably means a bandwidth limit has been thrashed (or I've frelled up the formatting).

Very nice! The lighting reminds me of the zenith system, and in fact when you think about it works the same way in principle. (with respect to shadows.) If you look in my gallery you can see similar lighting in my bricks image. Blurry reflections seem to work fine with the color bleed method, so i'm wondering what benefit true ambience yields? Does it provide color detail in shadow areas, unlike blurry reflections by itself?

madmax_br5, the blurry reflections method has its downsides, the worst of which are the unrealistic 'undershadows' and the weird pearly surface sheen that occurs on many surfaces. These are probably due to the top blurriness level not being blurry enough. This particular True Ambience method has its downsides, too, of course. Most obvious is it's still stuck with the disappointing lack of smoothing on mesh surfaces. There are others that I'm investigating. But it does have a proper 'radiosity' effect (if not 'officially' radiosity), as opposed to simulating it by some bodge. It certainly does have colour detail in shadow areas, and as far as I can tell those colours enjoy secondary bouncing. More later.

great render glad you let the marbles alone :)

Wow, the wall and the sidewalk I would take as a real photo. The bicycle has kind of a "plastic-y" feel -- probably more to do with the mesh and texture than anything else. Can you retexture the bike with procedurals? The lighting is terrific!

Great image all the way around. Question...what did you use for th esidealk because that looks great.

A good bit of work there, PJF. Could try adding a bit of shinyness (as though its new) or a bit of grunge (old and worn) to the bike to make it look as real as the rest of the scene does. Still, very well done.

Great realism! This is so photographic it looks like a photo. Great effect all round on this one and an excellent render. 8) Catlin

Nukeboy, I completely agree about the appearance of the bike. I did spend some time trying to tweak the textures (they are Bryce procedurals) and this was the best compromise I could up with in the time I was willing to spend on it. It just wasn't the important aspect of the image/investigation for me. I may revisit this later to make the necessary improvements. Boomer, the sidewalk is made from a collection of textures shot with my 3 megapixel digicam. Each paving block (from my yard) was shot separately and then combined in an image editor. There are other real textures added to the mix, and everything was blended together and then augmented with painted on chewing gum and general wear and tear, etc. There is also a lot of 3D detritus spread mostly around the less trodden areas near the wall. The squashed cigarette packet near the front has a way bigger texture than the back wall! Flak, I did ponder what to do with the bike - whether to make it completely shiny-new, or old and decrepit like the street. In the end, having observed the state of most bikes I see in my town, I tried for a 'well maintained' look. Maybe that was my mistake. ;-) Thanks for the feedback all.

Okay, I gotta send you all a pic of an historic alley near me called "Bubble Gum Alley" (May be a week, or so). For the last 50+ years, people have been sticking (no pun) gum on the walls of this alley. Some are just a bit of chew, others spell out a certain "history". Very cool, or very discusting. Considering what anthropologists go through, I think this is "high" art...