Attached Link: http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?postid=1678925#post1678925

Please excuse me while I wipe drool off my keyboard...

lol, i'm really starting to dislike it the more I look at it now, actually :)

Sorry to be picky, but I see a crooked light. Looking fantastic. Looking at it again, I'm also made a bit uneasy by the fact that the lights/windows on the cylindrical topnotch are running horizontally rather than in line with the top curve of the cylinder. Could be just me.......

the whole cylinder is crooked, that's why it's like that, my own futuristic architecture :D as for the lighting, it's a semidome, so that might explain why it's a bit weird. the only thing I'm not sure about to be completely honest is whether you get hard or soft shadows in space. like don't you need an atmosphere for lightrays to bounce and give ambient lighting? Drac

No, I meant 'a' crooked light among the thousands. I wouldn't be so picky normally, but I've heard that they rend you limb from limb with crits over on cgnet.... It attracted my eye the second I looked at the image, so it is noticeable. And now that I've seen it once I can see it repeated elsewhere :^(

Looking great man. The only thing i might crit is the infamous Bryce-mat on the right. :) Architecture is top notch and as for the lighting...i dont think anyone at CGtalk has enough space travel experience to bitch about the accuracy. :) Since its scifi anyway, why not use whatever looks good.

there's a bryce mat? =) lies... all lies... that's no prefab... really... honestly... would i lie to you?... i just thought it looked cool and i have never used it, lol. i'll change it to something else :)

I LOVE that Bryce mat. I use it pretty much everything. OK, that's not true. But I do like it. I usually get rid of the blue and it helps. This is AMAZING! A real CPU buster for sure. Give me more.

That's cool to the max, pal. You should plan to build a whole city sooner or later. I mean like "Dystopia". S.

well the original idea, provided I would have stayed here in Seoul until Xmas was just that, to offer up a massive freebie giveaway, blow poor moebius87 out of hte water ;) this way you guys just get about 6-7 buildings. Drac

Amazing! How many windows are there? ;-)

didn't count, but the whole scene comes to a measly 400k polys :D

wow man, how did you create those windows?(newby talkin here :o) ) I'd love 2 know how thats done! great look. This is certainly a great thing...your right bout the cilinder though. CZ

Man this work you are doing RoXoRs Drac. Amazing work!

just mats, cz. didn't even do them in the right way, somehow they just ended up right shrug

I read the whole thread, and you're impressing a lot of people there even with your Bryce and Wings toolset! :) I agree with many of them on the scale -- the windows really add to the illusion of size, and your models are outstanding. My one crit on the scale is that the structure on the right (where your robot will be) looks a bit huge compared to the other buildings, meaning that your robot may end up being physically larger than any large set of windows you have there. Is there enough distance between the foreground structure and the others to account for the size? If so, why isn't there another bunch of buildings or two between them? What I normally do in a situation like this is check the #3 view in Bryce and just compare the size of one wireframe to the others. Size and distances might not be obviously apparent in a render, but it does subtly affect the final image, especially in the lines of perspective and most especially if you have any atmosphere (which I know you won't have because it's in space, but still...). Anyway, it just seemed a little off for me because I recently did a Bryce image where a person looks larger than a castle tower because the tower was in the very far-off distance. With distance you lose detail, color saturation, and focus, and I just didn't get the same sense here with your last test render. Sorry for the critique, by the way, but I thought I'd point it out before you do any more work -- although the line of ship/craft traffic that you're planning will probably bring the issue up without my having mentioned it anyway. I would have posted this comment in the CGTalk thread, but I didn't want to impact it and your contest rating with what might seem like a negative comment. All in all, I love what you've done so far. :)

you're a real gem, april, thanks for taking the time and the consideration. and you're absolutely right. there are two reasons it's like that: 1. i imagined the 'air traffic' would make up for the distance. as in make the ships bigger and bigger as they approach the tower/balcony thingie. 2. i need to tell a story, and whatever model i'll end up doing needs to hold a little orb with a galaxy in it that needs to be visible. so yeah, don't know, i might just add more buildings in between to make the transition or something, although the scene is really messy and the textures are crappy if i bring them in the foreground. might just make the thing smaller. don't know, tomorrow i'm starting on the planet and starscape, so i'll get a better idea of where to put things once that's done as the general background. many thanks again, i look forward to more critique from you :) Mihnea

I'd say the overal look is great, it doesnt need much more texture! this could very well be how space would look like in the future. But could you please explain how you did those windows exactly? i realy LOVE them! CZ

Excellent Drac, the only thing which is out of scale, IMHO is the fence compared to the rest of the foregroud building on the right, looking forward to see final render of it ! :)

Now I'm sorry I entered, LOL, great work Drac...

where are you headed with this? full city perhaps? foggy/hazy atmosphere? Kinda "Blade-Runner"-ish? nicely done very cool BT

"Pre-fabricated models are not allowed to be used. These include models generated from Bryce and other parametric model generation software". Think I'll enter anyway, just tell them I'm a newbie Maya user... Nice work, btw, drac. AS

There's nothing to stop two people working together on a challenge, is there? So you could have a modeller working with a lighter/texturer/renderer...... $0.02

poggie, if all three of you can be happy with just one prize and the other two stay undetected throughout the challenge, go ahead. but the rule is 1 meatbag per team

Something like I model and AS textures and renders, but who gets the prize, lol ? :P

you get the artistical recognition, AS gets the prize :D

Thats not fair, he will get Z-Brush soon anyways ! :) Seriously, we need to somehow make AS to start modeling with something else then Bryce, such a texturing talent waisted on things like cubes and their latest reincarnation, tech-cube ! :P

It's most likely going to be Zbrush 2.0, I'm laying some hopes that DAZ gives us some sort of modeler for B6, or at least true booleaning with export. yadda, yadda, etc, blah...;o)

they better. or they'll have me on their ass, AS :)

AS quotes Pre-fabricated models are not allowed to be used. etc So what happens if you build a model from scratch in Bryce using prims? Your scene is looking good, Drac! Interesting work on the lighting/windows etc.

@Draculaz: "the only thing I'm not sure about to be completely honest is whether you get hard or soft shadows in space." Shadows in a vacuum are 100% sharp ('cos there's nothing to bend/perturb those dead straight light rays). But they will still have variation within them, depending on the light source. If the light source is a pin-point, then the shadows will be 100% black (except where they get washed out by reflections from surrounding objects; even then the transitions would be sharp). If the light source is disc-like, then the shadows at the edges will still be sharp, but not at full density. Then they'll get gradually more dense as they move towards the centre. That's the umbra (the totally dark bit in the middle) and the pen-umbra (at the edges). The closer to the object, the larger the umbra. Hang on, I'll grab a picture...

TheBryster; "These include models generated from Bryce and other parametric model generation software". I take that as no matter what, Bryce cannot be used to enter the contest. (along with vue, terragen, etc) Otherwise. I would be a booleaning fool, and enter the contest. AS

AS: That sucks!

yea it really sucks! I had this GREAT Idea for the contest, but apparently over at CGtalk they think putting tens of thousands of primitives in a specific order is "prefabricated" and thus they rule out bryce rolls eyes Oh you know what? lets all go buy 3DS Max 7! that way we can win a free copy of 3DS Max 7!! WOOT!!