Hi folks, I posted a previous version of this scene before. Here it is again with a little more work to it. I basically dressed up the room a little, adding the door, the shelves (the stuff on the shelves comes from previous projects). It's the first time I played around with plants (trees), pretty cool. oh and that radiator heating contraption is exactly like the ones I have in my appartement.

It's starting to look pretty cool, but I still need to work on the lighting.

Let me know what you think.
Cheers,
H&B

You need some grime. Dirt, and dust bunnies are your friend when it comes to realism. :D Looking good, keep adding to this thread with your WIP!

Very cool H&B. Looks like they must be playing for beer! Steama

I like it! one might add some rust or corrosion and dents to the radiator, agree with bluetone, and maybe use some kind of irregular lighting source.

Thanks. Yeah I like the beer bottles lying around. I need to make a beer label to stick on there. How would you go about adding some grime? I suppose one way would be in the textures themselves. Anything else? How about a dirty sock draped over the radiator? :o) Oh and maybe one robot-guy passed out on the floor surrounded by beer bottles....with a cracked and leaking brain tank...! Yeah....

How about DCG's Anything Goos for the unclean look? BTW, looks very good -- causes one to smile!

Message edited on: 12/02/2005 20:02

I like it too. How about rendering from a different angle, maybe looking over a shoulder or lower... you probably want the lamp in it. Can you lower the light and let the lamp put out a color onto the table? R

Anything Goos...Now that's a plug-in I gotta get. It produces beautiful stuff from what I have seen in the DCG galleries. That Eric Winemiller does some awesome work!

I'll look into that anything goos plug-in. And yeah, I also want to do some renders from different angles. I want to make a little-kid version of the robots and have him on the other side of the doorway peeking in, with the point-of-view behind and a just a little above his shoulder (sort of seeing from his point of view). I tried getting the lamp colors to project a bit onto the surroundings but I kept getting weird and unpleasant artifacts and decided to put that aside for a bit. H&B

You certainly have all the ingredients of a great picture. Here are some other thoughts: You could darken the rest of the room so the lamp focuses attention on the card table. And you could have another light source peeking in through the open door as well. Consider adding some cigars and smoke for a little more atmosphere. I would make the leaves on the plants darker and less vivid in color.

Hey, how about little robot mosquitoes, with little screwdrivers for proboscis? They be flitting about the card players one being swatted at show one off in the corner of the scene so you can see his robotic origins. Dont you just like all the strange ideas we forum users provide?

Maybe one of the mosquitos could be crawling across the lens of the unseen camera that takes the "picture" of the scene? hmmm.. you know this could be a never-ending picture. There will always be something to add or vary....;o) Cheers

Great suggestions. I agree with the grime. I also think the view is wrong.Definitely need some more pokerish atmosphere. Focus on the table I think is the way to go.SSS would be good particularly on the heads.

What's SSS?

Santa's Secret Service?

Silly Sentient Solenoids ;)

Soulfully Sentimental Scrapheaps? (I just had to get one in there.....) :o)

I agree that you need to focus more on the game on the table. And also I'd recommend softening and warming the lighting. The main light source seems to be the big hanging lamp (which is beautiful, btw), which is casting that warm yellow color, and yet the light in the scene is a clean white. It should be much more red/yellowish. Also, the lamp has a broad surface area, which would cast very soft light. It looks like you are using a spot light with soft shadows on, but that doesn't seem to be enough. If you don't mind the longer render times, I would recommend eliminating the spot light altogether, and using the glow channel from the lamp to light the scene. Work with both the glow brightness and the GI intensity to get an acceptable amount of light without washing out the color of the lamp. Somebody else mentioned having a little light pouring in the door as well, and that's a great idea too, especially if it bounces off the walls a bit. GI will go a long way to giving this scene some great atmosphere. (if render times are a problem, at least dramatically increase the size of the light source for the spot's soft shadows, and increase the fadeout on the edge as well.

Message edited on: 12/05/2005 14:50

Here is another version of the image. I havent yet played with the lighting, though I will. I wanted to work on a few details first. I added the beer labels, bottle caps, poker and potato chips. I'll likely try adding a cigare or two. I like the look of the table with all the stuff scattered on it. It's just little details, but I find it adds a lot. I'll try some more experimenting with using the lamp's glow to light the scene.

Cheers,
H&B

One more little detail. I like how you can just make out the bottom of wall that is behind the glass door, a little distorted and colored by the glass in the door. I could probably try and punch it up just a little more. :o)

You might like the effect if you cut your main lights effect down to about 1 inch say, and play around with the drop off. Great fun work--we should all try more in a similar style/idea.

Are we talking about a cone light effect? More foggy? Too bad carrara doesn't do that effect properly with transparency. I was talking about sub-surface scatter, which is in c5, but not prior. Even fresnel, also in c5 on the heads would be interesting.I do think that there needs to be a bit more technology in the picture with robots...maybe something funny like silicon chips instead of poker chips or some techno cd's. The details do make the story more interesting.

I did model my Ipod a while back, maybe I could mskr one those ipod speaker attachements gizmos and put the whole thing on the table. I like the idea of contrasting the hi-tech (well, retro high-tech) robots with the non-tech surroundings. When I first starting playing around with Carrara I modeled an ornate foozball table and room, If I get the time I want to try and put in these robot players around the table. So much carraring to do....so little time. ;o) H&B

OKay. Here is another render. This time I played with the textures a little and added some cigars (though only a couple of whisps os smoke). I gave the light a softer tint but that's about it. I think there's probably enough "stuff" in this picture so now I'll try and improve the lighting, tweak a few textures here and there. I like the peeling paint (it's like the ashtray, but a different colot) on the robot in the middle, unfortunately you cant see it very well here so I think I'll switch his texture with one of the other bots. At this point there is so much going on in the scene that my computer lags horribly whenever I move something.

Cheers,
H&B