Acadia opened this issue on Mar 30, 2007 · 181 posts
bagginsbill posted Fri, 13 April 2007 at 4:43 PM
Hi - I haven't left yet - checked in one more time. Congratulations! Very nice scene. The water looks perfect and so does the chrome.
Regarding the displacement amount, I have to say again, for perhaps the 300th time ;-), that Poser screen shots are showing displacements in the user's chosen Poser display units. I'm using inches. Clearly you are using feet or meters or something. So if you copy my value (in inches) and put those numbers in yours, they get effectively multiplied by 12 (inches per feet) or 39 (inches per meter) or 103.2 (inches per Poser Native Unit). Personally, I can't imagine why you haven't changed your chosen units yet, since I find it incredibly non-intuitive to think of shader bump and displacement in feet or meters. I mean, what makes more sense to you, a number like .0003424 PNU, or .1 inches?
So, everybody pay attention - I AM IN INCHES, ALWAYS, EVERYWHERE, EVERY SHADER DISPLACEMENT OR BUMP I'VE EVER POSTED IS IN INCHES.
Ok.
Here's some tips to refine it:
The floor isn't following our Fresnel rule - which is that Diffuse_Value + Refraction_Value + Reflection_Value = 1. As a result - it's somewhat overlit. Since you're using .5 for reflection, try .5 for Diffuse_Value. Frankly, though, the floor would best be done by setting up the EdgeBlend node as I showed in my tutorial on the Fresnel effect. See, as you look down at a part of the floor close to you, the angle is higher and should reflect less. As you look across the room to the farthest corner of the floor, your viewing angle is much lower and it should reflect more. This is the Fresnel effect and our brains are very sensitive to it. A constant amount of reflection never quite looks right. The reflections look far more correct and believable when you take that into account. Plus the beauty of it is you don't have to think about what value to set as you more the camera around. The shader will take care of it. But if that is too much for you to try just now, then I'd probably lower the reflection_Value. Given that viewing angle I'd go to betweem .2 and .3 and set the Diffuse_Value to .8 or .7 (so rv + dv = 1).
The lights are a bit too high. See how there is that hot bloom on the right side of the tub. If we were taking a photo, the camera auto exposure setting would have noticed that and darkened the whole scene to compensate. So lower all your lights until there is no bloom. You'll be surprised how much more contrast is created. The scene will look a lot more 3d.
Need shadows badly. You've got the overall quality of the other elements to the point where that is the most obvious departure from photo-realism. You don't have to make the shadows 100%, but you need some. Under the props should be darker, under the shelves, etc.
Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)