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Comments SMC #31 Flying Vehicle
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Comments SMC #31 Flying Vehicle // Speed Model Challenge
Post by kena // Jun 24, 2008, 10:29am
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kena
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Moving away from the great list of categories to the more serious subject of this SMC: I have a problem. Through an hour or so of playing around with my idea, the final picture has veered away slightly from the main title :o . How much leeway is allowed? I'll just say there isn't much flying vehicle at all hehe. Whoops...
hehe - throw on a couple of wings, and you are there! |
Post by Tiberius // Jun 24, 2008, 10:42am
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Tiberius
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I've done all the modelling, but because I've never done a proper project my texturing, lighting and rendering needs some work. I might post it here first to get a thumbs up or down. Well done for being the first person to know who Tiberius was, great era of history. Don't do any of it at school :( , I'll have to wait until college and uni. |
Post by Matski007 // Jun 24, 2008, 12:39pm
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Matski007
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awesome work so far, I encourage everyone to enter, Im not bothered about winning (I know I wont lol), its good to receive opinions and criticisms on work. Also maybe the rules should be, the most creative one wins, rather than most intricate model. Prodigy, your spaceship is AWESOME! however it is based on something real that already exists, where as kena's flying house is sort more original and creative because no-one else would have thought about a flying house.
So maybe we should have a Hardcore Modelling challenge, for realistic and complex models, and a Softcore Modelling challenge for weird and wacky interpretations of the same competition subject matter.
Hope that makes sense and I dont offend anyone |
Post by kena // Jun 24, 2008, 1:21pm
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kena
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wellllll.... we have so few entries as it is. Maybe an honorable mention for whoever didn't win that was the most imaginative? |
Post by Matski007 // Jun 24, 2008, 2:10pm
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Matski007
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perhaps, but also I meant for future competitions, not just this one. It is a shame not many other people join in, would be good to rake in the newbies or the demo-ers. |
Post by jamesmc // Jun 24, 2008, 6:29pm
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jamesmc
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Hokey Smokes!
There are some more mighty fine entries in the SMC now!
Great job all. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Jun 25, 2008, 2:03am
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Jack Edwards
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I'm against adding different levels to the SMC. We barely get enough participation now. Better I think would be to just extend the recognition to 2nd and 3rd place trophies or honerable mention like Matski mentioned.
Another option would be to allow multiple choice voting and have everyone vote their top 3. That way the winner would always be more of a consensus choice. Shame there's no way to weight the voting so that first, would be weighted more than 2nd and 3rd. Ah well... :o |
Post by Dragneye // Jun 25, 2008, 7:54am
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Dragneye
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You ain't kiddin'! Some Real nice entries indeed.
As an aside, I agree with Jack; lets keep it simple. There's usually a lack of many entries that spreading them out just doesn't seem logical. But I do like the idea of an 'Honorable mention', because many times it's hard to choose just one; like this SMC :-D |
Post by prodigy // Jun 25, 2008, 8:47am
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prodigy
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I like that idea aswell.. but how we choose 3thd and 2nd place?? it is posible make a multiple- choice poll?? |
Post by Matski007 // Jun 25, 2008, 12:29pm
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Matski007
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first place and second (honourable mention) place I think is best. I think it could work one of two ways,
either people vote for one person they want to win and from those results the places of 1st and 2nd ae chosen
or
everyone makes a reply on a voting thread regarding who they want for first place, and who they want for honorable mention (like on CG forums), then whoever is in charge of the challenge can add them all up |
Post by Breech Block // Jun 25, 2008, 1:55pm
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Breech Block
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Great Gyrocopter Nez, looks quite stunning.
Unfortunately, I only understood about a tenth of your explanation on the rendering process. Perhaps you could find the time to give James a more detailed account for his trueClue magazine as I would love to understand and try your technique. |
Post by Nez // Jun 26, 2008, 2:55am
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Nez
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Thanks for the compliment Breech. Sorry if my explainations weren't up to scratch!
I'm assuming you're talking about the 'post-process' bit where I faked 'depth of field'? If so, it's not actually that hard but Iguess my shortened explaination relied on most folks knowing some of what I was mentioning already, which is never a fair assumption. See if the following makes sense; if not I'll expand further.
By 'depth of field', all I mean is that I tried to achieve a semi-photographic effect where the background wasn't in sharp focus and the foreground subject was. If you're into cameras, that's like widening the aperture (or reducing the f-stop); if you're not, ignore that last sentence and just think aboutthe aim being to make the background a bit blurry, so as not to detract from the subject and to look a bit more natural - whilst photography does allow you to see things near and far sharply at the same time (deep 'depth of field', i.e the range over which you can stay in focus is large) the human eye doesn't and you can only focus clearly on near or far (shallow depth of field). So adding some 'depth of field' to a rendered image can help it look more like an image seen by eye, so to speak. Hope all that makes sense - you can probably find a better explanation somewhere on the 'net.
There's a number of ways to achieve this effect, and there's a number of folks here who could show various ways. My version of tS (5.1) has a 'foreground shader' effect - effectively a built-in post-process method, which means it does the unaffected render and then blurs parts of the image afterwards. I've tried once or twice with this and found I wasn't getting great results, although I should probably try again as it's been a while. I gather there's a way to get good DoF effects from Vray too (based on Prodigy's work) but this isn't an option for me, as I don't have it.
So what I tried (and this is the first time I've tried this method, although smoeone else may welll have tried it) was the following:
First off, I did a 'normal' render with raytracing on, etc. Didn't use any of the tS built in post-process features or foreground shaders which can sometimes be useful for this kind of thing.
Then I did a second render, but using the ZRender plug-in. If you've not come across this before, what it basically does is produce a grey scale image where obejects closest to the 'camera' are black and those furthest are white. You can define what you consider near and far to vary the degree of the effect - I rather arbitrarily chose the front skid of the 'copter and a beam in the furthest building. I'm not sure whether or not I'm supposed to, but I removed all my lighting from the scene first to ensure it didn't affect the render, but that may have made no difference. As an aside - I first came across the use of ZRender for achieving fog effects in a thread by W!zard, which is vaguely how I got the idea. I rendered to file and saved this with a different name.
So I now had two renders - one just an unaffected view and one ZRender greyscale image - see first image pair below.
I loaded these up in Paintshop Pro (v5) and started with the base image.
I created an additional layer in the image containing a duplicate of the base image, and applied blur to this layer (I used Gausian blur, with a radius of something like 4 pixels, can't remember exactly). To make things easier inthe next step, I turned off the layer below with the base image. See third image.
On the blurred layer, I created a mask using the ZRender image (this is very easy in PSP - using Masks, New, from Image, selecting the ZRender image as the source.
This then masks parts of the blurred image - so that basically the areas in white (in the distance) on the ZRender image are kept and the areas in black are removed. Shades in between are shown with a degree of transparency depending on the shade of grey - see fourth image.
Turning the base layer back on, parts of the unblurred image now show through the gaps where the black areas of the foreground in the Zrender image have masked the blurred copy layer.
As a final adjustment, I made the blurred layer slightly transparent (reduced the opacity slightly) so the blur effect was a bit less strong.
NB I also performed a final resize as I'd originally rendered out at 1600x1200 in the hope that a resize would help with the anti-aliasing of the various sloping edges in the image which lokoed abit ragged in an 'adaptive AA' render, but that's not really relavant, except that it would change the radius of gaussian blur to try...
I hope that all makes sense! Given I'd never tried it before, it worked quite well. Only real trouble I had was trying initially to do the same thing using Photoshop 6, where I couldn't work out how to create a mask using an existing image - there must be a way, I just didn't spot it.
If you were asking about something else, sorry! |
Post by Breech Block // Jun 26, 2008, 9:27am
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Breech Block
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First of all Nez, thank you very much for providing such a quick and highly detailed account of your submission for the SMC it is very much appreciated. And yes, your response does answer about 90% of my query.
I must admit that DoF is something I have always wanted to achieve in my own work (ever since I saw Scott Rodgers brilliant You Only Live Nine Lives animation (July 2001 Winner)), but have never had any success. Like you, I have tried using tS's foreground effects shader but despite following the manuals instruction, to date my results have ended with either no visible effect or the whole image being completely blurred. Your method, whilst requiring more effort and technical know-how seems to offer better results and a far greater degree of control. You have certainly used it to very good effect on your submission.
Incidently, I have come across grey scale DoF images\layers before on the web and in 3D World magazine but have always associated them with the likes of Maya or 3D Max and never even considered using the principle with tS. Furthermore, since becoming more involved with the forums, I am becoming far more aware of just how important post production work is in creating really good good images. Talking of which, I also own PSP and whilst I have only used layers and masks at their most basic level, I have long felt that they are subjects I need to get better acquainted with. Armed with the info and incentive that you have provided, I shall certainly be exploring these areas further.
Finally, if I could just impose on your time a little bit more, could you please offer an expansion of "fresnel shader layered over the freecp reflectance shader that allows reflections to be desaturated".
Perhaps to save on some of the explanation, I understand that when texturing an object you can apply multiple layers and control how they blend together, but I'm curious as to what exactly it is that you used and what effect you were trying to gain.
Thanks again for taking the time to explain your process Nez, I found it quite an eye opener and I'm sure other beginners who view this thread will think likewise.
PS: Best of luck in the competition. |
Post by Nez // Jun 26, 2008, 10:57pm
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Nez
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No problem Breech; glad the DoF stuff was of use. Please bear in mind that it's not a technique I've tried before - and I'm totally new to trying out any form of post-processing myself as I always tried to achieve as much as possible straight from the renderer, until very recently. Similalrly, I've only a limited experience with either ZRender or using masks, so I may just have got lucky... I definitely plan to experiment a bit more with various post-process methods from now on though.
NB - for another great Zrender tip, see W!zards thread at the following link:http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?t=3405&page=3 - actually, this is an all-round great thread that you should read in full, but that particular page is especially useful ;)
I'm sure there are others who could add a lot to a post-process discussion, may be worth initiating a thread at some point to discuss more....
As for the shaders thing - again, sorry, was a bit presumptious to go with such a brief description - I get used so used to some of the 'old timers' doing the same that it's rubbed off on me!
As you correctly surmised, I was referring to using layered textures in TS5's material editor. Rather than use my original scheme, I've roughed up a very basic scene with a sphere and an environment for it to reflect (I've just used an IBL as it happens, as this can show as a spherical environment). I've shown an environment with strong colours for reasons that will become obvious.
Assuming you are familiar at least with some of the basic reflectance shaders (e.g. phong, metal etc), the key is the use of some special shaders that I referred to. The first is 'ShaderLab' which I downloaded some time ago - it's a free add-on that allows a whole slew of additional shaders to be employed, many of which you can further fine tune. These include colour and transparency shaders etc, but the one I've used here was one of a set by our very own TomG, called 'pure fresnel reflection'. There's another similar add-on called ShaderMagic which is also free which I haven't yet tried, with even more great shaders to try out...
The other shader I used here was the 'freecp reflectspro' shader (developed by the guy who developed Dribble - did a bunch of plug-ins for tS previously which are now available for free). This is a general but very adjustable reflectance shader - which I've never used before! I just remembered seeing something in the help file about saturation of reflections and thought I'd give it a shot.
NB I'll try to find some weblinks if you haven't already got hold of this stuff. Don't recall which tS version you use but I imagine they work under TS6 and probably model side of newer version.
So: the first image below shows the scen with a simple 'caligari phong' shader, with the reflection coefficient at about 0.18.
the second shows the same colour, with the freecp shader instead; similar values have been kept, except I've adjusted the setting for 'reflect sat' to about half, the third with the saturation to zero. Due to differences in the shader, it deesn't actually seem much differemt in the first case, although it's obvious at zero.
The reason for trying this was that reflections in car paintwork seem desaturated to me, so I thought I'd try to get a similar effect. This may well not be the best way to do this, but it was the only one I could think of at the time. I believe if you can use HDRI in newer versions of tS, you can do something similar but don't know any specifics.
Now to demonstrate the fresnel effect - I've done this separately (i.e removed the desaturation) just for clarity - I just added the fresnel on a second layer, with the same colour and default opacity/blend settings.
4th image shows sphere with just fresnel reflection using the shaderlab reflectance shader -I've just shown one of the default presets included for the strength of the effect (which is quite strong in this instance - I used a softer setting for the copter). what it does, in very simple terms, is create a very reflective/shiny area on surfaces angled away from the camera, whilst those more closely facing the camera seem less reflective/shiny - that could probably be described more technically, but what it gives on something curvy like the sphere (or several parts of the copter) is a brightening at some of the edges.
Again, this is an effect I've been led to believe happens on some shiny surfaces on cars etc, although I may well have employed it totally incorrectly. I keep hoping someone will come along and actually produce a simple guide to shader settings for realistic materials (e.g car paint, ceramics, etc) in terms of the best reflectance shader and bump settings etc...
I hope that's enough explaination to cover my brevity - I realise a lesson in using ShaderLab to its full would be not only beyond me but would also take a lot longer. Suffice to say -if you've got these shaders, have a play - I'm still a long way from making the most of them. If not, let me know and I'll see if I can help you find them... |
Post by TomG // Jun 27, 2008, 3:26am
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TomG
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Fresnel shaders emulate the real world - in the real world, any reflection is stronger when the surface is highly angled to the viewer, and weaker when the surface is pointing straight back at the viewer.
This means on a sphere, the reflections are stronger "around the edges" where the surface bends away from the viewer. The same is true on glasses, windows, and more (try standing and looking almost parallel to a window, and then stand in front of it and look straight through - you'll find in the first case it is harder to see through the window and easier to see the reflection, and in the second it is easier to see through the window and less easy to see the reflection).
As the example above describes, this also affects transmission too, but inversely to reflection. When looking straight at a surface (pointing almost straight back at you) it is easier to see through it, more light passes through. When looking at a steep angle to the surface, less light passes through. Again this is also something you can see on glasses (the "dark edges" to a glass).
The two are inverse of course, because the light either passes through the surface, or reflects off of it, meaning if it reflects a lot, then it doesn't transmit a lot, and vice versa.
This is what allows fibre optic cables to work - there you get what is called Total Internal Reflection, where the angle of the light hitting the edge of the fibre optic cable is such that the light is totally reflected into the cable again, and none escapes out of the cable, and so it bounces its way all the way down the cable. Full reflection means zero transmission, and its caused by the angle if incidence between ray and material boundary :)
Its not just car paint that does this, but I believe all reflections and transmission follow these rules. The effect is indeed normally subtle though, rather than overwhelming, though things like dark edges to glasses are where we would notice it the most. You do see it on cars, mostly thanks to their curves which means you have a wide variety of surfaces at different angles to your view. They are a good way to check this effect out.
Anyway, many shaders ignore this effect since it is subtle and instead they give just a flat, even amount of reflection, independent of the angle of incidence. Adding this extra detail does mean extra calculation for the shader, so does make things render more slowly, but it will make things render more accurately. Use the shader when the effect would be pronounced - highly reflective things with curves, or highly "transmissive" things with curves. So cars and glasses are prime examples ;)
HTH!
Tom |
Post by prodigy // Jun 27, 2008, 3:25pm
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prodigy
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Come on Guys! don't miss this oportunity to show us your flying vehicle!!
Just left a few days only!! :banana: |
Post by Breech Block // Jun 27, 2008, 6:05pm
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Breech Block
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Thanks Nez, thanks TomG. I really appreciate the time you have both taken to explain the intricacies of the shaders to me and other forum readers (now I know why the cars always look so spectacular in those brochures :)). What else can I say other than you have both opened up a whole host of new avenues for me to explore.
And Nez, as to your comment:
I keep hoping someone will come along and actually produce a simple guide to shader settings for realistic materials (e.g car paint, ceramics, etc) in terms of the best reflectance shader and bump settings etc...
I know exactly how you feel. When you click on the shader, the choice of available options can be be quite off putting. Added to that the thought that just a slight change to one of the numerous values within those options can have a fair impact on what it is you are trying to achieve the intimidation factor goes through the roof.
PS: Thanks also for the pictures Nez, as they really helped me to understand what you were trying to achieve in your submission. |
Post by rjeff // Jun 29, 2008, 3:29am
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rjeff
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Wow..this thread has died off... |
Post by prodigy // Jun 29, 2008, 5:03am
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prodigy
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Last day, last oportunity :rolleyes:
COME OOOOOONNNN MODELERS!!!!! :jumpy: |
Post by TomG // Jun 30, 2008, 4:25am
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TomG
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As a PS on cars in brochures, there are other things too to make them look spectacular :) Lighting is important, and often there is a large white sheet or board above the car too. Check out advice for car photography, and apply the same things in your set up - the white board above the car gives it something to reflect (other than the roof of a warehouse or wherever it was photographed). The same is true in 3D as in photography, having something to reflect will make all the different as to how your object comes out.
Times this is noticed (in photography, so you can copy it in 3D) - cars; jewelery; eyes (watch a music video - quite often you will see a circular ring of lights reflected in the person's eyes, if you just focus on those and not the big picture; never investigated if this ring of lighting is to make the person illuminate well, or it if is specifically to show up in the eye reflections).
So getting the look of a good car paint shader actually comes down to more than just the shader - your environment and your lighting and how they interact with the shader will be critical. I do suggest photography tutorials as good ideas for how to set up your 3D scene in those cases :) Setting up reflective objects is much the same in 3D as photography.
Note that bouncing light is another thing all together - 3D doesnt do that by default until you enable Global Illumination (GI), so photography for non-reflective objects using bounce cards etc is not usually a good source of tutorials, unless you do want to get into using GI to simulate those features, but there its often better (faster, easier) just to fake it with 3D specific lighting techniques.
HTH!
Tom |
Post by prodigy // Jun 30, 2008, 12:47pm
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prodigy
Total Posts: 3029
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Ok! no one else has anything to share? :rolleyes:
Last call!!!... 2 hours left .. HURRY!! :jumpy: |
Post by prodigy // Jun 30, 2008, 3:54pm
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prodigy
Total Posts: 3029
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Ok it's over! :) |
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