Stairwell WIP

[Alanw]

I've finally put down the books to start a project. In the past I've fallen back on XSI to model stuff, but this is going to be entirely done in Escape.

I mostly would like a good scene to practice some lighting and shading that I can call my own. Any crits or suggestions appreciated.

I couldn't resist the temptation to render an AO pass. It's point cloud based, and I haven't cleaned up where my surfaces intersect so it gets ugly in places.

I'm mapping all the UV's and cleaning up the geometry now, so hopefully have something textured to show next time.

Not sure if I'll do the "ghost pigeons" yet...

-Alan

[TheUsualAlex]

Good job so far.　I liked lighting on the photograph, btw.

you might want to try using mPBR to see if you can generate ambocc pass from there using environment area light instead. Might or might not yield better result than the shader... Looks like the old issue of the white corner edge there still need to be resolved somehow...

[linhan4444]

good :thumbsup:

[morpheus101]

I like it. Keep them coming :thumbsup:

[cellchuk]

I liked the photograph as well. and the model is looking good so far.

keep us updated

[Jason]

I couldn't resist the temptation to render an AO pass. It's point cloud based, and I haven't cleaned up where my surfaces intersect so it gets ugly in places.

Hi Alan,

Nice scene you're working on:) Keen to see how the lighting goes.

Cheers,

Jason.

PS. Just in case you didn't know, the white glitches are related to ShadowBias.

[LEO-oo-]

Nice job - thank ou for sharing!

[ykcosmo]

very nice job!!!

[zasid]

Cool Job I will be looking forward to see some interesting lighting test.It will be great if u can show a transition from day to nite.

[Alanw]

Thanks everyone.

I've had a little time to edit the geometry and fiddle with the occlusion() settings, but mostly I'm busy with mapping UV's and organizing my scene to render. I will experiment more with lighting once all my shaders are written and textures are painted.

And thanks Jason and Alex for the suggestions. In this image I've increased the bias to 0.003. If I go any higher it starts looking worse, so I suppose this is about right. I may give PBR a try later to see how it compares. Right now I'm using PRman though.

[King Kirby]

It strikes me that a lot of the feeling of the photo comes from the slightly wideangle lens and cropping chosen. Any plans to match those aspects?

Coincidentally a stairwell lighting tutorial just popped up on CGTalk.

CGTalk - Six Tuts on Light and Shade

[Alanw]

It strikes me that a lot of the feeling of the photo comes from the slightly wideangle lens and cropping chosen. Any plans to match those aspects?

Coincidentally a stairwell lighting tutorial just popped up on CGTalk.

CGTalk - Six Tuts on Light and Shade

Thanks for the link.

I do plan on trying to match the photo as much as possible. I'll hopefully post some shader/lighting tests with the proper composition soon.

[Alanw]

I have all my UV's mapped now. I'm almost finished collecting texture references as well, so I plan to begin painting my maps soon.

The texture on the walls is the only one that's giving me trouble. It's hard to tell if it's weathered paint over plywood or wallpaper.

I've also been studying different approaches to the rock debris. In the images above I tried meta-balls converted to polys, but after I changed the geometry to Sub D's it looked more like liquid then anything. Then I instanced 5 RIB archives each containing a single rock to groups of my painted points. Each one randomly oriented and scaled a bit. This looked decent, but took too long to render and used up a lot of RAM.

I found a really cool shader today by Peter Stuart that uses bombing to randomly place a bunch of pebbles. This one takes a little bit to render, but it's still faster then my point instancing and I think it looks better. No reason for me to re-invent the wheel.

I've changed the lighting model from Lambert diffuse to Oren Nayar, but I plan to experiment with it further. I still think the rocks need to look a bit more "chalky" then they do.

-Alan

[michael]

nice

that Peter is a smart cookie.

[zasid]

Hi ALan,

thats looks cool can you point us from where u find that shader.Thanks.

[Jason]

I found a really cool shader today by Peter Stuart that uses bombing to randomly place a bunch of pebbles. This one takes a little bit to render, but it's still faster then my point instancing and I think it looks better. No reason for me to re-invent the wheel.

Are you bombing diffuse texture? Or are you bombing displacement texture and just using a regular oren-nayar/diffuse/etc for light & color?

[Alanw]

Are you bombing diffuse texture? Or are you bombing displacement texture and just using a regular oren-nayar/diffuse/etc for light & color?

His shader is pretty cool in this regard. It's a surface shader + displacement shader combo with fake shadows and diffuse illumination. The pebbles themselves have pretty decent shading on them, but you can't see it very well since mine are so small and I desatured the colors.

Here's the link. http://www.bhsunshine.com/shaders/pebbles.html

[zasid]

Thanks Alan,

these shaders are really amazing.

thanks.

[abvfx]

His shader is pretty cool in this regard. It's a surface shader + displacement shader combo with fake shadows and diffuse illumination. The pebbles themselves have pretty decent shading on them, but you can't see it very well since mine are so small and I desatured the colors.

Here's the link. http://www.bhsunshine.com/shaders/pebbles.html

Great site. I could learn alot there.

zasid: Awesome work so far. Cant wait to see more detailed lighting going on. Hope it all gonna be standard Houdini lights, i love traditional light setups. So much faster and customizable.

-andy

[Alanw]

Finishing up my textures. I'm still adjusting things here and there before I move on, but here's a quick comp. I haven't put any time into lighting yet, nor have my shaders been updated for the various AOV's I'm going to be using for the final comp.

The lighting is going to be somewhat standard. Right now I'm using two rectangle pseudo area-light's. It gives a sort of occluded look, which is fine for testing since I'm not rendering out separate passes yet. I plan to test photon based global illumination as well since the roof areas are way too dark and could use a little indirect illumination. I may just fake it with a bunch of uber lights though. Not sure yet, but it's going to be a fun!

-Alan

Edited August 22, 2008 by Alanw