itsjustme

Happy Birthday, Will!

I haven't tried that yet, Steve...but it's worth another experiment. I'll do some quick messing with it. After a few more experiments, I had something similar show up on Bertram's mouth when lighting the head from behind. Setting the shadow casting light to have ray-traced shadows with the darkness set to 100 percent got rid of it. Hope that helps, Steve.

Nosir, I used the setup that I posted with the test in this post: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=33048&p=400217 It's just one klieg light.

The possible Bertram skin? It might need a slightly darker tint...I'm still tweaking it. It has nearly the same settings as "skin1" (1.3, .85, .5 instead of 1.3, .85, .56), what I think you're seeing is the blue tint on the more shallow areas along with a very stark white light. Gelatinous would be more like the higher settings.

I haven't tried that yet, Steve...but it's worth another experiment. I'll do some quick messing with it. Okay, so here is a set of test images. The first is the settings for "chicken1", "skin1" and "skin2" from Yves' numbers. The second image is using the half extinction numbers from Jeff Bolle's "Batgirl" image here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=46491 The third image is using the half extinction numbers from Steve's "Buying A Coffee Shop" thread here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=44044 The fourth image is the possible Bertram skin...which is pretty much the "skin1" setting with a couple of minor changes. I didn't get any hot spots in these tests, so I'm thinking it might be something to do with the lighting where they appear...just a guess though. Hope that helps, Steve.

I haven't tried that yet, Steve...but it's worth another experiment. I'll do some quick messing with it.

I worked on some lighting on the smoking area a couple of weeks ago starting here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=38232&p=399990 I put a version of Bertram in the set and decided I needed to do some tweaking to him before I could adequately evaluate the lighting. I tried several things in order to "toon" Bertram, but ended up just updating his nose and ears (which made me have to re-do his hair)...I didn't like the other changes very much. After that, I started working on his skin...which led me to an exploration of SSS. In order to get a better handle on SSS, i did some tests using the extinction distances with color values posted by Yves here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=25867&p=212206 I have attached the test files and renders in the "SSS_TESTS.zip" in this post. I made my test box extremely small so that I could see the color changes, which also meant that I had to turn up the "Relative density" to get rid of artifacts. The numbers in the name of the renders is the "Relative density" setting. From these tests, I think I got a skin setting for Bertram that might work (image is attached). I'll post an image of Bertram with the settings applied once I get his hair finished. The SSS settings are "skin1" with some minor tweaks. SSS_TESTS.zip

Have you tried updating your graphics card drivers? At the very least, it couldn't hurt and might allow you to use OpenGL3.

Great stuff, Mark!

Looks great, Chris!

Thanks!

I got a great grin out of this one, John. Very cool.

I don't remember the render times for each AO setting, but (using 16 passes), AO at 70 percent quality with the three sun lights was about 1 hour and 45 minutes (of course, the time gets faster as you reduce the quality), with the 17 bulb light rig and the three suns was close to 1 hour and just the three sun lights without any ambient light was about 18 minutes. I'm not too concerned about the render times since I'll be compositing Bertram into the scene. Also, my render times are pretty high due to the underpowered laptop I'm currently using.

I think I didn't write that very clearly...the test images start at 30 percent and go to 70 percent in increments of 5 (I'll tweak the original wording).

I rendered the smoking area with AO only with a white Ambiance Color to better see the AO grain. The quality settings (for these test images) go from 30 percent to 70 percent in increments of 5. If I were to stay with AO, the lowest setting I like is 65, but I still prefer 70. I've added the renders in the attached ZIP file as individual images and as layers in a GIMP XCF file for comparison (you can just hide layers in GIMP to A/B each setting). I then set up a 17 light hemisphere of blue bulbs to replace the AO and the render time was reduced considerably. I also reduced the saturation of the yellow sun light and put the present version of Bertram in the shade to see what it would look like...attached is that test as well. There is still a lot to work on...it needs bounce lights, possibly a couple of fill lights, etc. I'll also need to finish Bertram so that I can see how he will really look in a closeup in the shade (texturing will help). So, I'll have to start making some decisions about how the final Bertram will look. AO_quality_percentage_tests_10_16_2014.zip

Looks great, Robert!

You could use bones.

70% has given me great results with purely AO renders, but it could probably be reduced...I haven't experimented with turning it down for this scene yet.

I'm doing some borrowing of methods used by Rodger Reynolds, Stian and Yves...in combination. There are three kliegs that make up the sun, the yellowish shadow casting sun, a blue non-shadowcasting sun and a negative blue shadowcasting sun. The yellowish sun is positioned 140,000 inches (about 2.2 miles) above the ground and the other two sun kliegs are set to "translate to" and "orient like" it. Then, the Choreography has the "Global Ambiance Type" set to "Global Color" set to the same blue color and the AO is set to "70% Occlusion Sampling" in the render settings. I've added captures of the settings at the end of this post. I still haven't added bounce lights, so it's lacking that for now. To possibly decrease render time, you could try a blue skylight rig to replace AO. Hope that helps, Steve.

It's been a few weeks, so I posted what little I have to show on the smoking area here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=38232&p=399990

I started messing with the lighting for the smoking area...not much to look at yet, but it will hopefully get better.

His blog is one of the many in my newsreader: http://www.tomrichmond.com/blog/ Love his work.

Looks great!

Yessir.

I use a modified "T" pose like Robert suggested. The arms are raised as high as they can go without raising the shoulders. For me, it makes weighting the shoulders easier. Just my preference.