robcat2075

Looks like the same problem. It's elusive. It's even harder to make happen twice.

I hereby declare this... pretty close. Aside from the off-screen reflection items mentioned above ( I think that's a lightsaber showing in the yellow block), the shadows are still a bit too bright and the blocks need a smoother transition from the faces to the bevels. Those are doable but I'll let others pursue that. However, I think this shows we can do those sort of renders with A:M. I added some bump to the surface; that can be turned off easily in the material. 256 passes with a denser, less pointy light path, 5.5 hours: CurvedGlass11h_denser_path.prj render preset: CurvedGlassTest.pre Reminder: when doing caustics scenes do a Q render before trying a Shift-Q (progressive) render. Then you can often try some minor parameter tweaking while a progressive render is running. If you make any major changes to your scene, save it then reload it to completely reset A:M's awareness of what's in it. Yes I think the original image was carefully stage managed and manufactured and not the result of just a few minutes of work.

Looking at the original image some more, part of that "look" is that there's a bunch of detailed crap off-camera that's being reflected in the plastic pieces. It's not just the refraction artifacts that we are seeing. We'd have to know what that is better to get all that little detail.

This one is too bright, but you can see telltale signs of the zigzag pattern the light is on in the "teeth" at the edge of the blue shadow.

Clever! That's a situation the FakeAO may be useful in.

The challenge of this simulated area light thing is making a path for the light to traverse that somehow evenly distributes the light within the shape. of course that's not truly possible with a "path". The more passes you have in your multipass render the more accurately the light is describing the line and not randomness. The more instances there are of the light moving in a straight line, the more obvious the stepping is in the shadows. Any math whizzes know how to truly randomize points within an arbitrary shape?

How did you get the ceiling in there?

I'm still pondering how to fit 101 things into 4 lessons, so this won't appear immediately, but I'll ponder more seriously now since there's interest. This will be completely separate from the old animation boot camp.

no, no need for feathers then.

Are you planning to put feathers on him?

I would put a place a bunch of specular-only lights around the scene and let the facets of the jewels catch them.

Bevels need to be fatter and the sides need some sort of ripple to make more interesting refraction artifacts.

Thicker slabs looking promising... (see next post)

closer... A more random path for the area light would solve the stepping in the shadows. Part of the challenge of duplicating the example is that I don't know much about how the lights are arranged, I can only guess from the shadows and reflections. I'm not a lighting guru, but I think the essential elements of that imagery is available in A:M. More study of the original image and tweaking of the A:M version will certainly get closer to the goal. for further investigation... -their shape is much thicker than mine and has a very specific beveled shape to the edge with probably some random non-uniformity to break things up -I've only approximated the colors of their model.l -I'm not sure how they maintain the sharper caustic patterns with the hazy illumination. That would need some more R&D -My version is an all-at-once attempt. With compositing of different lighting situations many of the more nuanced details in the original could be had. Here's the PRJ to play with. Click thru any image requests. CurvedGlass08__Rays.prj "Rectangle" is the path that "Spiral Dome Light" travels to simulate an area light. With multipass ON the light travels the path from 0 to 100% in the first 0.2 of the frame that would also be interesting to pursue.

It has both. However I would have to make a black sky dome to get black reflections as A:M currently doesn't reflect the camera background color. But first I'm trying to get the shadowing closer.

another aborted attempt...

closer...

256 passes finished yeah , it really needs a rectangular light over it.

Caustics will be needed to get the colored shadows. For the diffuse illumination a simulated area light will be needed, which means multipass. My model is only a bare approximation of the shape they have there. first attempt, not even finished rendering yet. This is done with a light traveling on a spiral which is not the shape they have used in their image, I suspect theirs is more rectangular, but i had a spiral ready to go. The spiral doesn't create a random enough light placement. more R&D would be needed. But i think something very similar can be had with A:M.

Bouncing ball is the atom on which character animation is built. Would there be interest in such a class? It would be about 4 or 5 lessons, each one focusing on some small element and building on the previous ones. Unlike a series of tutorials that are just out there, it would be an online class where everyone is doing the same exercise at the same time. Hopefully being able to do a proper bouncing ball will enable you to more critically assess your other animation efforts and avoid elementary problems.

some blur added on Aftereffects made them look a bit more luminous sparks.avi_Comp_1.mov

First attempt. These are streak particles whose color goes from white to orange to black over one second. the emitter rate is animated in the chor to make it go on and off sparks.mov They need some glow to look brighter. I'm not sure if streaks can "glow"

streak particles would be ideal for that

basically you want some of the facets to flash at various times? how about making a facet a Group and animating it's color in the chor to a brighter color or white briefly?

messed with the colors a bit