Imperial Hall

[photoman]

Hello all!

 

It has been (I feel like I have said this too much) a long time since I have posted. I have been really busy with school and polo and photography stuff.

 

My Dad wants me to do another archviz sketch for his office card for Christmas. Last year I used my Residential Lap pool sketch.

 

For this year I wanted to mix it up a bit.

 

I first started by using a vertical composition (Final render is going to be 1200x1600px). I then chose to use a one-point perspective composition to emphasize scale and accentuate depth. After I had these in mind I sketched out a doodle involving pillars and arches. The idea was to have a hall lined with pillars lead to another chamber that had an arched door that lead either to a Christmas tree or some other festive element.

 

I started the modeling and shading. The modeling is pretty much finished, I have just started the shading/texturing. As of right now all materials are procedural, either darktree's or images used with the BitmapPlus plugin.

 

The lighting is supposed to be at night. I used a blue kleig pointing in as the main light in the large chamber, I also used several orange bulbs to simulate torch light in the large chamber. In the hallway there are 2 bulbs at low intensities to give shadow detail.

 

The first image is just a test render, the second is where I am at right now. Both are using radiosity with 35k Photons.

 

 

 

50minutes 5pass

1:40:04 9pass

 

 

I shall post more as I work on it more.

 

 

Photoman

[robcat2075]

Welcome back! Looks very cool.

 

Don't miss the very fast "FakeAO" plugin elsewhere here that forum member jenpy has created. That ought to be a boon to people doing interior like yourself.

[Darkwing]

Jaw-droppingly amazing! Fantastic work, looks great so far!

[Fuchur]

Wow... that is really great!

 

*Fuchur*

[HomeSlice]

Beautiful work as always photoman. You may need to turn down the reflections a bit on the column bases, or perhaps add a little bit of grunge at the bottom of the bases in order to define them more clearly against the floor. In some spots it is difficult to see where the floor ends and the column base begins.

 

I'm guessing that the specks of light are artifacts from the photon mapping, but I think they look cool, especially in the Christmas context you are working in. Maybe you could add a fog image ( a bunch of tiny dots with alpha channel) to fill the space with specks of light? Not sure if it would look good or not, but perhaps worth a try?

[Gerry]

The specks of light really make it magical!

[robcat2075]

ya know... maybe something to break up the reflections in the floor so they are not quite so perfect. Maybe slightly wavy or blurry or not all quite so identically aligned?

[largento]

Very nice! I'm with Gerry, the specks of light really do give it a magical look.

[John Bigboote]

Father "Someday son, this will be all yours..." gestures out window.

Son "What, the CURTAINS?!"

 

Don't know why, it reminded me of that...

[tbenefi33]

wow awesome work.

[jason1025]

nice lighting

[petokosun]

nice lighting

[photoman]

Thanks for all the kind replies .

 

@Robcat

I looked into the "FAO" and it seems I need a current subscription (which I don't have, using disc and v14c) and a PC (Which I do have). If I do update to v16 (I may in December) I will definitely look into using. It looks like it can do a lot for a little render hit.

 

@Gerry

The magic light specs are from a low radiosity sample rate. Although I prefer a cleaner render I may find a way to include them in the final render for aesthetic reasons .

 

@Homeslice

I agree with your point about the reflections. I am still tuning the settings on the different materials. I tried a very low level of soft reflections but it came out unrealistic. The pillars had a very high specularity and radiosity does interesting things when it is too high.

 

UPDATE:

 

I have tweaked some more. I made a fresh marble material for the column, and updated the shading so it works with radiosity better.

 

I have also modeled torches and a single present to add to the scene. I (well my Dad did at least ) decided that the festive element is going to big north star. I plan to add that in post, for now I just put up a dusk-star map to add interest.

 

I have also been playing with the lighting, adding some here adjusting there sort of thing. Right now there is 9 lights overall. 8 bulb 1 kleig.

 

Here is my latest test render:

 

1:43:35 9pass 100k photons @ 100samples

And for fun here is a render without radiosity:

0:27:13 9pass No Radiosity

 

I am still tweaking around with things. I am still open to adding and removing elements too.

 

...

 

I will say that I do miss playing around with A:M. It is nice to have such control over a scene when making an image. It is also nice to put various paper sketches and ideas to life.

 

Cheers

 

Photoman

[photoman]

Here is a bigger version of the previous render.

Took about 7 hours.

 

Photoman

[fae_alba]

Father "Someday son, this will be all yours..." gestures out window.

Son "What, the CURTAINS?!"

 

Don't know why, it reminded me of that...

 

"Why don't you want to marry her? She's got huge.......tracks of land"

[photoman]

Update!

 

I have been working off and on wit this project. Mostly distracted with school work and college applications... anyway my Dad wants the final render this weekend so he can get the cards (about 150 or so) printed in time.

 

I haven't added much, just the MMX above the last arch. I adjusted the lighting slightly as well.

 

For the MMX decal I used a bump map and then created an AO (Diffuse) map using Robcat's method on his latest tutorial. Thanks!

 

For the final render I plan to do a 25pass render at 250 samples for radiosity at a resolution of 1500x2000. I don't really want any grain at all in the final render.

 

I will post the final post-produced render when it is ready!

 

Photoman

[photoman]

So here is the final render.

 

I added the vignette, edge blur, and some of the grain in post. The star was added in post as well.

 

It took about 16 hours to render too.

 

 

Photoman