@kwistenbiebel said:

looking fabulous stuckon !
Just curious:are the render times still between acceptable ranges?

the render times are not bad at all, the last layer I render was 1000 something by 700 something and it was less than four hour with plants(which are thousands of polys) and reflections on the window shops. Oh BTW I started lighting the red zone, heh heh actually all I did was turning the layer on and see how the lighting from the yellow zone would affect it, pretty good start dont you think?

[stuckon3d]

This is the second pass for the yellow zone, I fixed the burns on the shops and made the street go into darkness so that it does not compete with the hotels lighting, I think I went a little too dark so im going to adjust this a little bit on the next pass, I also added the plants on the balconies and glass reflections (but those are stand-ins until I get the lighting on the red zone done). I also added in PS some pools of lights coming from the window, which I will render them properly when I have all the light placements on all the zones.

PS: how often would you like me to post updates, on the other forum they wanted daily updates but if you guys prefer I can post every week or not until it is finished. Just let me know, I don't want to be a bother.

[stuckon3d]

I see what you mean by it, it really does make the hotel pop, however... if I pull off what I have in mind, I will take the viewers eyes into a journey, starting on the red zone, then it will make you want to look at the yellow zone and then the green zone and then if you liked the journey it will make you want to step back again and start over. If I can pull this off then I have a good image. Wish me luck.

[stuckon3d]

the goal of this image is not to show off the hotel but to capture the magic I felt when I was walking down that street the first time I saw it during my recent honeymoon . The weather was warm with a slight breeze, the moon was out, and the street lighting was almost magical. That is what im trying to convey.

[stuckon3d]

@gaieus said:

It is already very enchanting!
But I think the too much light in the front distracts the eye from the hotel a little bit - that has so much warmer (thus less) light. But it can also be the "light leak" or something you are mentioning...

Really nice!

Thank you Gaieus, that was a good observation, and you are correct the green zone is competing with the yellow zone in brightness so the eyes dont know where to look first. What I will end up doing to guide the eyes better is attenuate the lighting as it goes further into the street thus by the time your eyes hit the hotel, it will looked frames in semi darkness, thus making it pop up and show its full spendor. what do you think about that strategy?

[stuckon3d]

I've been having so much fun lighting this shot, I just could not stop this weekend, so here is the first light pass for the yellow zone. Some of the plants and the glass reflections are left out on purpose so that the renders go faster, but as you can see, you can pretty much tell what is going to look like with them anyway. So what Am I going to work on next? Some of my omni lights are creating burn on the window shops and doorways, so this will be fixed of course, also the floor in the foreground is just a temp floor, the way I envision this is having pools of light coming from the window displays. I think it will make the picture look very enchanting.

[stuckon3d]

@solo said:

Cris

Can you link a larger picture?

Looking fantastic, so much detail that gets lost at such a small size.

thanks.

Thanks solo, the thing is that I dont have the full composite at full res yet (3076x2304), but here is the link to the raw image of the hotel lighting which is (3076x2304). Unfortunately, I cant post the image here, it is telling me the file is too big.

301 Moved Permanently

(www.websitetoolbox.com)

[stuckon3d]

Thank you guys, your comments make me all warm and fuzzy inside, it also makes me want to push myself even harder and do even better.
Here is a second light pass for the hotel with some people and a moon added.

Enjoy!

[stuckon3d]

the first hotel light pass is done! I decided to break the green zone in two part. The foreground part of the street and the hotel in the background. This makes more sense for compositing the image. Also the window do not have any reflection, I will do this in a separate pass after im done lighting the entire image. So far I have used 22 omni lights and 20 LEM and as you can see the render times are still very decent. About 25 minutes at 800x600 full quality and antialiasing. SO... yellow zone here I come!

Hope you like it, C&C are always welcomed.

[stuckon3d]

First texture pass complete, moving on to lighting the scene next. Actually I already started lighting it a little already. check out the chandelier inside the hotel lobby.
The image is at the top of this thread. C&C are always welcome.

[stuckon3d]

@unknownuser said:

You mean this is not a photo 8O

Very nice work Cris.

thank you Eric, you are too kind but this is not even close to being done, as a final image that is, texturing on the other hand and im almost there. I added a new image with a little explanation on what I did on it.

Enjoy.

[stuckon3d]

@mike lucey said:

Hi stuckon3d (I like to use your real name )

On first moving onto this thread I thought the image
was a photo! Well done on this standard of work and
as the guys have already said, please keep us posted
on progress.

Yes, I think Tavi is doing great development work on
Podium. I hope he bring a Mac version on stream soon.

Mike

thank you so much Mike, Its always nice to hear nice things about your work.
as far as my name... is "Cris" , yup no "h".

[stuckon3d]

@marcday said:

Excellent image!

The one and only thing that irks me about it, if I may, is the street floor - I think that if you spent some time finding a good set of textures for a nice bit of paving or cobbles - then altered them to really sit well in the scene (you know, have some realistic change to the material as it reached the edges - a bit of dirt - something like that, and increase the specular of the texture through the middle where people have made it shinier due to their walking there). . . that would really just finalise this wonderful image for me.

Look forward to seeing any updates on this one!

Cheers,

Marc x

thanks Marc, and I could not agree with you more, the texture you see there for the floor is just a standin until I get to texturing the green zone. If you are going what? let me explain, I divided my texturing work in three areas, red. yellow and green. This is also the way im going to light the image, in chunks and then put them back together in photoshop. I'm doing this to reduce rendering times and to have more flexibilty.

As far as having shinier areas where people traffic goes, that is a great idea, I'll try to pull that off on the texture itself and on a few slates by adding a little reflection to them. thanks for the input.

[stuckon3d]

@robmoors said:

Very realistic for a podium render, podium has indeed come a long way! The level of detail is insane, how long have you been working on this? Very well done, keep us updated!

thanks Rob, as far as time is concerned, I started 3 weeks ago but I only spent 2 or 3 hour per night, and sometimes non at all( my wife needs me too ), to me time is irrelevant, I'm doing this for fun and to brush up on my skills because at work I'm only doing one aspect of 3d which is lighting. I cant wait to get to that stage for this image, but I must said that im really enjoying modeling and texturing in SU too.

[stuckon3d]

Howdy yall,
this is my first post in the gallery here, It is a WIP, right now I'm almost done texturing the left side of the street and i'll be moving on to the hotel at the end of the street.
I hope you like it. If you want to see how this image progress, here is the link.

301 Moved Permanently

(www.websitetoolbox.com)

Of course comments and suggestion are always welcomed.

9-07-07
Hi guys, instead of making you scroll all the way down and up so that you can see and compare the images progress, ill put them together at the top for your convinience and i'll add a little explanation on what I did and what is left to do.

Image 2: So we are finally on the green zone, I'm about 40% done. I worked mainly on the street floor. I'm pretty happy with it. I believe it has the dirt in all the right places. But now I need to touch up the brick texture because it look too new compared with the stone texture. Also, the stone has a hit of reflectivity which it will become more obvious when I get to the lighting stage. Also, the hotel has the main texture applied but the sun is washing it away. Once I do more work on the hotel I will shift the sun so that it compliments more the look of the texturing, so that you can see it better.

PS: this is the exact same explanation is in the podium website, sorry I just dont have the time to write new stuff.

I hope you like it.

Image 3: Image 14: Green zone has been completed (for the first texture pass). Once I do the first lighting pass I will check if there are any touch up needed for the textures. I also started the lighting inside the hotel. You can see the chandelier and a couple of statues I put in there. One thing I forgot about was to model the curtains inside the hotel so I guess ill be going back to modeling for a few minutes before I keep on lighting the hotels interior. BTW, I'll will "light " the scene starting from the green zone, then yellow and then red zone.

[stuckon3d]

he, he right the chicken legs are...strange but everything is great,I love your works:)

poster-jessalba

I've accidentally created whole new topics when I ment to post a reply before aswell

Posted by Towner

Those are great! I love the clay ones...and the camo.

[Fella77]

Signature on a Wacom Intuos 3

P: akzidenz

Well I've been using Wacom tablets for years and I've never worn a pen tip out - the plastic protective covers to the old tablets could get a bit hashed, but not the pen tips.

P: akzidenz