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rontant
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Re: Light & textures - rendering examples of this and that.

Am I the only one who thinks that the sun brightness in sh3d is way too weak? Look at my rendered photo below:

Isn't it too dark?

As a workaround, I used Photoshop to increase the brightness to the level I think would be ideal. See photo below:




Bigger and closer light sources give softer shadows – smaller and farther light sources create sharper shadows.

Cec


I tried using light panel as the sun substitute. The panel, set at 100% intensity, is placed outside about 2 meters away from the window. The problem I have with light panel is the missing shadow. If I decrease the size and/or move it further away, I can't get the same level of brightness I want.


Light panel is fine but I lost the shadow effect casted by the early morning/late afternoon sun?


Same issue here with the shadow.

Any suggestion or comment?
[Oct 20, 2018, 4:02:37 AM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Ceciliabr
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Re: Light & textures - rendering examples of this and that.

Aperture, shutter speed and ISO is what normally controls the exposure.
Unfortunately none of these parameters can be controlled when making snapshots with the SH3D camera.

Yes, bigger and closer light sources give softer shadows – smaller and farther light sources create sharper shadows.
So when you place a panel light @ 100% only 2 meters away from your window, your shadows WILL get soft.

First of all; I don't think your image is too dark
Of course, the gallery background is not adjustable, so the smaller the image, the darker it is perceived.
Secondly; the camera is an absolute observer, whilst our eyes are dynamic observers. So when your snapshot is viewed against a white background, your eyes are automatically adjusting the white balance and the light to the brightest area. Any normal exposure will seem a bit dark when viewed against a bright white light.




The gallery does not offer us the most favourable surroundings for viewing. Using Photoshop to adjust the brightness to match a white background is often necessary when posting small images.

Cec
[Oct 23, 2018, 5:54:14 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
rontant
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Re: Light & textures - rendering examples of this and that.


Any normal exposure will seem a bit dark when viewed against a bright white light.


Ah yes, I got it now. With my image put against a dark background, your point is indisputably clear. Thank you very much Cec.
[Oct 25, 2018, 2:15:43 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Ceciliabr
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Re: Light & textures - rendering examples of this and that.

Part four ( A)

In school I learned that nature will never produce a straight line.
It will never produce rectangles, hexagons or cylinders, and it will never produce neon tubes.
I learned that whenever something “unnatural” is introduced, nature will not recognise its existence in its basic form.
It will immediately start the process of forcing it to adapt.
The forces of nature: Wind – dust – sunlight – rain and so on, is immediately set to work.
I learned that nature wants chaos.
And I learned that maintenance is essentially just another word for humans trying to prevent nature from forcing the adaption.




I don’t really agree with all of this anymore.
I think man is a product of nature, and by logic reasoning everything man ever creates must be as natural as nature itself. Where else could it come from?


That being said, I think texturing is all about applying chaos.

_________________


This part was initially meant to say a few words about how I use textures, but I have gotten some inquiries about water, so I will start with that.
Water: Another 3D illusion:



I have made a project file that can be downloaded HERE.
It includes a downscaled water model ( 14MB) and some textures.
The 3D model is based on an auto-generated procedural terrain which I tweaked in a program called VUE eXtreme,
using some random-generated patterns.
I know this can also be made with Blender, but for me using Blender is no option yet.
(I’m still trying to figure out why my synapses go to sleep every time I open that program.)
Just so it’s mentioned; trying to make waves with a handcrafted height-field map is a waste of time. We can't do random like a computer.
Well, a computer can't really do random either, but it does it better than me.

To get SH3D to render a water-like surface from this random-generated water model, I had to first get rid of the foam texture that came with Vue,
and then edit the mtl-file to give it a glass surface.
After some trying and failing I settled for this .mtl-file:

SEA 2
newmtl foam
Ka 0.0 0.0 0.0
Kd 1.0 1.0 1.0
Ks 0.33 0.33 0.33
Ns 10.0
d 0.86
illum 2


I’m aware that I’m missing the density, but this setting gives a good enough mixture of reflections and transparency for my use.
If someone has the time to rework these settings and make it more water-like, please share the result.



In the project file " Sea 1" is the same model as "Sea 2".
The difference is that "Sea 1" is textured with a semitransparent wave-texture and has a different mtl.
If the texture is replaced with a colour, Sea1 also becomes transparent and reflective like "Sea 2," but in a different way.

__________

Textures.
(and a bit more about water)



This is the project file. Harbour.sh3d.

The pier is 280 meters long, sixty meters wide and 8 meters high, which means the texture has to be quite big if I want good renders.
But big doesn’t necessarily mean heavy. Big means keeping the size. High resolution and high compression render a much better result than low
resolution and low compression.



The texture file for the pier, which covers half the length of the pier and is repeated once, is 10000 x 750 px.
When texturing large constructions, I use 1 px = 1 cm for textures.
That means I can get a fairly good rendering from a “normal” distance.



For real close-ups I have to make the texture at least ten times bigger, or I can cheat by applying a higher resolution texture to only the part that’s in
the frame, a bit like I do with the water model; move it around to cover exactly what is needed.

I generally make textures that have the same dimensions as the object, meaning that if I use a rectangular box I make textures to proportionally fit all
sides so I don’t end up with images that are stretched or compressed.

This way the project file gets larger, but textures have little influence on the rendering time, and most modern computers can handle quite large projects.
The enhanced options for managing levels in V6 has made it very easy to hide / show levels we don’t need to see. This both speeds up the workflow and
makes it easier on the computer.
When I create something like this harbour, I often browse thru my old photo-collectors to look for inspiration.
The pier ( and the texture) were inspired by an old snapshot of a canal in Amsterdam.



It wasn’t good enough to rip any texture from it, but it gave me some ideas.

When making a texture as big as 10000 px, the first thing I do is to fill the bottom layer, creating a foundation for the different elements I will paint it with.
For the pier I chose a concrete foundation that I copied and pasted until it covered the whole length of the pier, and pasted different elements on top; some
drainpipes, some old bricks, some rusty leaking and some spots of dirt – trying to avoid making recognisable patterns. Finally I applied a grungy texture overlay
with lots of dirt.
It sounds easy, but it took me some hours to make this harbour look somewhat presentable.




Just mentioning:
Some of you may not have noticed this enhancement to v6 that’s not mentioned in the version history:
The materials modification pane now also scales the 3D model when its resized.



Cec.
____________

Some of my unscaled 4K originals, some textures and some other things can be downloaded HERE..

___________
[Dec 14, 2018, 3:57:01 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Ceciliabr
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Re: Light & textures - rendering examples of this and that.

Part four (B)
Other things I do…

I like my textures to be unique to my projects.
That’s why I spend time on making my own textures.
I create most of my textures from photos; snapshots of buildings, walls, fences, doors, pavements, graffiti… and what have you.
Cloudy days are best for photographing. On cloudy days the light is flat and there are few shadows. I don’t like it when shadows are pointing in the wrong direction.

There are also a number of websites with free textures that are good starting points for creating unique textures.
Anything can be combined.
Sometimes I just try a “wrong” texture on an object, just to see what it looks like.
I found a nice abstract image on a free textures website.
I applied it to the cover of a duvet.



Changing textures is an easy way to change the atmosphere...




Finding the right texture can take a while, and sometimes the right texture just isn't even created yet.
Sometimes creating a simple 3D model is a lot faster than searching for the texture of your dreams, especially when it comes to flooring.
Floorboards and tiled floors can easily be made with Photoshop ( and maybe with Gimp?) using 3D extrusion.
A model can be textured with any kind of texture, or just coloured, without losing the structure.

Here is a project file: Flooring.sh3d.
I have made some example renderings.

Livingroom floors:













Bathroom floors:





(For shiny floors, give it a bit of shininess and set the ShininessShader to Glossy when rendering.)



A short comment on texturing terrains ( answering some questions I have got on email):

Everything is easy when you know how to do it, but I know from experience that creating complex height field maps take a lot of trying and failing.
The easiest way to start is to use Verto Studio 3D as terrain generator, and to use Gimp, Photoshop or what have you, to start playing with gradients and grayscale.
Designing a correct height field map that perfectly reflects the real surroundings of a house, is more than I’m able to.
I know there’s a way to accomplish this by using Google maps
and a new plugin made for Photoshop, but I’m not familiar with that technique yet.
Answering a question about texturing a terrain:
If it’s a terrain created from a home-crafted height map, it’s quite easy; just enlarge the height map and start applying textures to the right places.
I will show an example on how I do it:



It’s a try and fail game, so be patient. This took some hours:



____________

Note:
Apart from where it’s evident that my images have been subject to post production ( photoshopping), all images here are straight out of SH3D.
The only postproduction is downsizing the images from 4K to 1280 px.

Example of photoshopped image:




Cec.
[Dec 14, 2018, 4:23:12 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
okh
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Re: Light & textures - rendering examples of this and that.

Wow. At a loss for words.

So much to learn - and so little time (before Christmas at least).

Looking forward to studying further. Thanks for posting.

ok
[Dec 14, 2018, 5:37:19 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Ceciliabr
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Re: Light & textures - rendering examples of this and that.

I'm really sorry about the typos here.
Spellcheck think it knows better than me what I want to write, and tends to automatically substitutes even words that I have spelled correctly.
Alas, it is too late to edit this post now, so the wrong words are here to slay... ...STAY! forever.

I'm browsing through my collector... I mean collector... COLLECTION!

Good fight ... NIGHT!


Cec
[Dec 18, 2018, 2:29:06 AM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Xiste
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Re: Light & textures - rendering examples of this and that.

(...) texturing is all about applying chaos.
Yes.
And you can even turn it around and say: Chaos is texture.
In the world of computer-aided composition and performance we can apply a process that creates a touch of randomness to pitch and timing. When we apply this process to our music we make it sound like it’s being played by a human rather than by a machine. This process is called Humanizing. The amount of randomness in this process is however quite questionable as the computer is dependent upon certain parameters to be set prior to applying the process, and as you say; computers can't really do random.
Neither can nature, in my opinion. Nothing is random. Everything is dependant upon the state of the initial conditions.

I see no unstructured randomness in your perfectly applied chaos. I guess that's the secret to creating these lifelike images.

I have just read this whole tread once again from start to end. You have obviously put a great deal of work into this.
I can only say thank you for sharing your knowledge, your creations and your thoughts.

btw: You should revise your spellcheck settings and untick the automatic replacement ( or what it’s called).


Xiste
[Dec 22, 2018, 11:21:00 AM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Xiste
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Re: Light & textures - rendering examples of this and that.

Just noticed the title of the last image: "Jag kan ro utan åror"
It's actually quite funny, meaning I can row without ores

The title is taken from a Swedish song, known all over Scandinavia.
Here is a recording made for the film: A Cowboy in Sweden, performed by Nina Lizell and simultaneously translated by Lee Hazlewood:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhFg_Qtu8p4

Enjoy,

Xiste
[Dec 22, 2018, 12:26:36 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Ceciliabr
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Re: Light & textures - rendering examples of this and that.

Here is a recording made for the film: A Cowboy in Sweden, performed by Nina Lizell and simultaneously translated by Lee Hazlewood:
A highly entertaining video clip! Simultaneous translation is underrated smile
Thank you!

C
[Dec 24, 2018, 9:57:49 AM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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