Elegant Bridge

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spacekdet
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Re: Elegant Bridge

Post by spacekdet »

Yep, position comes into play with other light types, even more so if they have any falloff assigned.
Light manager plug-ins are a definite bonus when it comes to large numbers of lights in an array.
Point or local lights are good candidates for making light arrays since they don't have any directional issues.

On the other hand, I find that an IBL works fine since it's basically a pre-made array.
It looks like a ring but it's actually a sphere with the number of local lights distributed across it's surface.
The parameter 'IBL resolution' controls this number.
Since it uses a large number of lights, the manual recommends against using mapped shadows with IBL.
I like that you can influence the color with both the image assigned and the light color itself.

I get good results using gradients culled from sky photographs thanks to the great 'Gradient Thief'!
Instead of making the IBL large and encompassing the entire scene, I'll instead scale it small and put it up near (but inside) the skydome, about where the 'sun' would be.
Uncheck the 'show environment' box. Show environment causes the light object itself to render- which can be handy if you want to use it as a background or also to check to see which direction the image texture is 'facing'.
If your terrain dips below the 'ground grid', tic the 'below ground' box.

One other thing that often trips me up- make sure there aren't any extra default lights in the scene- use the scene editor to weed them out or the 'None' light library before you begin building your setup.

here is an example render and the settings visible, and also the archived scene file if you want to play around with it.
IBL_settings_minitut.jpg
zipped scene file:
IBL_sky_minitut.zip
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Finis
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Re: Elegant Bridge

Post by Finis »

Lighting is now a few infinite lights with ray shadows at slightly different angles, thanks Spacekdet, and GE light with no shadows and the sky texture image. That made good fuzzy shadows.

I think the shadow on the water would be very indistinct. I'll adjust the lights to blur the shadow more on the water and accept the extra blurry results on the land.

Now to de-straighten the shore of the near island and add a beach. Road needs its asphalt and stripes. Then a little fine tuning, maybe adjustments from advice from you all, and its done. Probably do some other versions in other software to try different looks like sunset and night. Animation of driving on it someday.

The convertable car from the TS objects library will replace the minivan. In bridgeworld everyone has a cool car.

There are some render artifacts, spots, on the towers again. That's a job for Paint Shop.
Attachments
EB_IslandShadows.jpg
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marcel
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Re: Elegant Bridge

Post by marcel »

don't blur the shadow on the land. If you want to reduce the shadow on the water maybe with more refflect on the water it will be ok. Also i think the global effect will be better.
in case you like the entire image but not this shadow, here is a way for a still image:
create 2 images, the second will have the water with a setting to don't receive shadow. then merge both image with transparency. you can adjust the intensity of the shadow on the water like you want. when you are near the final render it is sometime easier to use differents render and use them on post production work.
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Dragneye
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Re: Elegant Bridge

Post by Dragneye »

Hey, this is coming out very nice Finis. Thanx for giving a 'play by play' on the lighting also. I'm sure many will find the details useful.
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Re: Elegant Bridge

Post by Finis »

Thanks Dragneye.

I'll do something like that Marcel. That will get both water and land shadows but each with its own look.

Spacekdet provided images of bridge shadows on water and I looked at some over deep water and they all have sharp shadows. The land and water shadows aren't very different. So that's real shadows. For art I still want the water shadows to be less distinct like in my SMC round bridge.
Image

Business is picking up with mowing season approaching so I might not have much time for this for a while.
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Re: Elegant Bridge

Post by MikomDude »

That is one of the most useless bridges I've ever seen :P Cool model though! I really like the triangle shaped bases for the bridge.
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Re: Elegant Bridge

Post by marcel »

Useless object: that is a good subject for a MMC! that can be very cool :)
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Re: Elegant Bridge

Post by Finis »

Useless object is a good MMC or SMC theme. Go put it in the MMC suggestions thread. When I did the round bridge I was thinking about how to do it fast and it had no meaning. It could have symbolic meanings though.

Elegant bridge: I worked on producing a single texture image for the near island. It would produce the effect from the previous image (not the round one) and add a beach with the Paint Shop method noted earlier. So far attempts to apply the new texture crash TS.

Things I'll try:
-- Leave the island as is for the vegetation and create another layer with the beach. That will probably not allow me to align the beach with the shore. I need to learn UV mapping. I have LithUnwrap.
-- Create a duplicate island and enlarge it slightly and apply a partially transparent beach. That creates the effect of a two layer texture but I can use Primitive Itch (I think) UV tools to move and size the beach to fit.
-- Continue to try to paint a single texture and apply it to the island.

I also intend to make the islands lighter green like in the earlier pictures with the grass textures. I like the way that color looks with the sky.
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Finis
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Re: Elegant Bridge

Post by Finis »

I tried making a simple tree-like plant and putting that on the island with geometry paint. The plants were hardly visible and the render time for the sparse test scene's 400,000 polygons means one with enough coverage would crash or render for years.
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Finis
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Re: Elegant Bridge

Post by Finis »

Finishing unfinished projects. No MMC's or SMC's for me for a while. I'll work on finishing my dueling pistols and occasionally on this.

This needs a texture with beaches or other interface of land and water. Then it is done. May need to learn UV mapping.

Also will work on learning Messiah 3D interface and renderer. Then the animation. Then I'll animate a drive along the bridge in Messiah.
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