New member WIP thread

[PixelPete]

Hey guys, new member here, from Brisbane, Aus. I'm trying to self teach myself at the moment, and I'm just working off photography, some my own photos, some from photographic architectural publications to try and reproduce the results as best I can.

Forgive my naming conventions, or lack there of. The first image is from a church in Paris (low res because its a lighting test), a photo I took myself, and the second is from a House in Sydney.

Modelling a scene is the most enjoyable part for me, and as such modelling is where I'm most experienced. mental ray, however (3dsmax 8 means I'm missing out on the A&D materials, much to my dismay) is where I'm still trying to learn. Getting the lighting right, and materials to react accurately or, in the least, aesthetically pleasing.

I'll be posting any work I put into here, really in an attempt to get me to update it regularly with new work and meaningful updates =]
So any input would be awesome, there's some killer work on these forums!

[uddie]

Hey welcome aboard. I would say your off to a strong start, hard to tell with the low rez images but it looks like you have some nice lighting and atmosphere going on. Your floor texture on the second image needs work, by the looks of it your using a procedural wood map for the floor boards. I would try and find a decent resolution timber floor texture or something. Try CG textures as a good place to start if you don't have any to hand. Maybe a little too much Ambient Occlusion on that Red wall too. Keep up the good work though look forward to seeing more. Pre A&D mental Ray makes your work much harder but your doing great so far.

[PixelPete]

Yeah the floorboards are procedural, I've had some trouble getting decent wood texture while eliminating tiling but I'm still looking into it. I tried to mix some procedural's to make it a bit better, but alas..
I'm also trying to minimize how much post work I do, so I learn more of mental ray. I've as much experience with photoshop as I do with modelling the scene, so I have no qualms with taking a render and faffing around with it to what ends.

One question I do have is about Ambient Occlusion. Right now I'm approaching it the only way I know how: by making an Ambient Occlusion texture override in the render settings and adjusting layer settings in photoshop over the original render...is there a better way of going about it?

[uddie]

You could do it in the material if you prefered. Add the ambient occlusion shader in the diffuse slot of your material then add your colour/texture to the bright colour (default white) in the AO shader. This method is good for tailoring specific AO so that for example the furniture has less occlusion than say the walls do. Although I personaly still prefer to add my AO as a pass in photoshop. You can than have multiple AO passes with different seetings and paint over where necessary to achieve your effects. I like the flexibilty it gives me.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Why the Dutch angle on the first image?

[PixelPete]

Why the Dutch angle on the first image?

Why not?
It's not the original composition, nor am I particularly attatched to it. It just seemed interesting at the time. Admittedly the subject wasn't photographed in Holland, but I'm not familiar with French angles

The original and likely final angle was more like the second image.

[PixelPete]

Here's an update. I made a fullsized texture for the wood floor and I think it came out quite well.

[uddie]

See, now thats already looking miles better just with that update. Good Work

.

[PixelPete]

The textures are still twitchy in places which is annoying. The lighting is still too stylistic for my liking, but I'm having trouble getting good results with the daylight system...