Jump to content

Trees, lights, a few questions


mathes
 Share

Recommended Posts

Hi there. This is my first post here, I figured this would be the best place to get some help, since I see some beautiful work on these forums.

 

I'm making an animation for a new condo development in Camrose, AB. This is surrounded by mountains, and many many trees. I'm wondering if you have any advice on how I can represent all of these trees, keeping in mind that the animation goes all around the building. I'm using a two-plane tree right now, but it is looking quite repetitive.

 

Also, lighting. Right now I have 10 directional lights. One at each 45 degrees, including one sun. And two pointing straight down and straight up. It doesnt look too bad, but I'm guessing there is a better way.

 

Also, I'm using maya.

 

Thank you for any help,

 

Jeremy Mathes

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just realized your mention of using maya. The rpc plugin for maya isn't ready quite yet. But I believe it will be released shortly along with the new version.

 

As far as lighting goes, I haven't used maya so I couldn't give you any specifics on global illumination for that package exept to say try looking into using some sort of GI. If your not familiar with that at all you should know that GI doesn't always work in animation, or at least you will be looking at tremendous rendering times to make it work. Here is a setup for faking GI. It outlines the process in max but the principles will work in maya as well I'm sure. Credit here to most honorable CGA member DelfoZ

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow, quick responses. I'm going to try the Fakiosity posted above. I do have mental ray with this version of maya, but the render time would be too great.

 

And hearing that RPC's are out for maya now made my day. I'll have to look into that further.

 

Thank you all for the help.

 

Jeremy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I setup the 3-ring system for my lighting, and on the side with the sun, it looks great. Much better than before. However, it makes the backside appear quite flat. I think i may need to add some lights back there to create subtle shadows.

 

Once again, thank you

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did some tweaking with the lights, and I'm very happy with the results. The backside is no longer flat.

 

As for posting examples, I would have to check with the supervisor first, I'm not too sure if that's a big issue or not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Jeff. That's freaky, good guess.

 

I went to the ArchVision website to see if they had a demo of RPC for maya, but none was listed. If there is a beta program for it, I would love to test it out. They used it here for 3dsMax and the results were very nice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Mathes,

 

I'll look into the Maya plugin and see what I can come up with.

 

Well it was not too hard to guess that you were probably at MRD becuase you are the only medium size studio, other than in-house work at architecural fims that do architect viz work in Calgary. ;) Well you and now Smoothe.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...