Condo Interior

[Ken Walton]

OK guys - I guess I've finally mustered up enough courage to step in front of the firing squad.

 

This is just one angle from 1 of 11 units. There are significant errors here which will be fixed (ie. positioning/rotation of "potted plants" (thanks Marc) a couple of straggling shadows, etc... There's no GI here, just object lights for the walls, ceiling, and floor, a target spot from outside, two rectangle lights near the "window walls", and a few slightly colored overshot spots to fake some bounce and fill in gaps. This project is all animation (no stills) so for render purposes, I decided to remove the glass from the windows to avoid having to raytrace those shadows. I guess I could render a reflection pass with some flat interior lighting and comp it in post - we'll see how time goes. Anyway, with all of these excuses out of the way, I guess I'm ready - rip it up guys.

 

 

Thanks,

Ken Walton

[Ken Walton]

Oh yeah - Render time: 33 seconds.

[Ken Walton]

Keep leaving out the important stuff...

 

Dual P4 Xeon 2.4's, 1GB RAM, Quadro4 900XGL

 

Archicad, 3dsmax4.2

[STRAT]

jeez, 33 secs? wow!

 

well, most nice modelling. very detailed and pleasing to look at.

 

as you know - GI!!!!! put some in (just a tad) and this scene will really fly. it renders nice as it is, but as it stands it looks scan lined and 'un-real' gi will sort that.

 

the camera looks odd too. wat lens is it? under 35mm i suspect. the lens's distortion is showing up - look at the ceiling lights, they curve away on both sides.

 

that floor is way too reflective too. maybe turn it's specularity down aswell, altho gi will help.

 

it also looks a bit too clean and regular as far as texturing goes.

 

but i'll wait for the gi render i think. good job

[kid]

not bad for scanline.

 

strat, not everyone has GI yet

 

Ken, if you select your glazing objects and go to 'properties' in the quad menu and uncheck 'cast shadows' you can then have your reflective glazing in the scene and still use shadow maps for your outside main lights - no need for multiple passes and compositing. I'm sure this will work with a Standard Material with a Reflection map in the slot, but I certain it works with the Raytrace Material (with IOR=1)

[Paul Griger]

Hi Ken,

 

Solid 1st posting, I think you’ll survive the CG firing squad

 

I like the overall placement, the textures of the materials, & lighting for not GI. Overall its pleasing to the eye.

 

Couple of Q’s re ArchiCAD:

 

1. what did you use to get the rosettes and the fluted casing on the window casing, is that an add-on library to AC?

2. add-on library for AC to get the tables and fan?

 

Now the crits:

[and keep in mind that I am not an art major, so I am just pointing out what catches my eye:]

 

1. my eye has a hard time focusing on anything in the pic. My eye wants to focus in on the 3-seat couch, but that statue distracts my eye. Maybe change the camera angle or remove the statue?

2. the cabinets on the right hand side are distracting also. Maybe they would be a shade or two darker, or out of focus somewhat, I don’t really know. They just stick out more than I’d expect.

3. can you have the reflection for the floor falloff a bit, it seems to reflect indefinitely on the floor?

4. and since it is so reflective, would we see the outdoors in the floor reflection?

5. What is that “white wall” reflecting on the floor from that large, two-wide window?

6. the rug looks very natural, but it doesn’t look “grounded” in the scene, like it is almost floating. Would there be a slight reflection or shadow on the floor from the rug that would be more discernable? I’m not sure what else is making my eye feel like it is “floating”

7. what is that bright spot on the ceiling to the upper left of the fan?

 

These are just things that I noticed. I’m not ripping the scene by any means, but rather pointing out what I’d want others to say to me if I was looking for ways to improve a scene.

 

Looking FWD to any refinements you may incorporate and the future post of an update.

[Ken Walton]

Thanks for being so gentle so far guys - I agree with everything that's been said.

 

Ok, in order:

 

STRAT: Greatly appreciated. The lens here is either a 28 or a 24 - don't recall exactly. I personally don't like dropping below a 35 on interiors, but the client kept asking for it - I tried to avoid it three times - tsk tsk... Keep in mind that this is predominantly an animation sequence, so I'm not sure how to get around the FOV issue - ie. hiding a wall won't work because it'll need to be seen in some part of the same shot, and a visibility change would be obvious. What would you suggest? You're right on the floor - I had cranked up the "flat mirror" to 35 for some reason - no idea why - and forgot to put it back around 13 or 14. The spec on the floor is down quite a bit already, but the shellac mat still seems to be popping quite a bit. I think I'll try decreasing the shellac blend - this could probably help the reflection too. I'm not sure what you mean about the clean & regular textures though - give me an example and I'll see what I can do. As for the GI, it is finalRender I'm using here (which has provided me with these delicious objLights) and I'll give it another shot. The only prob is that I pretty much ruled out full GI from the beginning, so this scene isn't tweaked for it (max materials - not fR, object rendering controls not set, etc. etc...). I'll probably post another unit somewhere on here with the GI - this scene's way too messy to clean up right now. My bad...

 

kid: Thanks, and I'll give it a shot - but I'm gonna have to stick some planes w/ a flat mirror in their place. Even a touch of raytracing in this scene will eat my lunch. Like I mentioned to Strat, this scene's pretty f'd up and unorganized - it was my lighting r&d platform so not too much care went into the organizing of objects. Include/exclude would be a real pain in the ass, especially since this scene contains the unit as a whole (all 4200 sq ft). Again, my mistake.

 

Paul: Thanks - I'm surviving so far, but some of the crew hasn't been here yet... Archicad questions: I was in love with it when I bought it, now I'm not that sure. I think I'd lean more towards "max being a complete solution" now than anything else, but I'll see how ac 8 goes... The casings and rosettes (as a matter of fact all the casings and millwork) ended being done in max and setup for vertex snap. I wasted damn near a month searching for libraries and other peoples shit that had these in it and came up with diddly squat. I should have done it in max from the beginning. Snapping verts in max, to me, is quicker and easier than any parametric object in archicad, and the quality difference can't be measured. The furniture (except the 3-seater, which is from MrCAD, and the loveseat - which is made from the 3-seater) is all original. Again, my search for consistent quality models turned up short and wasted more time than it would have taken to make it from scratch. I'm sure everyone recognizes Marc Lorenz's potted plants (which are botched in this shot) and the hanging basket is from 3dplants.com (not too impressed with those - anyone got good suggestions for plant/flower meshes?) Next subject. You're right about the focal point in the scene, but I'm no art major either - my formal education consists of a semester of art class in 7th grade. I'll render another angle, which should help with the cabinet as well. Good eye on the "white wall" on the floor - that's the tiling of the cylindrical environment map and I missed it. I'll make the rug a little thicker and raise it slightly off the floor to get the shadow. If this was a still, I'd just burn the edges slightly in photoshop. I think the "popping" of the spec hit on the shellac floor material is causing the bright white area, which also adds to that "floating" effect. Like I said earlier, decreasing my shellac blend should solve alot of probs here. Lastly, the white "ghost" spot next to the fan is from an overshot spot. I don't think it directly affected the ceiling, so I'll try an exclude.

 

Everyone: Again thanks for the input and advice - keep it coming and I'll get an update on here soon.

 

Sincerely,

Ken Walton