Bicycle Time Trials Race Starting Ramp

[nathanpeucker]

Studio/Institution: The Gordon TAFE
Genre: Other
Software: 3ds Max
Description:

Hey all! Just thought I'd post my first (mostly) complete render.

 

Looking forward to any feedback you can provide, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

In 2010 the UCI international road cycling event was held in Geelong (Australia) as a result the Tafe's Building Design discipline was approached to design starting ramp and award ceremony stage. My group's design was one of three or so finalists which they took into 'consideration'. However ultimately (probably due to budgetary constraints) the competition took advantage of conventional portable construction.

 

Anywho, originally all design and presentation work was done in the then Google Sketchup. So in the interest of helping my learning of 3ds Max + mental ray I decided to redo the old project in 3ds Max.

 

Look forward to seeing your thoughts, suggestions and criticism!

 

Thanks!

 

P.S: I know the cloth around the edges needs a bit of work, I still have a lot to learn about the cloth modifier, feel free to point out any resources!

[Stephen Thomas]

I think it's looking not bad at all. The camera position could maybe have been more interesting, but depends on what you had available I suppose. Something more dynamic either looking up at the riders about to start or showing the award ceremony might be more appealing.

 

There's a couple of things that could help make it sit better with the background photo. You have sun shadows, but I think it also needs a soft contact shadow around the base where it meets the ground. Maybe a slight hint of a blurry reflection of the canopy/base in the road would help sell it too. Cloth looks good to me actually, some nice anisotropic reflections around the folds.

[nathanpeucker]

Thanks for the response! Yeah, this was one of the better shots I had unfortunately (and the street is almost always too busy to get new snaps on). I was considering adding some entourage at a later time. What method is generally more preferred? - Using photoshop or rendering as part of the scene?

 

The way it sat on the ground kind of bugged me, I was trying to get Ambient Occlusion to take care of that on the matte/shadow/reflection pane. I couldn't get that to work though. Am I incorrect in trying to use Ambient Occlusion for this purpose, is there a better rendering method? Or is it something better to do in post processing?

 

Reflections are easy enough to add, I'll look into that!

 

Thanks a lot for your time!