Post Your Renders - Happy New Year yall

Dartanbeck

Shininess Channel

If we keep in mind that a value of 0 (or Black) is a full spead of light and a value of 50 (or 50% Gray) is extremely sharp, tight light angle, we can use maps to help determine how light is spread across a surface. For Allegorithmic shaders, I believe that it might be Roughness that goes into Shininess, but Glossiness may very well do it.

I've been meaning to perform some tests with Shininess maps, but just haven't done it yet. But I do already know how it would work visually simply by using the above. So my intent was going to be making an object that is part wet and shiny and the other parts dry and smooth - even slightly rough, like clean dry skin. A practical example would be tears on a face, finger dipped in blood, clear black tea running down the chin, etc., 

evilproducer

I tend to use wet maps in the Highlight channel and not the Shininess channel. The same principle applies, such as black has no highlight and white is full highlight with shades of gray in between. It's all up to the user and scene dependent. What I do may not be what another person wants to do.

Dartanbeck

evilproducer said:

I tend to use wet maps in the Highlight channel and not the Shininess channel. 

Me too. Always, as a matter of fact - except for a few experiments. 

Colors in the Highlight channel will change the appearance accordingly, but I'm fairly certain that Shininess is more of a value-driven  effect, though I've never tried getting a red shininess, for example, yet. However;

Since we know the effects we're looking for (Black = Open, Mid Gray = Really Tight) out of the shininess channel, we can use a map to solve issues, should we ever need to - and we have a great idea of how to go about that.

Nowadays specular maps are usually set up to work right out of the box, whereas some of the older ones needed to have their Brightness turned down to avoid looking too much like plastic. In this situation (the new, correctly shaded maps) we can see how the lightest areas of the map will be really tight, and the darkest areas will be fairly even in the spread of light across the surface. 

Therefore, if we try the effect and it turns out backwards, the next step I'd try is to invert the map and start reducing the value, since I already know that white (100%) shininess won't render any highlight, and the darkest parts of the map are actually fairly close to (if not actually) black - and black inverted is white, meaning that I'd have to start with lowering the brightness to a value of 40 to have the new result's brightest areas be 40, the rest being darker respectively.

Dartanbeck

Oh... and ep...

I've always loved that render - especially for these examples. What a wonderful wet look! Great render, too!

evilproducer

What I like about that render the most is the hair. I think I was able to get a really nice wet hair look with the dynamic hair. It's actually the ponytail hair sample that comes with Carrara, which I edited to look wet in the hair editor and the Texture room.

By the way, I love the sunken starship picture. It's a great use of your underwater set.

Dartanbeck

Yes. That hair is fantastic! Takes practice and patience to get those dynamic hair shaders the way we want them... but the rewards are amazing! 

evilproducer said:

What I like about that render the most is the hair. I think I was able to get a really nice wet hair look with the dynamic hair. It's actually the ponytail hair sample that comes with Carrara, which I edited to look wet in the hair editor and the Texture room.

 

evilproducer said:

By the way, I love the sunken starship picture. It's a great use of your underwater set.

Thanks man! I had a blast building that scene 

FifthElement

TangoAlpha said:

Been playing around with Substance Painter - that's a fun piece of software. Takes an fbx rather than an obj...

It should read OBJ files just fine (that is how I import), just make sure they have corresponding .mtl in the same directory and that normals are facing the right way.

Congrats, it is a fun software to use indeed, if you have any questions feel free to ask 

FifthElement

Here is re-work of one of my previous renders (from Above An Beyond challenge) which I never had chance to render in HD (previous computer was too slow), added few details here and there and put another astronaut (did not like NASA free one) ...

As usual, rendered in Carrara and post in Fusion 

Dartanbeck

I love it! Great conceptual eye!

evilproducer

Looks outstanding! I think I would like the flashlight pointing more downwards, but that is just me and it does not detract from the image and concept.

FifthElement

evilproducer said:

Looks outstanding! I think I would like the flashlight pointing more downwards, but that is just me and it does not detract from the image and concept.

Good point sir, would be better, the thing is I'm sick of working on it, so it is what it is (for) now, lol 

Anyways, here is very short animation which never made it to any of my Carrara Reels (I guess I was not happy enough with it):

evilproducer

I hear you. There's images that I have done that I think could be better if I changed this or that. But then, if we all revisited our old works, there's a high likelihood we'd fundamentally damage what we liked in the first place, and then we'd have to change our names to George Lucas. ;-)

Dondec

FifthElement - wow, most impressive!  That's some imagination you've got there 

   - Don

magaremoto

Dondec said:

FifthElement - wow, most impressive!  That's some imagination you've got there 

   - Don

ditto, great works here fifth element

a couple of things: it seems the eye bots don't catch lighting properly, maybe they've been added in post?

about the ninja I would have expected a split up of the water melon (?) in slow motion

nevertheless awesome use of carrara

MarkIsSleepy

evilproducer said:

I hear you. There's images that I have done that I think could be better if I changed this or that. But then, if we all revisited our old works, there's a high likelihood we'd fundamentally damage what we liked in the first place, and then we'd have to change our names to George Lucas. ;-)

A fun challenge though is to go back to one of your earliest images where you really liked the concept but didn't have the skills to do what you pictured in your head and redo it with the skills you have now.  Just take your basic concept without necessarily referencing the original directly and create it from scratch.  I do that with one or two images each year and it can be an interesting exercise.  It also gives you a warm fuzzy feeling about all the things you've learned since then. :)

Here's an example (these were actually in Daz Studio so I'm not going to clutter up the Carrara render thread with them, links go to DeviantArt):

2013 Version:http://fav.me/d6wjjou

2014 Version:http://fav.me/d7y7ret

 

FifthElement

Yep, 

magaremoto said:

Dondec said:

FifthElement - wow, most impressive!  That's some imagination you've got there 

   - Don

ditto, great works here fifth element

a couple of things: it seems the eye bots don't catch lighting properly, maybe they've been added in post?

about the ninja I would have expected a split up of the water melon (?) in slow motion

nevertheless awesome use of carrara

Lol, I see now whats going on, it is illusion apparently, they are fairly small and all upfront, therefore they are all in the darker spot, they were not added in the post (maybe next time i'll do that) 

Here is a version in which I edited depth map (which controls brightness in Fusion, the further the object, the brighter it is) in post so the drones will look like they are more apart from each other.

Thanks for the feedback 

magaremoto

3 scenes by Howie Farkes rendered in about 15 mins each one, touched up in post

Dondec

Teriffic renders magaremoto... as real as it gets.  HF... so amazing huh.

   - Don

PhilW

MDO2010 said:

evilproducer said:

A fun challenge though is to go back to one of your earliest images where you really liked the concept but didn't have the skills to do what you pictured in your head and redo it with the skills you have now.  Just take your basic concept without necessarily referencing the original directly and create it from scratch.  I do that with one or two images each year and it can be an interesting exercise.  It also gives you a warm fuzzy feeling about all the things you've learned since then. :)

That's what I did here - quite a difference!

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/-golden-girl-then-now-/2558977/

magaremoto

Dondec said:

Teriffic renders magaremoto... as real as it gets.  HF... so amazing huh.

   - Don

thank you Don, however I should tweak some shaders and render single layers to get a better realism, anyway I focused on lighting rather than else

Howie Farkes amazes me every time (and carrara as well)

First try with a freebie available here:http://www.nonecg.com/architecture/nyc-set-8-1-block.html

to test high resolution, only 6 minutes with 24 cores but it's still a w.i.p.

 

evilproducer

Some quotation weirdness there. I didn't say that, Mark did. Not that I disagree with it. Just something personally I haven't really had the desire to do.

de3an

magaremoto said:

First try with a freebie available here: https://www.cgtrader.com/free-3d-models/architectural-exterior/cityscape/nyc-block-set-8

to test high resolution, only 6 minutes with 24 cores but it's still a w.i.p.

 

Nice render.

That's some freebie! Lots of detail. Thanks for posting!

I had to try it myself. Not as high res as yours (2048 x 1536), Carrara native renderer. 4 minutes 11 seconds, 8 core Power Mac. AA = Good, Accuracy = 0.5 pixels, one "sun" light and "Sky Light" activated with a "Realistic Sky". A little Photoshop white balance and level adjusting.

Click the image for the full size:

magaremoto

well done de3an, carrara can handle maps easily indeed. In your render the shaded parts are particularly realistic imo

It should be interesting make a comparison with octane 4 carrara

de3an

magaremoto said:

well done de3an, carrara can handle maps easily indeed. In your render the shaded parts are particularly realistic imo

It should be interesting make a comparison with octane 4 carrara

 

Was your render Carrara native or octane?

DUDU

Since a long time, I try to download something from CGTrader without success.

They told me to use Chrome and I want only Firefox, how are you doing ?

Dartanbeck

Chrome works great for me. I tried it when I was getting tired of Firefox being unreasonably sluggish for a long period of time - but that was a while ago.

Dartanbeck

magaremoto said:

well done de3an, carrara can handle maps easily indeed. In your render the shaded parts are particularly realistic imo

It should be interesting make a comparison with octane 4 carrara

Yes. Both de3an and magaremoto, nice renders.

magaremoto

de3an: native carrara render of course

dudu: I've been using firefox all the time, no problem with it; anyway you might try to dload it from the author's site http://www.nonecg.com/deals/nyc-set-8-1-block.html

DB: thanks, very cool freebie to play with

another high res shot, 9 min this time even with sunlight set to 200, no issues slightly touched up to be better appreciated at 1920x

 

DUDU

@Magaremoto: I downloded from nonecg, very nice, thank you !

On CGTrader, when I click on Download, I have a page to connect to Facebook, Twitter, and Google... very strange !

magaremoto

my pleasure dudu

actually a daz bird whispered in my ear