Work in Progress: Backyard

[shushens]

I am not doing this with one particular photo in mind. I have seen shots like this in a lot of games, movies, photos. So I am just trying to make something with a little character and mood.

Right now it doesn't look very presentable. But I intend to change that soon enough

The two cubes in the shot are just placeholders for the window and an armchair. Will soon be replaced with the real things

Since I am not doing any gamma correction within XSI, the render comes out rather dark with diffuse textures in sRGB profile. So I just took it to Fusion, gave a gamma of 1.8 (often looks better than 2.2 on my screen) and added a little glow while I'm at it

[Hirazi Blue]

Very nice start!
Some deformation on the leaves would obviously be nice... ;)

[Diurno]

i like it, i like it, i like it!

how did you done that nice effect in the angle between the floor and the wall?? it seems really natural, without that "1 block near another block"effect.

the plants are finished? cause the leaves looks really good, but the branch seems a little "blocky"

[shushens]

Very true, Diurno. I will have to do something about it. In the meantime, I was running an interesting errand. I painted each panel of the window on a separate texture and applied them on two separate UVtiles. I am sorry for being so slow. I will show more progress soon.

[Deracus]

Interesting approach, that you took there...but what´s the benefit instead of giving each frame it´s own mat and UVs?

[shushens]

Nothing, in this case. I just love playing around with these things. I tested this to make sure if I ever have to texture something huge and continuous, I do not run out of UV space

[shushens]

i like it, i like it, i like it!

how did you done that nice effect in the angle between the floor and the wall?? it seems really natural, without that "1 block near another block"effect.

the plants are finished? cause the leaves looks really good, but the branch seems a little "blocky"

Thank you Diurno! Sorry I am a bit late in replying. I have manually fixed some of the blockiness, but I guess if you could look more closely, you could see issues still. The leaves are still unconvincing. I tried a few things. But nothing is not making it a whole lot better. So I am working on the other things in the meantime.

Here is some progress:



Now I will have to worry about UVing those cushions and finding proper texture for those canes.

By the way Diurno... your name sounds very Italian to me. Are you Italian? just curious!

[Diurno]

By the way Diurno... your name sounds very Italian to me. Are you Italian? just curious!

yeah i'm italian ^^.

by the way, can you explain how you did the angle between the floor and the wall? cause i love it that result

[shushens]

Surprising as it may sound, I haven't done a thing. The wall is a lambert with a bump, and so is the floor. No AO, no nothing. MentalRay did it for me. Very convenient, eh?
I usually do not waste time to worrying about transitions, so I usually paint some dirt like I have done here. I guess it worked. ^_^

[Diurno]

for my opinion, yes it's worked so good.

[shushens]

I am not very happy with the result yet. I think the lighting needs more work, but not sure where exactly. The foreground leaves still look bad. I think I will work on those now.

[Hirazi Blue]

Yes, the leaves on the foreground need some more attention, but overall it's a very nice picture!

[Deracus]

Indeed...the foreground leaves need some polish...but you are developing this to a really great piece!

I would think about sharpening and detailing the wall-texture about more, as it´s coming out a bit blurry at the moment. Detail is also important, if you are planning to use DoF, as it is always a good foundation for a nice blurred impression of what might be there...
Also the blurriness creates some sort of split between the sharp texture of the pillows and the wall....

Mind sharing some details about the lighting?

[shushens]

Thanks a lot to you both! I would be so unmotivated without you guys!

This is my scene:





Physical Sun is the only direct light. I am using an HDR image as well, but I could not find a good HDR that looks relevant to this scene, so I used an already tone mapped 16 bit TIFF that I had. I pushed it to 32bit and saved as EXR. But it is not really very high res. So I had to cover up most of the window glass with leaves and all so that it doesn't show too much.

Here is a slightly improved render:



It will be really difficult to get anything more realistic out of these leaves. I've been trying a few things. Pretty much every deformer is conforming with the constraints, except Fold. I don't know what technique it uses, but the pinning is getting useless in all axes with Fold. So I used a little bit of Bend and a little bit of Twist.

Should I use a fill light or something else? If so, then from which direction? Deracus, I will work on the texture of the wall further then and show you A lot of hard work has gone into this scene and I really don't want to lose a part of it by adding DoF I think it's really not necessary in here.

The reason for adding the vase is, I also want to do a candle light night scene. I haven't done anything like that before. It will be interesting

[Grubber]

This is turning out very well. But I do not really like the vase, maybe because it is so clear
Also I wanted to ask how you made the plants?

I hope for another update!

[shushens]

Like any of these? Or should I do even more?

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