Gerbera Daisies

Rik

Hey all,

I've been working on a scene mimicking a photograph I took of a some Gerbera Daisies I took a few months ago at the Dallas Arboretum. I need to finish this guy up so I can get back to the game props, and I need me some feedback! Not a real-time asset.

Using Max2012 with mentalRay, and its built in Depth of Field feature for the first time. Still tweaking those render settings and textures.

Blaisoid

shadows are too black, on the photo they are all brown/red/pink.

Aga22

theres a bit too much black in your scene. have you thought of using SSS materials for the petals? and you can use a bit of hair and fur to make the small tentacly thingies around the center.

edit: also the real flower's petals are a bit wider.

Rik

Thanks Blaisoid, I left the shadow color as default and I do see that the darkness is a bit intense.

Aga, I've never used Hair and Fur in max so I don't know how it works or what the benefits are, though I'll look into it. Do you mean just the stamen (stand-alone cylindrical parts) or the all of mini-flowers that are bunched up along the base of the flower petals?

The thought had crossed my mind to use a SSS material, though at the time of render I just plugged in my maps to see what kind of result I'd get with an Arch&Design material. I'll look into it though, as there definitely are some subtle features that would be more noticeable with an SSS material.

I see that the petals are a bit too thin; I'll have to see how much I can tweak the geometry without noticeably distorting the texture map.

Aga22

also, you should add some variation to the petals in regards to their rotation... now all the petals are preety much flat to one another...notice the petals on the original , some are more turned upwards, some backwards...

Rik

Here's an update to what I've now got. I have not added the stamen yet; I've spent some time reworking the diffuse and ended up using an Sub Surface Scattering material to get some more depth. I think the color vibrancy is much better now. My next step is to get the unbloomed (word?) stamen in there and rework the small flowered stamen to be more lush. Even with a high Anti Alias, the Depth of Field blur looks very dirty. I'm going to render a ZDepth pass and composite the green background in separately. I'll also make the petal adjustments that Aga brought up.

Shadows have been softened and given a dark burgundy color and so they don't look near as sharp.

The few hair and fur tutorials I've gone through have not given information on how to replaced a generic hair fiber with a mesh; the foreground flower's stamen do a have a bud at the top of the strand, and so I don't think a thin hair fiber will look legit. I'll keep looking for tutorials that can help me do this, but I may end up just manually placing them as needed. If anyone has a suggested website or tutorial to achieve this, please throw a link up.

Aga22

yes the colors are a lot nicer now. the center of the flower (white) is too small compared to the real one ( i dunno why i didnt notice it before) ... keep going mate!

Rik

Thanks Aga!

I ended up modeling the smaller stamen and manually placing them around the inside perimeter of the petals. Also remade the blossomed stamen more lush and threw some omni lights in to brighten their white.

Waaay better results with a Z Depth pass compared to mental ray's built in DoF camera settings, and I composited in After Effects for the first time. Good stuff. Still tweaking the blur settings and it needs an AO, and some petal rotations but it's close.

Here's a pre-final version. It's a bit small but, we all know size doesn't matter.

Rik

Here's the latest and greatest. I'd say it's on the cusp of completion.

Ended up compositing the background in separate. I had no idea After Effects had such great compositing tools. The Luminosity Lens Blur saved the day when it came to selling the depth of field. I ended doing a few touch ups in Photoshop, including some additional blur where my DoF map fell short and some color highlights on the petals.

AO map came out much darker than I wanted, and so that was tweaked before going into AfterEffects as well. Also some minor color correction with the Curves Editor.

If anyone has any more suggestions or sees something I missed, please do tell.

Also, I'm not sure if I should put the reference photo in my portfolio to show what I was aiming for, or if it would better leaving it out.. On one side, it shows how close I was able to get, and on the other it also shows where I may have fallen short. Anyone thoughts?

Anthy9986

Looks nice right now. I don't know how nit picky you want to be but if you are looking at making it a perfect replica I would suggest setting the background in max to the photo. Right now your petals seem too pointy and thin also they aren't in the 'exact' same spot as the photo. Which really depends how close you want to get to the picture.

Other than that my only critique would be the stamen still seem too thin

Rik

I wasn't trying to replicate the photo exactly, and ya the petals are not shaped exactly the same and are definitely not in the same place. It was more an exercise to see if I could make the flowers look photo realistic and tinker with a depth of field shot. I can still tweak the stamen, though I'm essentially finished with the piece and don't want to go back in and remake the petals. I do appreciate the feedback.

Rik

Made some more tweaks. I increased the size of the bloomed and non-bloomed stamen, and bumped up the color saturation for the bloomed ones.

Also added some color abberation and more noise imperfections.