Photorealism

joahun

Hi!

I am new to this forum so sorry if I post in the wrong section.

I have been using 3ds max for 10 years on and off as my hobby. I got into it again recently and made a little scene.
My goal is to make this lego figure as realistic as possible. Any suggestion and opinion is welcome but please keep in mind I'm kind of a beginer.
Thanks for the help! 

Noren

Check the smoothinggroups/topology of your wall stones. A slight warping isn't a bad thing for realism, but they look like the flat faces all equally have a small influence from the neighboring faces.

joahun

Hey Thanks! Definitely gonna look into it. I usually just hit Auto Smooth so now every face is on a different group but gonna fiddle around with it. Thanks again for the tip!

Klunk

you need to improve your lego brick laying

musashidan

Apart from the structurally dubious wall I would say you should make the scene more interesting. As it is it has no story. Flesh out the scene, give it some purpose or context. Your modeling, shading, and lighting is all in place and looking pretty decent, so now you can concentrate on pushing the scene further.

Octo

The lack of contact shadows isn't helping...is there even a floor?

joahun

Klunk said:

you need to improve your lego brick laying

Haha don't worry, going to fix that wall! Thank you!

joahun

musashidan said:

Apart from the structurally dubious wall I would say you should make the scene more interesting. As it is it has no story. Flesh out the scene, give it some purpose or context. Your modeling, shading, and lighting is all in place and looking pretty decent, so now you can concentrate on pushing the scene further.

Yeah the scene is pretty boring, this is more like a test render. I just wanted to make sure if I need to tweak more the lighting and textures or the models them selves. I am planning to do a short in the style of the lego movie. I'm gonna upload a new pic with an actual scene with a story behind it! Cheers for the suggestions!

joahun

Octo said:

The lack of contact shadows isn't helping...is there even a floor?

Haha, NO there isn't! This is just a quickly throw together test scene to be honest to see if I could improve the models or textures. But as someone said they are fairly decent so going on the next step! Thanks for your comment!

sacboi

Yeah, for me it's the walk anim/cycle over a studded floor that really sells a Lego inspired vid, I think.

littleclaude

What are you rendering this in? Looks like a lack of AO and Raytracing to me, also is there something for the reflection to bounce off in front of the character?

Scratches at a micro level, imperfections make for perfection IMO 

littleclaude

Forgot to say offset the bricks every level, like normal walls, AKA in real life.

joahun

So here is a little update:
I have started to build a bedroom yesterday and also tweaked the materials a bit.
I added better dent marks and played around with reflectivity. 
I also added fingerprints which makes it a lot more realistic.

Offsetting the wall bricks  and adding a floor was a great idea as it helps a lot.
Hopefully I will be able to finish the whole scene today or tomorrow.

Any further advice?

joahun

littleclaude said:

What are you rendering this in? Looks like a lack of AO and Raytracing to me, also is there something for the reflection to bounce off in front of the character?

Scratches at a micro level, imperfections make for perfection IMO 

It was more of a test than a final render but thanks for the advice. Honestly I don't know where to look for raytracing setting and no idea what AO is LOL Im quite the begginer here

JamesBrisnehan

He's talking about lighting techniques in rendering engines. Ray tracing is when the software emits photons from the lights in your scene, bounces them off the objects and into the camera to simulate real world light physics. AO stands for Ambient Occlusion which similar is to ray tracing, except the photons are emitted from a "sky" (or from every direction at once) to create soft shadows in all the little nooks and crannies of your scene. I can see both of those to an extent in your newest render already.

Something I think might help is Image Based Lighting. Right now all of the reflections and and speculator highlights in your scene are plain white which gives it a very CGI look. Image Based Lighting Creates a sphere around your scene with a High Dynamic Range Image on it. That image sphere (which could be anything, sky, bedroom, bus station, whatever) is then used as a light source, and projects more complex and realistic lighting and reflections into your scene. I don't know if 3DS Max can do IBL, but a relatively cheap, powerful, and user friendly alternative is Marmoset Toolbag.

Also some camera tricks might help sell the realism (if not over used) like wider camera angle/field of view, depth of field, vignette, film grain/digital noise, chromatic aberration, bloom, etc.. The basic render camera is to perfect and not real-world enough. Imagine a kid borrowed their parent's cheap digital camera and took a picture of lego Chris Pratt here. That picture is going to have a lot of flaws, but in the best way. If it helps, do some real world photography tests of your own.

One last thing, and this is kind of just a matter of taste, but I'm not digging the white brick wall. It clashes with the lamp. A more complimentary color would be nice for either.

joahun

JamesBrisnehan said:

He's talking about lighting techniques in rendering engines. Ray tracing is when the software emits photons from the lights in your scene, bounces them off the objects and into the camera to simulate real world light physics. AO stands for Ambient Occlusion which similar is to ray tracing, except the photons are emitted from a "sky" (or from every direction at once) to create soft shadows in all the little nooks and crannies of your scene. I can see both of those to an extent in your newest render already.

Something I think might help is Image Based Lighting. Right now all of the reflections and and speculator highlights in your scene are plain white which gives it a very CGI look. Image Based Lighting Creates a sphere around your scene with a High Dynamic Range Image on it. That image sphere (which could be anything, sky, bedroom, bus station, whatever) is then used as a light source, and projects more complex and realistic lighting and reflections into your scene. I don't know if 3DS Max can do IBL, but a relatively cheap, powerful, and user friendly alternative is Marmoset Toolbag.

Also some camera tricks might help sell the realism (if not over used) like wider camera angle/field of view, depth of field, vignette, film grain/digital noise, chromatic aberration, bloom, etc.. The basic render camera is to perfect and not real-world enough. Imagine a kid borrowed their parent's cheap digital camera and took a picture of lego Chris Pratt here. That picture is going to have a lot of flaws, but in the best way. If it helps, do some real world photography tests of your own.

One last thing, and this is kind of just a matter of taste, but I'm not digging the white brick wall. It clashes with the lamp. A more complimentary color would be nice for either.

Hi! 

Thanks for the explanation and advices! Camera effect are a great idea! You are right renderers are just too perfect!