[Crit Wanted] [Marmoset] 1959 Office Chaos

Sloth_42

Ello ello,
I'd like to hear your opinions on this portfolio piece before it goes up on the A-station. Bit of backstory: these are a few assets belonging to a bigger environment project I'm working on. Set in Cold War Berlin in 1959, the CIA 'rented' an abandoned attic where they rig western radios with surveillance eqipment to sell them to East German/Communist officials (the only ones who have access to popular western high-tech goods). I worked on these assets for quite a while, and considering I havnt uploaded a portfolio piece in over 2 years I figured its high time to post an update on artstation.

Im finding the lighting very challenging so far as this is the most complex scene Ive worked with in marmoset yet - ton of geometry in close proximity. Getting highlights where I need and want them is difficult without ruining the shadows. (If I disable shadows it usually looks worse than multiple intersecting shadows imo). Ones I posted are just meant to be the money shot, there will be different angles etc in the future.

What do you think of the overall lighting? 
Does it read alright overall?
Are the shadows acceptable?
Opinions on brightness/highlights?
Which one is the best of the bunch?

Look forward to hearing from you

Elivenger

So far I really like the amount of clutter you have! It looks quite natural! Is this going to be part of a larger scene? 

Sloth_42

Elivenger said:

So far I really like the amount of clutter you have! It looks quite natural! Is this going to be part of a larger scene? 

Thank you. Yes, these assets are from an environment im working on. Because it might still take quite a while till its finished I decided to show off a few of the props Ive done so far. Final env will be in UE4 and not Marmo.

Really spent a lot of time on these documents, but I think it paid off imo. A ton of variation both in terms of geometry and composition.

wenglish

Great job on this, and yes your file folders are top notch! Great for selling the "chaos".

I think your 3rd light setup is the best, but it could maybe stand to be a little brighter. You've got great material / texture definition in the different assets and you want to make sure it is as visible as possible. In general I'd avoid any pure black areas of shadow, as such deep shadows cannot really exist in reality anyway.

One other thing would be to maybe make the floor a bit more shiny. The planks seem to be 100% rough when I would expect them to have at least a little bit of shine, and probably some scuffs.

I love the posters btw, very 50s / 60s

Sloth_42

wenglish said:

Great job on this, and yes your file folders are top notch! Great for selling the "chaos".

I think your 3rd light setup is the best, but it could maybe stand to be a little brighter. You've got great material / texture definition in the different assets and you want to make sure it is as visible as possible. In general I'd avoid any pure black areas of shadow, as such deep shadows cannot really exist in reality anyway.

One other thing would be to maybe make the floor a bit more shiny. The planks seem to be 100% rough when I would expect them to have at least a little bit of shine, and probably some scuffs.

I love the posters btw, very 50s / 60s

Thanks for the feedback! 

I tried to implement as much crit as possible.

The original wood had roughness values between .7 and .9 and it looks quite reflective under certain lighting conditions. Turns out the lighting in my first marmo pictures didnt really do it justice and made it look way rougher than it actually is. So I went back into substance and tweaked the values a tiny bit, dropping it to .85 on some layers. It now looks something like this with just the HDRI light: 

Here are 2 new renders with refined omni lights and better surface highlights. Among other changes I also added a faint spotlight to create some highlights on the planks, and made the overall lighting brighter

With specular rendering ticked in the render settings (can look a bit wierd sometimes in my experience):



Without specular:


To-do renders:
-Title shot but from opposite angle
- Empty/Disassembled file cabinets to show off the different parts (?)
-Pictures of files/documents/blueprints/folders 
-Several shots of the office chair, especially from beneath


More crit always welcome. Cheers

Sloth_42

UPDATE: Final Renders. Been a real pain to get some of these shots without breaking the shadows. (Pictures not in final order).

Any feedback welcome!