[WIP] Engine scene

Rottingbone

Hey,

I'm working on a scene with a TSI Engine placed on a black glossy floor.
The floor is pulsing green light upon the engine, making the engine look clean.
Clean as in enviromently clean.

I would love some feedback on my scene, does the green light look clean,
or more like toxic waste. What's your opinion on the textures, lightning and overall execution of the scene?

Don't hold back.

3ds max Mentalray render:



3ds Max Scene:

SouthpawSid

would this happen to be going into a game engine and or being normal baked onto a low poly game res mesh? Because that's generally what we do here.

Welcome to polycount

DrunkShaman

The floor is too glossy, try to reduce down the green emitting light from the floor or use the indirect light reflection for bringing this piece to life a bit more. Very nice work tho, The pipes are too shiny so you might want to reduce down the intencity of Blinn material that you've used.

Suggestion: Make it look like the green light on the floor is not too static, but bleeding out to the rest of the floor in hue. That is after you reduce it down.

Nice one tho, Welcome to Polycount, here you will find the tips, tricks, crits and suggestions required to beef up your 3d modeling skills. Not just baking the maps or dragging and dropping it in to Unreal engine.

Feel free to ask any question in General, or if its related to technical; in technical talk, or if its required criticism; in here.

EDIT: Applying 0.5 noise to the silver parts of the engine will not make them look like they were home made from stainless steel.

xXm0RpH3usXx

everything looks like plastic right now...
you should definatly work on your shaders!

i learned that adding a gradient fallof map set to fresnel makes (especially on scenes like this) pop out parts better.

keep it up and welcome!

Rottingbone

Thanks for the feedback!

At the moment I'm totaly revamping my scene. I agree that the reflections look dull. Below my progress on getting interesting reflections. I used no lights in this scene. Just a plane with a softbox'ish texture (gradient map on self-illumination). My last scene missed to much environment reflections.

Will be working on the green light aswell, indeed it needs more bleed.



The material node.


To be continued.

r_fletch_r

If your using mental ray for realistic renderings ditch the standard material. arch and design is the way to go. standard material ignores energy conservation and and you have little to no control over the reflections.

For metals you need to be able to control the glossyness of the reflections, and the IOR curve.

heres a good tutorial
http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/10/making-better-metal-with-miamaterial.html

Rottingbone

Here's an update. I totally re-did all the textures, tweaked the model, and decided to re-do my scene aswell. I'm still having trouble with the background. I want it to be clean and simple, and it shouldn't be a distraction. Also the turntable-disc has some visual trouble in the medium shots, because of the shape of the engine. It doesn't look centered in some angles. Any suggestions?

Renders straight out of MAX. (Zoom in)


Tell me everything you think is wrong or should be improved, don't hold back!

Cheers, thanks again for the feedback so far.

xXm0RpH3usXx

Definatly looks way better than before...

1. You should change your background a little. There are some white reflecting parts that kinda blend with it and thus seem to vanish.

2. One light setup for different views most often doesnt work. Light reflects with the formula "Input Angle eguals Output Angle". A reflection that looks good from one side can look totally be out of place from another or dont fall into account at all.

Its really difficult to put that into an animation of a turntable, i know, but nevertheless its should be taken into account.

3. I think you should set your ambient a little lower. The retreating parts shouldnt be as brightly lit as those which protrude.

Maybe it helps, maybe it doesnt, but this is the site of the company i am working at right now.
We did an engine a few month ago, here is the link to the video:

http://3dfactory.de/?site=animation_gallery&id=1

Mark Dygert

I like what you have going here, some great modeling that I'd like to see more of.

As for the background I think you've hit the two extremes.

A black background robs most objects of their silhouette and often requires a really strong back light to help frame the object and separate it from the background.

A white background causes snow blindness, its so bright it washes everything out making it hard to see the details.

Rottingbone

Thanks for the reply xXm0Rph3usXx.

Indeed, I didn't notice some of the reflections fading into the background, but I really want the background to be white. Though, its a problem that needs to be fixed.
I will do a few testrenders to check how the reflections respond while animated.

I didn't quite get what you mean with 'retreating parts'. I currently use a skylight and photometric lights (emit from rectangle + far attenuation). Do you mean I should lower the intensity of the skylight?

Great video! My project also includes some sort of an x-ray effect. Inspired by: http://vimeo.com/21120050

Rottingbone

Mark Dygert wrote: »

I like what you have going here, some great modeling that I'd like to see more of.

As for the background I think you've hit the two extremes.

A black background robs most objects of their silhouette and often requires a really strong back light to help frame the object and separate it from the background.

A white background causes snow blindness, its so bright it washes everything out making it hard to see the details.

I'm a little afraid my scene will be too plain and grey if I darken up the background. But hey, nothing is certain before I tested it. Thanks for the reply!

xXm0RpH3usXx

What i meant is like cranking up the ambient occlusion.
Except for the little bit in the upper left part of your closeup there arent much shadowed parts on your engine. u are trying your best to accentuate the reflections, neglecting the shadows which give it more depth.

But you could just render an ao pass and overlay it in ae or whatever.

Rottingbone

A little update on the ambient occlusion. Thanks for the tip, I dig the contrast between the metal and the background.

And some project work in progress.


More to come!

ranger_park

You should put this on a turntable. It would look sick. Especially if you use the type of lighting they use at indoor car shows. (all the small white highlights making the car look extra slick)