A Chair on location (Maya)

aaronaton

Hi all,
I made this designer chair a while back using reference from Wallpaper* magazine here in the UK. Originally i was going to setup a standard 3 point based studio light to show off the model.

Instead i thought about the composition more instead of purely showing off the chair.

From here i thought i could create a mock 'rough and ready' studio and place the chair in it as though i was being prepared for a photoshoot! Thought it would be a great concept to contrast the sleek designed chair with a rough back garder esque studio setup

Everything is scratch-made in Maya, Chair and paper screen were sculted in Zbrush.

Crits please!

aaronaton

Main Composition

aaronaton

My light setup

HDRI map with final gather.
Light Linking, so ambient light that purely illuminates the back wall
2 area lights then light the chair and paper back screen to bring out the normal map a lil better.

Norron

The missing shadows on the drop cloth from the sky really kills the composited picture. It looks like you just took a photo and pasted your render over top of it.

aaronaton

do you mean the shadows under the chair, i did have them from a baked AO map, but they just got lost once i started tweaking the lighting. I'll have alook into it.

aaronaton

I've used a separate AO pass to get more shadowing at the bottom of the chair, don't want too much though as i want to make the backdrop act like its bouncing lots of light.

Envart

The grass is pretty dark and looks flat and the black tape doesn't look very realistic (reflections, shadows). The top of the brick and the wall don't blend so naturally either: some moss on brick too might help and more shadowing from the ledge. The drain pipe should be a bit grimier too. The whole scene lighting looks somewhat overcast. Love the chair tho, that looks great.

JGcount

Biggest problem to me is the lack of bouncelight from the completely white bacground, which you would expect from such a bright source and angle of the light.

aaronaton

Cheers for the crits!
Yeh i originally set out for the scene lighting to be overcast, no direct shadows. Yeh i wanted more reflections from the tape (which is a phong shader!) maybe they need more subdivisions??
I could opt for some GI too get more bounce light from the background, the only issue would be over exposure, see my render is set to A4 2000x3000 somewat pixels!

I'll take a look at making the back wall better.

aaronaton

Once that image is all sorted i think im going to go with another location. Heres my concept image, courtesy of Wallpaper* Magazine UK.



Just a single light source this time from a factory window. How should i go about with the draping wallpaper though? Should i paint an extension flat diffuse then pump through crazybump???