Urban dream (small bandwidth beware...)

BbB · Post by **BbB** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 8:52 pm

Hey Indigoers,
After finishing my engineer, I thought I'd return to the idea behind the Berlin courtyard and try something a bit more ambitious, environment-wise. This scene is a crop from a bigger town square, which I tried to model as completely as possible.
The modeling was done in Blender using a place called the Culture Brewery in Berlin (converted 19th century industrial estate) as a rough reference.
Sorry for the crappy (and incongruous) car. I had a few, and much nicer, free models from 3DWorld which I tried to use, but I failed to import any of them in Blender. So I defaulted to modeling my own car and this jeep is the only one I could find decent reference photos for on the web. It comes from CGtextures.com, as do the maps for the cobbles (heavily tweaked in PShop). I started to model a streetcar (or tram, or whatever you call it), but ran out of patience so I'll finish it later and use it in a different scene.
The first image from the top uses Camera tone mapping, the second one Reinhard, with some correction in PShop. I've also added a few other angles, a postprod-ed BW version, and a wire shot.
Hope you like it, and as always, comments and so on much welcome

Marcofly · Post by **Marcofly** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 9:08 pm

Mhhhhh!! simply beautiful images!! And the texturing is amazing!!

The camera mapped image is underexposed by 2 stops (i guess), and i suggest you to try other camera types.. i use gold200, and i think it's one of the best, for outdoor scenes..

Have a nice day, Master BbB!

Pinko5 · Post by **Pinko5** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 9:10 pm

Luca.

psor · Post by **psor** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 10:51 pm

Heya Bertrand! Very beautiful pictures you did again! The first images
almost look like out of a very high tech RT engine. I guess it's caused
by some lowres textures, on the street for example, and that the colors
seem to be a tiny bit to saturated. Probably through the camera you've
used. I like the Reinhard tone mapped image better in this case.

I really love the 'out.jpg', because of the angle you've chosen and the
mood is very, very nice! The tree in it is a bit distracting tho. I think it's
because the tree looks to bright, almost like it has not enough depth.
And the tree has a very dominating position in this composition. So I
would place it at another place. Right now my eyes go right to the ugly
tree instead to the beautiful facade of the building. If the tree would be
very beautiful or had something special then I guess it would be better
at that place. Right now, I would just get rid of it or replace it with
something different.

Just my two cents on the matter ...

Keep up your wonderful work mate! It's always great to open a thread
of Sir BbB and to get surprised another time. Thanks for that!

take care
Oleg aka psor

dougal2 · Post by **dougal2** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 11:10 pm

Simply amazing. AGAIN!

BbB · Post by **BbB** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 11:16 pm

Cheers guys.

psor
You have a good eye my friend, and you picked on quite a few sore points here. I agree with all your comments. The poor balancing of the Camera tonemapped image, I think, has to do with my laptop's screen (I use it for modeling and test rendering before sending final images to my desktop quad). I screwed up the gamma settings of the screen a long time ago and never managed to get them right again. So images appear lighter or darker then they really are. A real pain in the ass.
Your point on the texture is also spot on. The cobbles are one huge map I did in PShop. The idea was that it would only work if it wasn't tiled too much. Right now it's tiled only two or three times over the entire surface of the square, but even though it's big, it's not quite big enough to do decent close up. An idea would be to try a shallower DOF to "hide" the low-res close-up details. But a small aperture tends to kill the diffraction effect, so it's a bit of a catch-22 dilemma.
As for the tree, the same thing happened as with the car - I just couldn't find a decent-enough free model and had to build it from scratch in Blender (it was hell doing every little branch with polys). The result, I agree is mediocre.
This wide-angle shot you mention would be much, much nicer with a nice, poly-heavy tree with foliage and all. I really got to get myself Xfrog or Onyx, which make amazing trees. But these are really quite an investment considering they just do trees... Any suggestion on this much welcome.
(PS: here's one attempt I did earlier with a nice, free Evermotion tree. It's a very good tree but way too small for this scene.)

EDIT: A much more elegant solution for the cobbles, of course, would be micro-poly displacement...

metapixel · Post by **metapixel** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 11:22 pm

Wow

, how many beautiful images fresh fresh you show us, as always fantastic ,.... a question but how many computer uses for them?

pixie · Post by **pixie** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 11:58 pm

Reality sucks!

Vanessa07 · Post by **Vanessa07** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 12:18 am

Nice work again and again

Maybe you could add some brown leaf on the ground

BbB · Post by **BbB** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 12:30 am

Thanks for the comments, guys and gals.
I think I'll come back to this and start a list of things to improve, including:

- Find a way to improve the cobblestone texture in the foreground.
- Nicer, browner leaves on the ground.
- Nicer trees, with leaves if possible.
- Finish modeling this streetcar and integrate it in the scene
- I realise the glass is missing in the lantern.
- A night shot, perhaps?

Stur · Post by **Stur** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 12:36 am

My god ...
You really are very productive ! How much time do you spend per day modeling, texturing, finding references, etc ?

Very nice pictures again.

I agree with Psor about the too saturated colors though. And the reflections in the bubbles look strange to me ; the black area in the middle, and the overlapping edges of the horizon catch my eye.

But man, what a great modeling work !

psor · Post by **psor** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 12:48 am

@Bertrand

I just would like to add something more mate. The tree itself is good, but
the shader makes it "ugly", not the model itself. Furthermore the image
proportion you've chosen is not in the "golden ratio" style and that leads
to some problems. I'm very bad when it comes to explain stuff like this,
I just have an eye for it ... somehow. Anyway, I'll give you a little hint.
This examples are not 100% correct, they are just my way to try to find
a way to explain it in a simple way. So take them with a grain of salt.

examples

From Top to Bottom:

1. Your image with the the golden spiral applied.

2. Your image cropped to fit the golden spiral.

3. Your image cropped, seems more pleasing to the eye.

As you can see, the tree is exactly at on of those points where the
golden ratio applies and why the tree is so dominant in this image.

Just for another example, take my last rendered picture with the
flowers. First I had just one flower, the one in the back that is in
focus. I was somehow not pleased by the feeling I had and I
thought I should add some more to make me feel better.

So I added the two flowers in front of the others and placed them
in a way that I had the impression that it looked good. If you take
the golden ratio on my pic, those flowers build up a triangle that
points right to the flower in focus. This makes the eye pleased and
your mind does not really think about anything.

I hope I could explain a tiny bit of The Cult of the Golden Ratio ... *LOL*

edit: I wanna share those PDF files with you ...

take care
Oleg

BbB · Post by **BbB** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 3:20 am

Cheers Psor,
I'll read that carefully. That'll give me a break from modeling.

STUR: Yep, I probably spends a bit too much time doing this stuff. A couple of hours every day (or every night, I should say), which keeps my wife happy as you can imagine...

psor · Post by **psor** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 3:34 am

Immer wieder gerne Bertrand!

btw. take a look at cgtalk and search for 'golden ratio' there too. You'll
find some good stuff too. I remember some threads where people even
start with splitting their image into "important" parts to have a pleasing
composition. In the end it's a lot about math, but you can find quite a lot
good explanations from an artistic point of view.

Have a good read and don't get mad about it, just open up your mind.

edit: And keep in mind, the golden ratio is everywhere in nature
and even if you start modeling, e.g. your model of the alien also had
quite a few issues ... but that's another story. ;o)

take care
psor

Kram1032 · Post by **Kram1032** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 4:30 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_ratio I did know about the golden ratio... but not about that one...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_function also interesting... all the ratios in a single function xD

scnr

Urban dream (small bandwidth beware...)

Urban dream (small bandwidth beware...)

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