[rodrigonotor]

Hello, I'm going to try to make a scale replica (or various scale replicas) of "4ta Torre de Alaquas" that will be on the Plaza Melia

Project: 4ta Torre de Alaquas
Place: Plaza Melia
Modeling Software: Sketchup Pro 8
Maxwellrender version 2.7.20 Studio 2.6 plugin for Sketchup
Post-Produccion: PS6

Some pics for reference:





Some background information (in spanish)

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alacu%C3%A1s

http://elpais.com/diario/2004/09/27/cva ... 50215.html

And the Sketchup Model

[tonilluch]

Hy, very good theme, I want see the evolution.

[dariolanza]

Beautiful structure.

Go on!

Dario Lanza

[rodrigonotor]

Thanks Tony and Dario.

I convert the tower in a component in Sketchup, make some copies, but don't display in studio (are there, but not display). Explode in Sketchup, make group and now apperars. I assume it's an instance issue. I have not read about that.

Here are an update



Have to work materials and ligths.

[rodrigonotor]

Render shadow channel, I like the shadows more defined and less diffuse.



More resolution image
http://www.sketchando.net/foro_imagenes/torre_003_s.jpg

[Mihai]

Thanks Tony and Dario.

I convert the tower in a component in Sketchup, make some copies, but don't display in studio

Probably you have the preference on in Studio to only display instances of selected objects. So you can either select the real object first in the object list panel, or go to File>Preferences>Instances and set Display Mode to All.

[rodrigonotor]

Probably you have the preference on in Studio to only display instances of selected objects. So you can either select the real object first in the object list panel, or go to File>Preferences>Instances and set Display Mode to All.

Thanks Mihai, I give a try. Something about the shadows?

Regards

[Fernando Tella]

The bigger the light source, the more diffuse the shadow.

[Mihai]

The shadows are dependent on what the light sources are, and in this case it's the lighting found in the HDR. I think the shadows look pretty good and any sharper will look weird when composited. Look at the shadows that exist in the photo already.

Btw, you don't need to activate the shadow option for the statues also, you probably just need it for the ground for compositing. Unless you also want to change what the shadows look like on the statues themselves, but in that case you probably want a separate shadow pass just for them, not a pass that holds their shadow and also the ground shadow.

[rodrigonotor]

Thanks Mihai. I think maybe for better integration, leave the shadows of the statues but, will do more test.

I did this before, (I think) with the same values ​​of illumination, but can't replicate.

[Mihai]

I would check in this case if the scene scale is correct for your other render, maybe the towers are much too large. You can do this by checking how big your objects are in the Maxwell Studio viewport (open the MXS file), compared to the viewport grid. More details here:

http://support.nextlimit.com/display/ma ... cene+scale

[rodrigonotor]

The bigger the light source, the more diffuse the shadow.

Thanks Fernando, like Mihaid say, I use HDR channel for ilumination.

[rodrigonotor]

My fault with the shadows.

Most of the time, I work with a Software called sIBL (Smart IBL) More information Here

This software generate three copys from one *.hdr or *.exr. one for for each channel (background, enviroment, refraction, reflexion and ilumination). The advantage of this is that the file for the environment is smaller and should use fewer resources for rendering.

Here are a capture of enviroment file:





In the scupultures, I use the enviroment that was created by the sIBL but in the cube test I use de original HDRi file. Shame on me

[rodrigonotor]

Here are the progress

Change from many tower to one tower. A spiral around the tower I will try to make it neon ligth.

The spiral was make whith this Sketchup Plugin:

Helix Follow Curve info in english

Hélice siguiendo curva info en español

One spiral has to be the glass and other inside spiral has to be emitter.






Glass clear





Playing with some frosted settings





I expected that the emitter light was stronger, here are the settings

[Mihai]

What are your camera settings?

Also I think this is probably the most inefficient ways to do a neon like light, in terms of rendering

You can simply apply your emitter material directly to the outside "glass" surface, then play with scattering and/or diffraction as a post effect to make it look like neon. If you were to photograph a neon light, you just see the whole area of the glass as bright, since it's the gas inside it that lights up, it doesn't have a filament running through it.

If you want to keep this setup, I suggest to model the glass part as having an actual hole in the middle, where the emitter tube is. Otherwise Maxwell can't calculate the light interactions properly, it needs to know when one surface ends and another begins.