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Hi all !
I have a problem with this scene (among others) which is the glaring light of the physical sky near the horizon that makes my membrane fade away.
Since I haven't found a suitable background image, and that I am reluctant to stuff the back of my scene with background objects, I'm stuck with the big white glare
I tried the sky dome, but then had to turn all textures to gray to make it look like a scale model : with the textures, it looked a bit odd.

What'd'yer'think ?

--
Olivier

Hey guys, remember commandment 4 of the forum : "Thou shalt help the newbs" !

hmm, I guess there are several things you could do ...
I sometimes render the image a bit darker and adjust the image in photoshop with the curves tool.
or you can use a darker material
or you could upper the gamma value and lower the burn value.

render with alpha and composite a nice sky in photoshop...
the most flexible way i think!

munch

I made the cars and people less attractive for the eye so that the attention stays on my structure (Thanks Polyxo !)
Added a bit of motion blur so that my scene doesn't feel as if it was taken after the human race has perished to a mutant virus.
Also lowered the intensity of the sun -yes,you can !- an orientation also.
A semi-transparent plane now extends after boundaries of my model, to give a better sense of the horizon level...

What should I do next ?

--
Olivier

Thanks Kami and Botoxy,

I hadn't seen your post before sending my update.
I'll try your suggestions as well.
Yet, I never figured out how to use the Alpha properly : I think that having a separate Alpha file makes the process more complicated for non-PhotoShop experts.
I'd much rather have a single PNG output with a transparent Alpha channel...

Do you know if this is in the works for V2 ?

Cheers,

High quality HDR with clouds would probably flatter this best.

your update is a great improvement!
i'm not completely convinced by the blurred cars and people even though, they are much better than the first version

Looks good, but there is too much going on with the tarmac. Could be smoother, less grainy. I do like the motion blur thing

I agree it looks better with motion blur. You really need to find a bigger asphalt texture that doesn't tile so noticeably. Also, have you experimented with late evening sunset type skies for extra color at the horizon?

Thanks for the helpful comments.
I'm not used to HDRI backgrounds, so I guess that's why my first attempt is not so good.
I pushed the intensity quite a bit because it was real dark, and still it is lacking light.
Aren't the HDR lightings supposed to cast shadows ? This one doesn't, obviously.
The sun is not "On" because I figured it would contradict the position of the sun in the HDRI.
I suppose you can turn the sun on when there is no representation of the sun in the HDRI....right ?
Or am I missing something ?

I found bigger asphalt textures in the MXM galery, so I'll try that out to.

Cheers,

Hi Olivier, here's some comments:
While the thin parts of your construction now look less blown out than in the first rendering the bottom side of your tent still needs
more light to look less flat. I'm not sure what's going on there but it needs more light/plasticity.
In any case or you also need to wait longer - in this area the rendering is still very noisy.
Not sure what kind of look you are after with your metal construction. In the moment they at least don't look like metal yet.
The material library has some simple metal materials which should do for that distance.

Are the houses for the controllers Lambertian (100% roughness)? Then lower the value to maybe 95. An effortless option to
let these houses look a bit more alive is to use the (Rhino) Edge Softening plugin and to chamfer the house edges ever so slighly.
What material are you using for the windows? Try a AGS-material unless you were looking for this frosted glass look.

Hi Holger,

The membrane should have sub-surface scattering properties, but until V2 is out, I ruled out the idea of using it : I discussed this with Jeremy, and found that I would have to thicken my mesh into a solid and make sure it does not intersect with any other object, which is quite a lot of trouble.
The metal is painted white in this case ; only the special fittings are in bare stainless steel, and this would show in a close-up view.

Thanks for the hint about the cabins and windows : I hadn't bothered making a maxwell material for them.
Are you happy with the softedge plug-in ? No bugs / crashes ? If so, I'll give it a try.
How about the HDRI lighting with sun option on ? Isn't that redundent ?
Discustingly biased if you want my opinion

Cheers,

osuire wrote: The metal is painted white in this case ; only the special fittings are in bare stainless steel, and this would show in a close-up view.

Is this white a diffuse (single layer) material? For a paint which has some gloss in it you should create a plastic material
(or use one from the library)

Thanks for the hint about the cabins and windows : I hadn't bothered making a maxwell material for them.

Even if you are not after perfect photorealism - lambertian materials shouldn't be used ever. It is impossible to create
any sense of plasticity with them.

Are you happy with the softedge plug-in ? No bugs / crashes ? If so, I'll give it a try.

It is a very helpful render-plugin. However it has its troubles with composite surfaces Rhino likes to create - here it can make the render
fail or even Rhino crash. Tiny fillets or chamfers catch the light and emphasize plasticity.

How about the HDRI lighting with sun option on ? Isn't that redundent ?
Discustingly biased if you want my opinion

You know, I don't do architectural renderings often. I'd imagine that it's pretty difficult to match the HDR and the sunlight in
a way that it looks convincing. I'd rather combine HDR and Rhino-lights - great that this is finally possible!

http://maxwellsky.maxwellrender.com/

Try the Cologne Christmas ski with a late afternoon time, looks great.