[Tora_2097]

@Tom: I am glad that someone noticed that chair. It was horrible to create it, but rewarding at last. It is made out of several hundreds splines all bended into position. 450K polycopunt in total. I am very pleased with the result, and am planning to further use it in upcoming scenes.
@Mihai: One of my monitors must be off balance I guess. I work on a Eizo 24" Flexscan and everything looks just great on it. However I upload my works on a different PC with a crappy 17" monitor and I don't trust its colorbalance, thats why I leave my images unchanged although they look abit flat as you mentioned. I'll post a color image here later, so you all can try a better b/w convertion.

Thanks everyone,

Benjamin

[Tora_2097]

[tom]

It is made out of several hundreds splines all bended into position.

That's it, once again congratulations, definitely unbeatable
Btw, the molding belt artifact on glass is also remarkable...

[4 HeRo]

Just how many polys for the wicker chair?

[Tora_2097]

Thanks a lot Tom. It mostly takes a good deal of patience and observing things as they are.
In the spirit of creating photorealistic images with an engine that is the closest thing to realitly today, it is my firm conviction that photrealistic modeling should be the first step followed by photorealistic shading and texturing. Only then you'll be able to take advantage of your rendering engine. The more objects you have and the more non-uniform they are in shape the more difficult it gets. Interiors with all right angles, reduced shapes etc are a lot easier to get realistic than antique furnitures and hundreds of unique shapes.

[Mihai]

Well here's a try, I thought the green channel looked most interesting in this image. I kept the highlights, just lowered the darks a bit.

450K for the chair? What patience

[JDHill]

...what atmosphere...beautiful.

[glypticmax]

Hi Benjamin,
Thank you for posting those modeling shots. Your chair just blows me away.
What do you use to model? Wouldn't something like the iterator function in Jenna (C4D) help with that?
I'm curious about the glass. Did you see one with raised chevron motifs? Or did you model them this way for rendering purposes? Glassware of that nature are often cut with intaglio motifs rather than being decorated with mould blown raised decoration. I'm not trying to be nitpicky, just interested if there is a rendering advantage to the way you modeled it.
Incredible work.
Thanks in advance for any insights.

[mverta]

Solid, brother.

_Mike

[Tora_2097]

@Mihai: Thats a good effort. I like your try too, it seems to have more character.
@glypticmax: Thanks for your comments, I'll try to explain my methods a little bit, although there is nothing spectacular to be revealed. I started by building the chairs underlying structure, the frame, armrests etc. I had a good reference photo, so I could examine the flow of the individual splines easily. I build a single complete row of bended splines and duplicated it around 100 times to form the lower front of the chair obtaining a rectangular shaped piece of wicker. All planar or near planar elements of the chair have then been covered with that piece and fused together in parts where there were more than one piece needed to fill the place in (the sides for example).
The bended parts around the armrest uses a different subdivision scheme in order to flow along nicely around the armrest. It has been put in place with simpe modifiers like bend/FFD box etc. The last step was to connect them with the sidewalls to obtain flow constancy. The entire modeling process took around 3-4 hours I believe. I think one could get away with a normal and clipmapped geometry as well in some cases but with inferior results I think.
About the glass:I didnt model it that way with special rendering advantages in mind, I just modeled them the way they looked like on my reference photo. The image was very small, so I might be wrong in some areas of the mouldings/elevations. It just looked good.
And I used Thomas An. method for liquids in glass btw. I am not afraid to use true dielectric surfaces widely in scenes since MXW 1.1 clears them so much faster compared to beta. I remember myself trying to avoid plastics and dielectrics as good as possible in my scenes back in beta times... No big deal nowadays.
@mverta: Hi Mike, havent seen you around here for quite some time. Everythings going fine? Have you seen my latest interior season in the gallery? (shameless promotion..)
Regards,
Benjamin

[Thomas An.]

Mihai,

Your b&k is a bit contrasty. No ?
Doesn't preserve the luminance levels of the original.

[Mihai]

Yes, I like contrast IMO it makes it look more like the b/w films like the kodak tri-x. Like:

[glypticmax]

Thanks for the notes Benjamin.
I've coming back to this image all day.
About the glass. Intaglio cut decoration would/could have the appearance of being raised in a photo. The decoration on the stem would definately be press moulded, but the body of the glass would more typically be cut. Its a small thing, but something I notice.
As far as book titles, I look at them like decoding the "Abbey Road" album cover. Particularly when you take into account every aspect of a CG render is done on purpose.
I keep waiting to see "The Omen" the "Kama Sutra"in a church render, or some other obviously unrealistic or humorous placement.
Keep up the good work.
cheers,
larry

[Hervé]

Absolutely perfect... great great piece.... naturally un-beatable...

[Tora_2097]

another one's cooking right know.
Thanks a lot,

Tora_2097