Render that pretends to be a photo

Gleb Alexandrov here and it’s time for another Making-of. Today we’re going to talk about “The Brushes” – still life render which pretends to be a photo.

[icon icon=”star”] Featured in official Cycles Demoreel 2014

[icon icon=”star”] Excellence award on 3dTotal

[icon icon=”star”] Render of the Week on Blendernews

[icon icon=”star”] Featured at Blenderartists Forum Gallery

This time, the idea wasn’t preceded by a concept painting. It came purely from aesthetic experience.

There is a jar with brushes on my table. It’s so routine and usual that it’s almost invisible. But once I noticed something unusual about it. At this time of the year, about 11 o’clock in the morning sun peaks through my window. One day brushes were lit so brightly and looked so joyful that in that instant rather dirty jar became something worth rendering.

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Screw modifier makes wonders, really worth learning.

2 Basic materials

During the the block-out phase simple materials were used. Typically, they consisted of just 1 seamless texture and were quite primitive in terms of shader complexity: just the mix between diffuse and glossy.

So, 1 mix shader and 1 texture is enough to represent the main qualities of wood (steel, glass)

3 Procedural UV coordinates

Along with uv- coordinates for texture mapping we can use Generated or Object coordinates. Thus, we can leave UV-mapping untouched and still be able to control the texture using Mapping node. 

To project texture evenly and from several directions at once, use so-called Box mapping. With the help of the Blend parameter textures seams can be hidden.

4 Material layers

Go ahead and add the layers to the basic materials. To achieve the compelling look, I’d suggest to add at least 3 supplementary shaders in every material: dirt, paint, scratches.

Use black and white mask as a mix factor.

[box title=”Decals” bg_color=”#8fb4c4″ icon=”info” icon_style=”border” icon_shape=”circle” align=”center” text_color=”#ffffff”]

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5 Painted glass material

It’s pretty complex material, so let’s decompose it.

1 Two basic materials – glass and paint

2  Both of these materials have several composite materials

3  The glass material consists of a glass and dust, dirt, fingerprints

4 The paint material consists of a translucent, diffuse, reflective, emissive shaders. Consequently, it uses diffuse, bump, translucency texture, etc.

5 Transparency texture in the paint material determines what areas are translucent (covered with a thin layer of the paint), and what areas are opaque.

6 Displacement map is also used as the normal map

[box title=”Glass shader” border_width=”2″ border_color=”#9e9e9e” border_style=”solid” icon=”download” icon_style=”border” icon_shape=”circle” align=”center”]

Recommend trying out Cycles Dispersion Glass shader by Harri Collis.

Download from Blendswap

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6 Lighting

The key light source is nothing more than a sun lamp with a soft shadows (sample size 12 cm).

To achieve a rim light effect, I created a plane and placed it at the window. Brush tops were lit separately with a spot light.

Spherical HDRi image softly illuminates the scene from all angles and creates virtually no shadows – it’s good for us in this case. What is very important about HDRi, that the reflective parts of the brushes and also the jar begin reflecting the bright areas of the HDRi. These reflections accentuate objects‘ volume and make a metal act like a “metal”, if you know what I mean.

Rotated HDRi using mapping node, searching for the most effective angle.

[box title=”Decals” bg_color=”#8fb4c4″ icon=”info” icon_style=”border” icon_shape=”circle” align=”center” text_color=”#ffffff”]

While Cycles is already a fantastic renderer, it still doesn’t have something similar to Directional Light yet (sun and spot lamps are similar in function but also not quite the same). So for now we had to add spot lights or invent obstacles between the object and the sun to restrict its area of ​​influence.

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7 Hair simulation

Let’s briefly explore the process of creating the hair.

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• 1. Create a plane.  It will serve as an emitter for the hair.[space size=”20″]
• 2. Create a particle system.[space size=”20″]
• 3. Hair length and density. The optimal value is almost impossible to guess, we should prepare ourselves for the inevitable return to this stage.[space size=”20″]
• 4. Adaptive rendering – hair geometry adapts to the resolution and depends on the minimal bending of the original geometry. These values ​​influence the polygon count during the rendering. It‘s important to remember this to squeeze the scene in memory limit for a fast GPU-rendering.[space size=”20″]
• 5. Cycles Hair Rendering. Ribbons[space size=”20″]
• 6. Set Children to Interpolated. Display – 2-5, Render – 2-5. Final values depend on desired hair density and computer characteristics. While children are activated, every parent hair is spawning several child hairs.[space size=”20″]
• 7. Set Kink to Curl mode.[space size=”20″]

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7 Hair styling

Now we’re switching viewport to Particle Edit mode and trying ourselves as a stylists, cutting and combing hair.

8 Hair material

There is now a special shader for hair — in Blender 2.69. My impression is that it’s somewhat slow to render – but anyway, it looks great. Who cares.

The node called Hair Info in material editor is essential when texturing hair.

Using Intercept attribute and Color Ramp (gradient), we can control the gradient of the hair color – from the roots to the tips. Note that the gradient may haveseveral “stops”.

Combining this information with the capabilities of uv-coordinates, we can confidently dye our hair – using length (Intercept) and location relative to the particle emitter (UV).

9 Render!

We want photo-real render, don’t we? Leave the caustic enabled and the maximum number of bounces untouched.

[box title=”Path tracing” bg_color=”#8fb4c4″ icon=”info” icon_style=”border” icon_shape=”circle” align=”center” text_color=”#ffffff”]

When trying to render this scene out, used classical path tracing, and not the branched version, as it was more conventional for me.

Perhaps now would have done otherwise, since branched path tracing coupled with manual tweaking of the light source samples solves the problem of noise in shadows. Spot lamps and perhaps any lamps generate much noise if there is a lot of obstacles between them and the camera.

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10 What could be done better?

Render was infernally slow: on my computer (i7 3690, 16gb ram, nvidia 650m) it was rendering about two days in the resolution of 1100-2200 (12,000 samples).

Reasons:

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• too complex and sometimes bad-planned materials[space size=”20″]
• the bounces number was too high (2 for diffuse and glossy should be enough in many cases)[space size=”20″]
•  high hair density and high number of curve segments in hair render[space size=”20″]
• classic path tracing in interior scene with lots of light and reflections and with lots of objects between the sun and the camera[space size=”20″]

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Last stage is cosmetic treatment. Brightness tweaks, lightening / darkening – basically, what we want here is to enhance the colors and get that extra ‘oomph’.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to ask questions, comment, share and subscribe.

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Making of Zeppelins

The post Making-of the Brushes appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

It was really exciting to be here and to chat with people in Blender section. There was very nice set of lectures – motion design in composing, topology in poly modelling, Blender-Pipeline, Making Of “Traffic Camera”,  Open Shading Language (OSL) in Blender – and so on.

Hopefully, video with my speech will be ready later, for now I made a short video from the presentation slides. Full text version of this Making-of is available right here:
The Making of “Her Majesty’s Zeppelins”

The post Making-of Her Majesty’s Zeppelins: slides from CgEvent 2013 appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague served as a starting point for the sketch. This epic structure contains rhythm, movement, contrast in its forms. It inspired me a lot during sketching phase.

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After sketching out tonal values of arcade and also a heavy blob of zeppelin, I opened Blender and prepared to modeling.

 

3 Workflow 

Before speaking about modeling, let me briefly explain how my workflow is organized and say few words about folder structure. I find it really easy to underestimate the meaning of organized folder structure and then to lose track of project. Thus, it’s highly advisable to create some sort of structure that will protect the project from chaos and entropy.

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Download – virtually everything that’s downloaded from internet goes here. Folder contains subfolders – steampunk, trains, zeppelins etc.

Export — exchange between software

Feedback – draft renders for tracking progress and for communicating with others

Output — layers and passes for composing

Ref – nuff said

Saves (blender) — .blend source files

Saves (ps) – same goes for photoshop of gimp files. Usually, source files for textures.

Test – this folder contains experiments and alternative versions of the scene. Essentially, it’s a testing chamber for things that can break scene, crash Blender or whatever. Quick tests are being done in an empty scene and later on are merged into the ”trunk” scene.

Textures – textures which are referenced by the scene.

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Files are given descriptive names: scene_zeppelins__01, tex_metal_rusty_02, ps_compose_final and so on.

 

[icon icon=”th-large” size=”1x”] Layers

Personally, I can rarely move consistently from sketch to modeling, from modeling to texturing and so on. If a scene is full of objects, there comes a time when separation on stages becomes meaningless. When it happens, it becomes easier to think of groups and layers rather than stages.

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This is partly due to the fact that all the components of the scene interact with each other. For example, if we move the light — the specular highlight on material changes, if we add a model — we introduce a shadow. If color of the texture on the columns is tweaked — the ship is being lit differently by secondary global illumination bounces. In turn, all of the above influences render setup.

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I often return to sketch phase to take a look at what can be improved and changed about composition.

 

 

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Sometimes modeling of the details distracts from seeing overall picture. When it happens, it’s cool to return to sketch and continue searching for the impulse that drives the composition.

If nothing comes to mind, try searching for the pictures of  cg artists that inspire you. Or generate some random shape to start the ball rolling (who said fractals?).

How to find inspiration?

4 Addons and viewport acceleration

 

Blender proves itself as a reliable tool to make this kind of stuff. Scene contains nearly 7 mln. polygons and many layers of things – and continues to be manageable.

Let’s briefly outline some useful Blender addons, especially ones which accelerate viewport.

 

 

Quick tools – macro by Johnathan Williamson from CgCookie. On pressing Q we get menu with a pretty useful stuff: symmetry, modifiers, shading modes.

 

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The main purpose of this addon is to save our clicks. For example, we can press Q and slide to Add Mirror, than press Q – and click Add Target. This way, Mirror modifier is activated and Empty Object is created on 3d cursor coordinates. This Empty is automatically set as Mirror Object. Very convenient.

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http://cgcookie.com/blender/2013/05/14/using-the-quick-tools-add-on/

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Material Utils – tool to assign materials to multiple objects at once.

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Display Tools – tools for viewport setup, made by Jordi Vall-llovera Medina “JordiArt”. Let’s take a look at some of the most useful functions.

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Fast Navigate — during navigation viewport switches to bounding box mode. There is a similar feature in 3ds max.

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Wire On – similar to 3ds max F4 function, displays wire over mesh on multiple objects at once.

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Double Sided off – mass disables property “show double-sided” on selected objects. This setting alone makes the viewport much more responsive. Without it the viewport begins to feel slower on approximately 1 mln polygons, and goes completely slow on 2 mln (on my Geforce 550m).

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With double-sided off it feels smooth on 5-7 million polys.

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http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Display_Tools

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Another crucial setting for viewport acceleration is VBO (Vertex Buffer Objects), which is found in system settings. Also, subsurf modifier on top of modifier stack ignores VBO, therefore, we can add empty modifier (simple deform with zero value) on top of stack to override this bug.

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Hotkeys. We often need to switch viewport to rendered mode and back again. By default, there is no hotkey for this function. Fortunately, it can be set manually by changing some values in input section.

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5 Environment modelling

During the arcade modeling group instances were used. Changes to original group propagated to all instances. For example, when mechanisms were added to the source group, they appeared in every instanced group.

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Arch is bezier curve with bevel object. Some objects were modeled using the new grid fill tool.

 

 

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At first, camera was positioned high in the air. Later on, it was positioned roughly at eye level to enhance the feeling of a huge environment.

Tiny figures were placed here and there for scale reference. Mechanisms were done according to the references of steam engines, locomotives, clock mechanisms, cranes.

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From time to time some details were being copypasted, then rotated and scaled before placing.

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Later on I decided to add a pit at the foreground, to make things look more technological. Once it was done, I thought that it would be cool to make entire cathedral float on anti-gravitational engine. But soon this idea was left behind because I wanted to be closer to London street life. Once again, already modeled elements were transformed and used.

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To make city believable, it was decided to add a road with cars and change design of houses from fantasy-styled to more grounded.

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6 Details 

 When the basis of the scene was done, detailing phase has begun. The column (also the symmetry) was broken, then lanterns, spotlights, lamps and elevators were created.

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…fencing, scaffolding, pipes, clocks, wires, dam, embankment…

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After that cloth was simulated, dome material was changed to add visual interest and provide one more scale reference – tiled bricks.

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7 Zeppelins – in search of a concept 

Ship concepts were reworked at least three times. Nevertheless, all three versions are shaped like a zeppelin – thought stubbornly refused to depart from steampunk motive. The first version of the ship was a funny fish with a harpoon and a soft belly.

 

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Then came the idea to do something like an air locomotive assembled from parts of the “terrestrial” trains. But this idea did not work. The third version was the final – a zeppelin with a rotating magnetic field (we can also fantasize about chrono-engines and how they distort time and gravity).

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The fins on the front of the ship have been added to break up the phallic shape and enhance the silhouette. Later, they came in handy when I was looking for a place for marking. Moreover, it was funny to imagine zeppelins as fishes or submarines in a surreal air-water world.

[icon icon=”gear”] Ship details

To determine the function of a ship and its belonging to Her Majesty’s Navy, special details were added. Flagship got bomb doors, guns, heavy armor (gears are protected by magnetic field), extra antigrav engines to maneuver and the spotlights. Tactical designator – HMA – stands for Her Majesty’s Air Fleet. Such labeling existed in reality. Also used winged badge of Royal Flying Corps.

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The remaining zeppelins were unwrapped mainly through smart uv project, box mapping and project from view. Uv islands obtained during unwrap were located on the texture of the main flagship.

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8 Lighting 

Lighting was set at the very beginning, and since then the base has not changed. The main light sources are the sun and the hdri. While processing hdri, I was trying to tint one side of the “sphere” in cool tones, and the opposite side in warm.

Dome was highlighted separately to achieve rhytmical light and shadow separation. I was constantly adding omnis to illuminate details and accentuate colors.

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All additional light sources were put on a separate layer, so they don’t clutter viewport and slow down the renders. Now I think that lights could be placed more rationally. But such scheme worked and it I decided to let it be.

 

 

9 Render Layers 

Separated scene on layers like this:

 

1. cathedral, arcade, foreground with the pit

2. flags, lanterns

3. houses (near)

4. houses (far), scaffolding

5. zeppelin – the flagship

6. zeppelin – loader-transporter

7. zeppelins – workers

8. cranes, people, fence

9. additional light sources

12. wire, a distant embankment, decorative elements of the arcade

13. dam, spline basis for the “magnetic field” of the ships

 

10 Render passes

Render layers also got render passes. Rendered ambient occlusion, z-depth (or mist), diffuse direct.

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https://github.com/Tlousky/production_scripts/wiki/save_all_renderlayers_And_passes.py

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To automatically export all this stuff I used addon called Save Layers and Passes in respectively named folders by Tamir Lousky and Luciano Munoz. Very handy thing, did not have to manually set the node compositor, indicate the names and folders.

 

 

 

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Rendered on CPU, because video card refused to handle 10 million triangles. On average, the level of noise in the picture was getting satisfactory after 500-1000 samples. Although, layer with an arcade demanded 4,000 samples because of small omni lights.

11 Smoke simulation 

Smoke was simulated in Blender then added on top of the compose. Emitter smoke density is animated from zero till one (0-80 frame) to eliminate big smoke puff. Also, smoke was blown away by the wind.

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Tried to render cloud for background using Nick Keeline’s impressive addon called Cloud Generator. During the tests realized that results are only suitable for mixing with main background in small doses. Nevertheless, pointed out for myself that such clouds can fit somewhere in the future.

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http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Object/Cloud_Gen

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12 Final compose and post-processing 

 For ships, buildings and arcade ambient occlusion pass was mixed with rgb pass (multiply mode). Later on aerial perspective was added with the help of z-depth pass. Painted/collaged backdrop. Tried to achieve the atmosphere of approaching storm. The city with Big Ben, a fixture of Englishness, had to serve as a reference to London.

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People were replaced and background ships added. A small lanterns were lit and also a side lights and beacons. Volumetric light came into play.

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Decision was made to focus on the ships and to visualize the magnetic field generated by the antigrav-engines. The basis for the field was modeled and then in post-processing it was given a glow.

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Vignette and color correction glued all parts of the picture together. Color range was driven by complementary colors, shades of cool blue and warm orange-brown. All in all, the picture became sufficiently solid to be finalized.

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Conclusion

Some ideas about what could be done better: some items are not logical at all, for example, gears floating in the air without any anti-gravity. Humans and machines, for sure, demand more polish. Perhaps gone too far with the smoke (although I like how smoke looks in steampunk setting).

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Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the positive reviews that picture have received in the discussion on Render.ru, Blenderartists and Blender3d.org.ua. It’s really motivating.

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I want to express my deep gratitude to my wife, who was helping me with practical advice and delicious coffee during the process of production. On top of that, many composition and stylistic decisions were taken in tandem with her. Thank you. All the luck and success!

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Stay tuned and feel free to leave a comment.

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Links 

The results of the competition (Render.ru)

http://www.render.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?post_id=1088804

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Russian version of this Making Of

http://www.render.ru/books/show_book.php?book_id=1963

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BlenderArtists Thread

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?313335-Her-Majesty-s-Zeppelins

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BlenderNews (Render of the Week award)

http://blendernews.org/xe/Feature_Articles/5564

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Blendernation – post and comments

http://www.blendernation.com/2013/10/05/her-majestys-air-fleet/

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CgSociety – Editor’s Choice 3d Gallery

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=132&t=1128771

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Blender3d.org.ua – award

http://blender3d.org.ua/gallery/6912.html

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Render.ru – award in the 3d Gallery

http://www.render.ru/gallery/show_work.php?work_id=88881&gal_rub=1&gal_add=award#work

The post The Making of “Her Majesty’s Zeppelins” appeared first on Creative Shrimp.