On 29-9-2017 13:55, Bald Eagle wrote:
> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> 
>> ... of course, this texture demands a light probe ;-)
>>
>> --
>> Thomas
> 
> Yes, "demand" is an understatement.
> When I rendered my first iteration of the bell, I had nothing but a light source
> and a gray background.
> It looked like featureless gravel dust blown onto old soap scum.
> 
> "Why does this look SOOO bad?"
> 
> So then I pasted in the hdr light probe code (and botched it) so that _HALF_ of
> my bell was light from one side and the gray was on the other.
> Direct side-by-side contrast of "visually offensive yuk" and "OMG, _WOW_" on the
> same object with the same texture and finish in the same scene.
> 
> No number of forum posts could have convinced me more about how metals are
> _completely_ dependent on their surroundings for what they look like, and in
> further test renders, how lighting and radiosity add yet another level of
> goodness.

Absolutely! I sometimes forget about a light probe and wonder what 
happens, only to jerk awake again and call myself a fool :-)

> 
> 
> Your model is very cool - I like the way you textured and finished the upper
> part of the model and gave the lower base a contrasting material for it rise up
> out of.

I must confess here that I love to watch and study RL sculptures. This 
is something that shows up sometimes. I wanted to use that feature one 
way or another.

> This proximity pattern is the way to go - I'm going to have to learn how to
> apply that if I'm going to make any meaningful progress on scenes worth looking
> at   :)

It is so incredibly easy to apply that it would be a shame to leave it 
aside. It needs some tweaking to get the textures as you want them but 
that is part of the fun of course. A little trick that is very helpful 
with this tweaking is using a false colours map first to see where the 
subsequent textures will be placed. That may look like this:

#declare My_map =
#if (False)
texture_map {
	[ 0.30 + Offset pigment {Violet} ]
	[ 0.40 + Offset pigment {NavyBlue} ]
	[ 0.50 + Offset pigment {LightBlue} ]
	[ 0.60 + Offset pigment {Red} ]
	[ 0.65 + Offset pigment {Orange} ]
	[ 0.70 + Offset pigment {Yellow} ]
	[ 0.80 + Offset pigment {Green} ]
	[ 1.00 + Offset pigment {LimeGreen} ]
}
#else
texture_map {
	[ 0.30 + Offset T_WhiteWashDark6 ]
	[ 0.40 + Offset T_WhiteWashDark5 ]
	[ 0.50 + Offset T_WhiteWashDark4 ]
	[ 0.60 + Offset T_WhiteWashDark3 ]
	[ 0.65 + Offset T_WhiteWashDark2 ]
	[ 0.70 + Offset T_WhiteWashDark1 ]
	[ 0.80 + Offset T_WhiteWash ]
	[ 1.00 + Offset T_WhiteWash ]
}
#end

> 
> 
> Thanks for sharing your experiments and the progressive improvement and
> development of your scenes, as always!
> 

You are welcome. It is something I do as much for my own benefit as for 
the benefit of people interested. I always keep a series of images (and 
often scene files too) from the different development stages. It allows 
me to assess the direction to go and/or branch of on alternatives.

-- 
Thomas

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