This is my first "serious" scene. It's the One Ring on a 
intended-to-be-old-and-weathered wooden table. I've rendered four versions:

radiosity + focal blur        radiosity

focal blur                    vanilla

The radiosity versions are a bit more reddish, but I don't think the effect 
is worth the trouble. The focal blur, on the other hand, adds a bit of 
realism, but obscures the table's detail. Any advice?

Things I like:
- The Ring model
- The texture of the table

Things I don't like (so much):
- The lighting
- The finishes don't look quite right

-- 
light_source{9+9*x,1}camera{orthographic look_at(1-y)/4angle 30location
9/4-z*4}light_source{-9*z,1}union{box{.9-z.1+x clipped_by{plane{2+y-4*x
0}}}box{z-y-.1.1+z}box{-.1.1+x}box{.1z-.1}pigment{rgb<.8.2,1>}}//Jellby

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Preview of image 'rings.jpg'

>  It's the One Ring

I see Four. =)

> The radiosity versions are a bit more reddish, but I don't think the
effect
> is worth the trouble. The focal blur, on the other hand, adds a bit of
> realism, but obscures the table's detail. Any advice?

I don't even notice a difference with the radiosity. The focal blur helps, I
think, but tone it down some so that the ring itself doesn't get blurred so
much.

 - Slime
 [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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Hey Jellby,

    Not too shabby.  I think gold is a hard thing to depict
realistically.  If radiosity doesn't affect the scene very much, you
might want to try photons.  They're fun to use with gold textures.  I
thought you might like to see a Brazil render my friend John Henriksen
did of a scene he modeled in 3dmax.  It might give you some ideas.  For
the table he used a height field generated from a scan of a cutting
board.  He had to do a lot of work by hand in Photoshop to get the text
up to such a high resolution.

-Ben Scheele

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Attachments:
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Preview of image 'ring&chain13-final.jpg'

Among other things, Ben T. Scheele wrote:

>     Not too shabby.  I think gold is a hard thing to depict
> realistically.

Especially when I don't have any gold to compare with ;) Thanks for the 
picture, it helped me realise that I needed much more reflection and 
brightness, though I was aiming for a more reddish kind of gold and a 
different kind of shabby (that was a new word for me) wood. By moving the 
lights and changing some parameters I was able to eliminate the stupid 
"brilliance 4" I had for the wood texture

> If radiosity doesn't affect the scene very much, you
> might want to try photons.  They're fun to use with gold textures.

Yep, I tried using them, but with the old layout and textures there was no 
noticeable effect, now there is :)

By the way, do radiosity and photons interact? I mean, would a bright 
caustics spot illuminate surrounding objects? I've seen you can also get 
caustics with pure radiosity (no photons), and I guess these would 
illuminate surrounding objects, logic says photon caustics (and faked 
caustics) would behave in the same way...

> I thought you might like to see a Brazil render my friend John Henriksen
> did of a scene he modeled in 3dmax.  It might give you some ideas.  For
> the table he used a height field generated from a scan of a cutting
> board.  He had to do a lot of work by hand in Photoshop to get the text
> up to such a high resolution.

You mean the text or the texture? There's a TTF font available for the ring 
inscription script (which I didn't use, because I like this one better). 
There's something I don't like in that picture: the text in the inner side 
of the ring is backwards :D

Here's the new version, better now? (with and without focal blur)

-- 
light_source{9+9*x,1}camera{orthographic look_at(1-y)/4angle 30location
9/4-z*4}light_source{-9*z,1}union{box{.9-z.1+x clipped_by{plane{2+y-4*x
0}}}box{z-y-.1.1+z}box{-.1.1+x}box{.1z-.1}pigment{rgb<.8.2,1>}}//Jellby

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Attachments:
Download 'rings.jpg' (61 KB)

Preview of image 'rings.jpg'

Wow! These look awesome!

You should fix that with the inner
engravement being the wrong way
round (are you using bump-maps,
or CSG?).

Aside of that, how about using a slighty
irregular heightfield for the wood?

And regarding focal-blur: make the
aperture a nuance smaller, so that the ring
itself antialiased at most, but not blurred.
Move the camera away a little, and add
some stuff, like pots and cups and such,
in fore- and background. Use radiosity
to light that, but keep a soft spotlight on
the ring, to make it the center of attraction.

I often tend to make single objects and
showcase them in my scenes, but realism
is added with more objects around it. It
would also add to the reflections of the
ring.

-- 
Tim Nikias v2.0
Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights
Email: no_lights (@) digitaltwilight.de


> Among other things, Ben T. Scheele wrote:
>
> >     Not too shabby.  I think gold is a hard thing to depict
> > realistically.
>
> Especially when I don't have any gold to compare with ;) Thanks for the
> picture, it helped me realise that I needed much more reflection and
> brightness, though I was aiming for a more reddish kind of gold and a
> different kind of shabby (that was a new word for me) wood. By moving the
> lights and changing some parameters I was able to eliminate the stupid
> "brilliance 4" I had for the wood texture
>
> > If radiosity doesn't affect the scene very much, you
> > might want to try photons.  They're fun to use with gold textures.
>
> Yep, I tried using them, but with the old layout and textures there was no
> noticeable effect, now there is :)
>
> By the way, do radiosity and photons interact? I mean, would a bright
> caustics spot illuminate surrounding objects? I've seen you can also get
> caustics with pure radiosity (no photons), and I guess these would
> illuminate surrounding objects, logic says photon caustics (and faked
> caustics) would behave in the same way...
>
> > I thought you might like to see a Brazil render my friend John Henriksen
> > did of a scene he modeled in 3dmax.  It might give you some ideas.  For
> > the table he used a height field generated from a scan of a cutting
> > board.  He had to do a lot of work by hand in Photoshop to get the text
> > up to such a high resolution.
>
> You mean the text or the texture? There's a TTF font available for the
ring
> inscription script (which I didn't use, because I like this one better).
> There's something I don't like in that picture: the text in the inner side
> of the ring is backwards :D
>
> Here's the new version, better now? (with and without focal blur)
>
> -- 
> light_source{9+9*x,1}camera{orthographic look_at(1-y)/4angle 30location
> 9/4-z*4}light_source{-9*z,1}union{box{.9-z.1+x clipped_by{plane{2+y-4*x
> 0}}}box{z-y-.1.1+z}box{-.1.1+x}box{.1z-.1}pigment{rgb<.8.2,1>}}//Jellby
>


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Among other things, Tim Nikias v2.0 wrote:

> You should fix that with the inner
> engravement being the wrong way
> round (are you using bump-maps,
> or CSG?).

No, mine is fine, it's the rendering Ben Scheele showed the one that's 
wrong... The ring (mine) is CSG (lathe & text).

> Aside of that, how about using a slighty
> irregular heightfield for the wood?

Hmm... maybe. I did some tests with function-hf, it looks like I will need a 
fairly high resolution and parsing time would grow too much (I guess I 
should save the data first). The hardest part would be fitting the hf to 
the round corners (the table is made up of round boxes). Right now, most of 
the texture is normal-made, which works very nicely under the spotlight, 
but is obscured by focal blur and radiosity (though I used "normal on"), 
maybe I should add some pigment noise (layers) too.

> And regarding focal-blur: make the
> aperture a nuance smaller, so that the ring
> itself antialiased at most, but not blurred.
> Move the camera away a little, and add
> some stuff, like pots and cups and such,
> in fore- and background. Use radiosity
> to light that, but keep a soft spotlight on
> the ring, to make it the center of attraction.

That's more or less what I've tried now. Not many objects, just two copies 
of the same dagger (I had to model it and draw the maps for the occasion), 
I also fixed the scale of the table (the planks were too small in 
comparison with the ring). Is it any better now?

-- 
light_source{9+9*x,1}camera{orthographic look_at(1-y)/4angle 30location
9/4-z*4}light_source{-9*z,1}union{box{.9-z.1+x clipped_by{plane{2+y-4*x
0}}}box{z-y-.1.1+z}box{-.1.1+x}box{.1z-.1}pigment{rgb<.8.2,1>}}//Jellby

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