Greetings all.

Here's the nearly-final version of my entry for this round of the IRTC. I
still need to tweak a few things, it's taking far too long to render at
present. The shadows need to be a little smoother, the floor normals need
toning down (they're all but invisible and take ages to render). I'm
thinking of changing the rotation on the girl a bit (although probably not
the pose). Finally, I might remove the ashtray on the table; it's a little
over-detailed and takes inordinately longer to render than other areas.
Maybe I'll just edit the detail down a bit.

I think the overall brightness is about right, but this image has been
gamma-corrected from the original, which is much darker. That's what
developing a scene on a laptop screen does for you...

Comments welcome, although it might be a bit late in the day to take on any
extensive suggestions!

Bill

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Preview of image 'ghostlight1.jpg'

"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Greetings all.
>
> Here's the nearly-final version of my entry for this round of the IRTC. I
> still need to tweak a few things, it's taking far too long to render at
> present. The shadows need to be a little smoother, the floor normals need
> toning down (they're all but invisible and take ages to render). I'm
> thinking of changing the rotation on the girl a bit (although probably not
> the pose). Finally, I might remove the ashtray on the table; it's a little
> over-detailed and takes inordinately longer to render than other areas.
> Maybe I'll just edit the detail down a bit.
>
> I think the overall brightness is about right, but this image has been
> gamma-corrected from the original, which is much darker. That's what
> developing a scene on a laptop screen does for you...
>
> Comments welcome, although it might be a bit late in the day to take on any
> extensive suggestions!
>
> Bill

     She seems almost too solid, (although, she is holding a physical
object, so mayhap that was the intent.) But it seems to me, that it would
look a little better if you could see the lines of objects behind her.
Also, I can't say I like the chair, but I've never been a fan of
modernistic furniture, maybe it would blend better if you changed the color
to something more neutral.  Just an opinion, though.

     Otherwise, it looks very good.  Keep it up.

Regards,

ADB

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"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Greetings all.
>
> Here's the nearly-final version of my entry for this round of the IRTC. I
> still need to tweak a few things, it's taking far too long to render at
> present. The shadows need to be a little smoother, the floor normals need
> toning down (they're all but invisible and take ages to render). I'm
> thinking of changing the rotation on the girl a bit (although probably not
> the pose). Finally, I might remove the ashtray on the table; it's a little
> over-detailed and takes inordinately longer to render than other areas.
> Maybe I'll just edit the detail down a bit.
>
> I think the overall brightness is about right, but this image has been
> gamma-corrected from the original, which is much darker. That's what
> developing a scene on a laptop screen does for you...
>
> Comments welcome, although it might be a bit late in the day to take on any
> extensive suggestions!
>
> Bill

This looks v good but I think that she is emitting too much light. I imagine
that if you tone her down you would loose a lot of detail in the room??? How
about adding some moonlight to increase the ambient light as well.

takes ages to render?

Stephen

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I'm loving the concept of this. And she's a very pretty girl. (Ahem... 
anyway...) Maybe she does look slightly too solid, but beyond that, you 
seem to have this down quite nicely.

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Where did you find this model?  Her hair is nice, which means you found a
highly detailed model.

She looks like a glass light, except you can't see through it.  Is that a
photo of her on the shelf?  You mentioned that there is too much detail,
but I don't think so.  If you must re-render, you might consider drawing a
box to re-render only sections that need it.

Hmmm.... maybe restore the originall Gamma, increase ambient light slightly
(not sure the "ambient" key word will do, so consider an additional hidden
light source).

"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Greetings all.
>
> Here's the nearly-final version of my entry for this round of the IRTC. I
> still need to tweak a few things, it's taking far too long to render at
> present. The shadows need to be a little smoother, the floor normals need
> toning down (they're all but invisible and take ages to render). I'm
> thinking of changing the rotation on the girl a bit (although probably not
> the pose). Finally, I might remove the ashtray on the table; it's a little
> over-detailed and takes inordinately longer to render than other areas.
> Maybe I'll just edit the detail down a bit.
>
> I think the overall brightness is about right, but this image has been
> gamma-corrected from the original, which is much darker. That's what
> developing a scene on a laptop screen does for you...
>
> Comments welcome, although it might be a bit late in the day to take on any
> extensive suggestions!
>
> Bill

Post a reply to this message

"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Here's the nearly-final version of my entry for this round of the IRTC. I
> still need to tweak a few things, it's taking far too long to render at
> present. The shadows need to be a little smoother, the floor normals need
> toning down (they're all but invisible and take ages to render). I'm
> thinking of changing the rotation on the girl a bit (although probably not
> the pose). Finally, I might remove the ashtray on the table; it's a little
> over-detailed and takes inordinately longer to render than other areas.
> Maybe I'll just edit the detail down a bit.
>
> I think the overall brightness is about right, but this image has been
> gamma-corrected from the original, which is much darker. That's what
> developing a scene on a laptop screen does for you...
>
> Comments welcome, although it might be a bit late in the day to take on any
> extensive suggestions!
>
> Bill

I think it is great as it is, the floor normals look pretty good and give
the impression of a carpet. I also like the ashtray so don't think it
should be removed. The girl is a really good model and I like the glowing
ghost effect how is that done?

I can't really think of anything to improve this image it looks very good as
it is, I guess the fireplace texture is the only thing that I am not too
keen on the grate just doesn't look right (maybe it needs a bit of black
soot or something) but that is very minor. Should be a good contender for
the IRTC.

Sean

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This is very beautiful and well done, I must say. Perhaps... I would like to 
see the girl to be a bit transparant...

Thomas

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Thanks for the comments, everyone!

There seems to be a consensus for making her transparent... this in fact was
my original intention, but there were two problems. Firstly, other bits of
her become visible, making her more confusing visually and swamping the
background objects. Secondly, when transparent she exhibits severe media
artifacts in the form of saturated pixels, which I have been unable to
remove.

Having thought about it, the main reason people expect ghosts to be slightly
transparent (but only to background objects, not themselves) is just because
that's the cheapest and easiest way to achieve it with movie/TV special
effects. I can see no way to do it with POV-Ray that doesn't involve fairly
nasty hacks or post-production (illegal for the IRTC). So I shan't lose any
sleep over it! :-)

To respond to a couple of other points:

--- EagleSun: ---
> Where did you find this model?  Her hair is nice, which means you found a
> highly detailed model.
The model is Aiko3 from Daz, posed in Daz Studio. The hair is Moko hair by
Yamato ('specially for Aiko). It is good hair, isn't it!?

> Is that a photo of her on the shelf?
Yup.

> You mentioned that there is too much detail, but I don't think so.
I meant just on the ashtray. I'm not toning down any of the wider detail,
don't worry! This is one of those scenes where one could just keep adding
stuff in forever...

>(not sure the "ambient" key word will do, so consider an additional hidden
> light source).
Somebody else mentioned some external light, too. I've tried a low
fill-light but it just makes it look like there's a TV on in the room
somewhere out of sight. I'm going to play with the lighting a bit more,
maybe extend the range of the light fading but lower the overall intensity.
Test renders are quite lenient; at this resolution, ~15 mins if I turn off
the area_lights and radiosity.


--- s day: ---
> I think it is great as it is, the floor normals look pretty good and give
> the impression of a carpet.
Excellent, glad you thought so. I wasn't sure about it myself.

> The girl is a really good model and I like the glowing ghost effect how is
> that done?
Ho ho, trade secrets my son! I shall put an outline of the technique in the
scene description for the submission. It's quite simple, if a little
tedious. Actually, the girl was one of the quickest elements in the scene
to render.

> I guess the fireplace texture is the only thing that I am not too
> keen on the grate just doesn't look right (maybe it needs a bit of black
> soot or something)
Agreed, it needs darkening a little. 'Twill be done.


Everyone says she looks nice! Although her eye sockets are empty so if you
can see her face full-on she looks a little scary. :-/

Bill

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"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> schreef in bericht 
news:web.4534a24ad0051878731f01d10@news.povray.org...
> Thanks for the comments, everyone!
>
> There seems to be a consensus for making her transparent... this in fact 
> was
> my original intention, but there were two problems. Firstly, other bits of
> her become visible, making her more confusing visually and swamping the
> background objects. Secondly, when transparent she exhibits severe media
> artifacts in the form of saturated pixels, which I have been unable to
> remove.
>
> Having thought about it, the main reason people expect ghosts to be 
> slightly
> transparent (but only to background objects, not themselves) is just 
> because
> that's the cheapest and easiest way to achieve it with movie/TV special
> effects. I can see no way to do it with POV-Ray that doesn't involve 
> fairly
> nasty hacks or post-production (illegal for the IRTC). So I shan't lose 
> any
> sleep over it! :-)
>

Ah yes, I remember now the transparency problems you showed us earlier. 
Forgot about them.
Interesting idea about ghost transparency, by the way. I don't remember how 
Professor Challenger saw the ectoplasms in The Lands of Mists, by Conan 
Doyle... who based himself on allegedly *serious* phenomena at the time.

Thomas

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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> There seems to be a consensus for making her transparent... this in
> fact was my original intention, but there were two problems. Firstly,
> other bits of her become visible, making her more confusing visually
> and swamping the background objects.

Maybe that could be avoided by using a bounded_by box for the ghost that is 
between the ghost and the camera, so that only rays coming directly from the 
camera can "see" her?

> Secondly, when transparent she
> exhibits severe media artifacts in the form of saturated pixels,
> which I have been unable to remove.

That's a tougher problem, but is it still apparent when high-quality 
antialiasing is used?

Rune
-- 
http://runevision.com

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