On 29-1-2016 22:53, Mike Horvath wrote:
> On 1/29/2016 12:28 PM, Simon J. Cambridge wrote:
>>> I have to agree that your works are diverse, fitting a central theme.
>>> I'm not sure I like the textures you are using though. They look too
>>> washed out and faded. Could it be a gamma issue maybe?
>>>
>>>
>>> Mike
>>
>> Hi Mike,
>>
>> Any image in particular? I tended to vary just about everything when
>> rendering.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Simon.
>>
>
> Most of the images I looked at appear kind of pastel or washed out. Are
> you developing on a Mac?
>
>

Not for me, on my lcd screen. Textures appear to be as intended.


-- 
Thomas

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On 1/30/2016 8:01 AM, Thomas de Groot wrote:
> On 29-1-2016 19:55, Stephen wrote:
>> On 1/29/2016 5:20 PM, Simon J. Cambridge wrote:
>>> Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
>>>> On 1/29/2016 4:22 PM, Cousin Ricky wrote:
>>>>> "Simon J. Cambridge" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
>>>>>> Thank you Thomas, for the welcome and the praise. I am a long time
>>>>>> lurker,
>>>>>> occasionally peering over the wall but never brave enough to post
>>>>>> (not until I
>>>>>> had something I felt I could post, that is).
>>>>>
>>>>> Well, in that case, you owe us a reflective sphere on a checkered
>>>>> plane. ;-)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Indeed he does. ;)
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> Regards
>>>>       Stephen
>>>
>>> No sooner the word...
>>>
>>
>> Well done. Welcome to the club. :-)
>>
>>
>
> [aside] that guy has the right spirit, hm? [/aside]
>

Yes, mine was a reflective woodworking plane on a chequered sphere.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On 1/30/2016 8:03 AM, Thomas de Groot wrote:
> On 29-1-2016 22:53, Mike Horvath wrote:
>> On 1/29/2016 12:28 PM, Simon J. Cambridge wrote:
>>>> I have to agree that your works are diverse, fitting a central theme.
>>>> I'm not sure I like the textures you are using though. They look too
>>>> washed out and faded. Could it be a gamma issue maybe?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Mike
>>>
>>> Hi Mike,
>>>
>>> Any image in particular? I tended to vary just about everything when
>>> rendering.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Simon.
>>>
>>
>> Most of the images I looked at appear kind of pastel or washed out. Are
>> you developing on a Mac?
>>
>>
>
> Not for me, on my lcd screen. Textures appear to be as intended.
>
>

For me they do a bit. A technique I used to do when looking at your 
entries for Tena Chep, was to copy them into Paint Shop Pro and reduce 
the gamma. Doing that for Simon’s images gives a more pleasing* image to 
my eyes. I reduce the gamma from 1 to 0.8

*Not that they are not pleasing as they are.


-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Beautiful work! One of my favorites is your "Forest of Kannim"-- very ethereal,
> kind of a (rendered version) of reality + fantasy, combined. A beautiful
> concept, very nicely designed and realized. It reminds me of some of the best
> Disney pre-production artwork, done by the old 'masters' there.
>
> Welcome to the newsgroups!
>
>
> Mike Horvath <mik### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> >
> > Most of the images I looked at appear kind of pastel or washed out. Are
> > you developing on a Mac?
> >
>
> They appear OK to me, on my CRT monitor-- good contrast, saturated colors, etc.
> (Every now and then, I re-check my monitor to make sure that it's behaving
> correctly-- especially the display gamma. Just a suggestion.) I had trouble last
> year, viewing a PNG image in a newsgroup posting, thinking it was too *dark* ;
> it turned out that I hadn't re-calibrated my monitor in awhile.

Disney? Wow! Thank you Kenneth. I must be doing something right after all! (I
always look at my stuff and think 'could do better' - one of my drawbacks is
that I tinker too much and never actually finish, a bad habit I have had to
learn to get out of).

All the best,

Simon.

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Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> On 1/30/2016 8:03 AM, Thomas de Groot wrote:
> > On 29-1-2016 22:53, Mike Horvath wrote:
> >> On 1/29/2016 12:28 PM, Simon J. Cambridge wrote:
> >>>> I have to agree that your works are diverse, fitting a central theme.
> >>>> I'm not sure I like the textures you are using though. They look too
> >>>> washed out and faded. Could it be a gamma issue maybe?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Mike
> >>>
> >>> Hi Mike,
> >>>
> >>> Any image in particular? I tended to vary just about everything when
> >>> rendering.
> >>>
> >>> Cheers,
> >>>
> >>> Simon.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Most of the images I looked at appear kind of pastel or washed out. Are
> >> you developing on a Mac?
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Not for me, on my lcd screen. Textures appear to be as intended.
> >
> >
>
> For me they do a bit. A technique I used to do when looking at your
> entries for Tena Chep, was to copy them into Paint Shop Pro and reduce
> the gamma. Doing that for Simon’s images gives a more pleasing* image to
> my eyes. I reduce the gamma from 1 to 0.8
>
> *Not that they are not pleasing as they are.
>
>
> --
>
> Regards
>      Stephen

Hi Stephen,

First off, thanks for liking my stuff. As I said to Kenneth I tinker alot and it
is sometimes difficult for me to let go of something.

The gamma question is interesting, because I tried what you said and for me the
images went darker and lost colour. My screens are all from dell, of varying
ages, and the images are fine on all of them (varying light conditions).

I tend to render with gamma 2.2, but that is not hard and fast, especially when
using brighter lights, and some of the images were colour corrected afterwards
anyway. From looking at other conversations here concerning gamma, I get the
impression that it is a contentious issue. (And I didn't know that 3.7.1 was in
the works - excellent news).

Cheers,

Simon.

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On 1/30/2016 4:21 PM, Simon J. Cambridge wrote:
> Hi Stephen,
>
> First off, thanks for liking my stuff. As I said to Kenneth I tinker alot and it
> is sometimes difficult for me to let go of something.
>

What is there not to like? The site its self is excellent. As Kenneth 
said “some of the best Disney pre-production artwork”
I particularly like:
http://www.landofthefirst.com/ell/images/ell.png

The one I changed the gamma on is Othil Admaq


> The gamma question is interesting, because I tried what you said and for me the
> images went darker and lost colour. My screens are all from dell, of varying
> ages, and the images are fine on all of them (varying light conditions).
>

You can only judge by what you can see yourself.

> I tend to render with gamma 2.2, but that is not hard and fast, especially when
> using brighter lights, and some of the images were colour corrected afterwards
> anyway. From looking at other conversations here concerning gamma, I get the
> impression that it is a contentious issue. (And I didn't know that 3.7.1 was in
> the works - excellent news).

Yes Clipka and Cousin Ricky have a holy mission. :-)

I don't care that much myself. As long as it looks fine. :-)


-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Am 30.01.2016 um 17:42 schrieb Stephen:

>> I tend to render with gamma 2.2, but that is not hard and fast,
>> especially when
>> using brighter lights, and some of the images were colour corrected
>> afterwards
>> anyway. From looking at other conversations here concerning gamma, I
>> get the
>> impression that it is a contentious issue. (And I didn't know that
>> 3.7.1 was in
>> the works - excellent news).
> 
> Yes Clipka and Cousin Ricky have a holy mission. :-)

It's not contentious anymore -- see? Nobody has contradicted my Words of
Holy Wisdom for years :P

> I don't care that much myself. As long as it looks fine. :-)

That might be because you're not a developer having to put up with
people claiming that what you're doing and officially recommending is
wrong ;)

I hope that by now there is some sort of mutual consensus that...

- "assumed_gamma 1.0" is indispensible to get physically correct results
(which in my humble experience makes it easier to design materials and
set up lighting);

- any side effect of "assumed_gamma 1.0" that stands in the artist's way
is not to be seen as a shortcoming of "assumed gamma 1.0", but as a
shortcoming of POV-Ray's feature set in general (*), that just has been
hidden until now because "assumed_gamma 2.2" /happened/ to compensate
for it; and

- any artist is of course free to use their own choice of
"assumed_gamma", at their own risk.


(*) A few such shortcomings that have been identified in the past:

- entering colours from 3rd party tools (the "srgb" keyword has been
taking care of this for a while);

- getting perceptually pleasing brightness gradients (the "blend_mode"
and "blend_gamma" mechanism now provides for this); and

- tonemapping for purely artistic reasons (this hasn't been addressed yet).


Some people had (somewhat correctly) observed that these problems do not
appear with an "assumed_gamma" of their choice, and from there
(incorrectly) jumped to questioning the legitimacy of the "assumed_gamma
1.0" in its entirety. My take on it has been -- and will always be --
different: /Knowing/ for a fact that "assumed_gamma 1.0" is the one and
only right (read: phyiscally realistic) way, I must concldue that
"assumed_gamma 2.2" /cannot/ be the /proper/ solutions to these
problems, and instead just obscures them, and that therefore I need to
find a different solution to these problems.

Obviously, that's a different perspective as that of the artist: The
artist needs to take what's available, and make the best of it to
achieve the desired result. So what's utterly wrong from the perspective
of the software developer may still be sufficiently legitimate for the
artist.

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Yes, now finally I did it. I visited your website, too! :-D

First of all: big congratulations! Your imagination is great. The
mystical, secretive inspires you, as it does me, too. And you have a
good skill in writing. You succeed to guide your readers into another,
hidden world.

I also like your POV-Ray renders. I checked for washed-out colors, but
honestly, on all my monitors the images look alright, in that regards.
There are a few other recommendations I would give to you, but only if
you want. So let me know.

I think, you achieved a great fusion of ideas, mysticism, text and
illustrations.

"Baramak" sounds like the name "Barak Obama" was the main ingredient for
this mystical twist of letters. :-)

Big congratulations,

Sven

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Sven Littkowski <jam### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> Yes, now finally I did it. I visited your website, too! :-D
>
> First of all: big congratulations! Your imagination is great. The
> mystical, secretive inspires you, as it does me, too. And you have a
> good skill in writing. You succeed to guide your readers into another,
> hidden world.
>
> I also like your POV-Ray renders. I checked for washed-out colors, but
> honestly, on all my monitors the images look alright, in that regards.
> There are a few other recommendations I would give to you, but only if
> you want. So let me know.
>
> I think, you achieved a great fusion of ideas, mysticism, text and
> illustrations.
>
> "Baramak" sounds like the name "Barak Obama" was the main ingredient for
> this mystical twist of letters. :-)
>
> Big congratulations,
>
> Sven

Hi Sven,

Thank you. Glad you like my stuff too. And I am happy to take
criticisms/recommendations of all kinds. (And I really hope Barak Obama is not a
Baramak, then we are all in trouble!)

clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Am 30.01.2016 um 17:42 schrieb Stephen:
>
> Obviously, that's a different perspective as that of the artist: The
> artist needs to take what's available, and make the best of it to
> achieve the desired result. So what's utterly wrong from the perspective
> of the software developer may still be sufficiently legitimate for the
> artist.

Hi clipka,

Agree wholeheartedly. Having been in the developer hotseat myself I know what a
hard place it can be.

I really like the sound of 'blend_mode' and 'blend_gamma'.

All the best,

Simon.

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This is an impressive amount of work !
You command respect. :-)



"Simon J. Cambridge" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Hello to all. First time poster here.
>
> I hope I am right in thinking that this is the best place to post this.
>
> Here is an image I created as an adjunct to a trilogy of fantasy novels I have
> written. I am not sure how many people have ever done this, but I decided to use
> pov-ray (long time user) to create all the illustrations for the accompanying
> website (www.landofthefirst.com). I also used pov-ray to create the book cover
> art.
>
> I would be really interested to know what other pov-ray users thought of my
> efforts.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Simon J. Cambridge
>
> PS. How do you create actual links on a message here?

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