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.


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.
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   :)


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

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