D.J. Brown schrieb in Nachricht <3a9dbbc5$1@news.povray.org>...
>Have you ever played the game Summoner? When I saw this I thought for sure
>you were recreating the inner city. The similarities are startling. Same
>building style, same colors, same brick and stone patterns, same kind of
>wells, everything.
>

No, never - but if it looks like this image it might be worth trying. What
type of game is it?

>Nice work.
>

Thanks!

>- One of the problems is the distance from the camera to the well and the
>level of perspective on the well. If the camera were far away, the well
>would almost appear two-dimensional and it would be acceptable to not have
>any focal blur. With the camera this close, though, one would not expect
>everything to be in focus. Think of the difference between using a zoom
>lense on a camera and just standing really close with a wide angle lense.
>This image shares properties of both and the mind's eye doesn't like
>that.(more on photograph stuff later, though)
>

Well, it is not suposed to look like a photograph :-) In the fantasy world
this is made for, there are no cameras yet, so one should go and see for
oneself.
OTOH you are right, that it does not look as a "first-person" view either,
but I don't think that's a matter of focal blur, since I don't see things
blured some 20 or 30 meters away.

>- Radiosity if FAR overrated. Only use radiosity when you need an accurate
>rendering, not when you want the image to look real. Two of the most
>overlooked features for lights are the falloff and the falloff curve. These
>create beautifully smooth radiosity-like affects. If you make several point
>lights like this that don't cast shadows, and place them at choice
>locations, you can create a fast, realistic looking, global illumination
>solution.
>

In the posted pic, radiosity is probably not needed, since I used an extra
light. I droped that one now and use just one light_source and radiosity.
Perhaps I could achieve better results with more light_sources and using
falloff. But why should I try to position extra lights, if I can just use
radiosity? Rendertimes are not that bad (about an hour for the scene without
aa - 3 with aa). Are there any other disadvantages in radiosity?

>In my opinion, people associate "realism" with looking like a photograph.
>But photographs don't really look too real. The contrast is compressed and
>then separated far too much and the perspective is usually distorted.
People
>are just used to using photographs as a basis for comparison and accepting
>anything similar as "realistic."

You are right. If you have a look what photographs and the film-industrie do
to have there products look good and real, it is clear that what you see
there is not what you would see with your own eyes.

>If you want a more accurate way to gauge
>realism, pretend you are looking at your image through a mirror, or
actually
>look at it through a mirror. Mirrors are much better at portraying realism
>than photographs. Your mind's eye will see the problems much more quickly
>than just looking directly at what it expects to be a photograph.
>

I'll have to try that, but I don't think I can convince my mind that the
rendered image is real even if I use another medium (mirror) to look at it.
But I get your point here and I'll try.

But I don't get, what you want to tell me with these two points together. On
the one hand, you say "It has to have some focal blur due to the camera
angle", on the other hand yo say "make it more like you would see it in
nature". Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate that you tell me your
thoughts - I just don't get it here.

>So I guess what I'm saying is that your technical work is very high-class,
>but I would wager that you're not looking at the image as a peice of art as
>much as you are a modelling exercise. I don't mean to sound harsh, I'm just
>trying to make you take a different perspective on the image to help fill
in
>the artistic gaps.

Thanks a lot. I have to admit, though, that I'm not looking at it as a
modeling exercise either :-) It's my 5th serious scene IIRC, so a lot of
what's coming out is just luck or hard work with hundreds of testrenders. I
still see myself as a newuser - many things I never used or even read about
and everything still takes to long.

Is it art? Don't know. I tend to think that art is everythink someone looks
at as art. I made it to fit a special purpose (illustrate my  realm in a
game, i'm playing), so I tend to think about it as "Gebrauchskunst" as we
say here. Something which is nice in a way, but it's not rare and it does
not want to deliver a message (or only very simple ones). My scenes do not
tell stories, which is a point I want to work on one day.

>
>Again, your image is beautiful! Keep up the good work!


Thank you for your comments. They were really helpful for me.

Marc-Hendrik

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