Just tinkering with photo-realism, wanted to see what people thought as to
what could be improved.

This image is NOT that exciting for content though :) I'm looking at the
light/camera settings for maximum realism.

This image uses focal blur of 0.3, an area light, and standard level 5
radiosity settings.

And this image took 6.5 hours for my P133 :(

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Attachments:
Download 'camtestf.jpg' (34 KB)

Preview of image 'camtestf.jpg'

For real realism, I suggest cylinders with bevelled/rounded edges. Some
scratches (ever so faint) would help too (that goes for all surfaces,
actually - especially the wood could use some roughening).
Even though it is quite possible to create totally polished and smooth
marble, stone and wood cylinders (with razor-sharp edges) and spheres in
reality, the illusion of photo-realism is much more believable if the
objects are *not* that perfect. Mind: They don't have to look weathered.
Just that little tiny touch of imperfection that is hardly visible to the
eye, but gets recognized subconciously.

Is the image supposed to be so dark? It looks a little bit washed-out into
the grey direction.
Also I don't get the bright globe at the top. I guess it is some kind of
lamp? Is it so blurry because of the focal blur or did you use media?

So long,
Johannes.





Charles Krause wrote in message <370f04f6.0@news.povray.org>...
>Just tinkering with photo-realism, wanted to see what people thought as to
>what could be improved.
>
>This image is NOT that exciting for content though :) I'm looking at the
>light/camera settings for maximum realism.
>
>This image uses focal blur of 0.3, an area light, and standard level 5
>radiosity settings.
>
>And this image took 6.5 hours for my P133 :(
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Post a reply to this message

>For real realism, I suggest cylinders with bevelled/rounded edges. Some
>scratches (ever so faint) would help too (that goes for all surfaces,
>actually - especially the wood could use some roughening).


Good idea. How do you model this however? Rounding/bevelling I can see, but
the scratches? Altering the texture somehow? I can see making the surface
normal vary according to some pattern ( large scale agate? ), but that's not
scatches.

>Even though it is quite possible to create totally polished and smooth
>marble, stone and wood cylinders (with razor-sharp edges) and spheres in
>reality, the illusion of photo-realism is much more believable if the
>objects are *not* that perfect. Mind: They don't have to look weathered.
>Just that little tiny touch of imperfection that is hardly visible to the
>eye, but gets recognized subconciously.


Hmm - I wasn't looking at the models at all in this image, just the
camera/lighting - but you have a good point, yes.

>
>Is the image supposed to be so dark? It looks a little bit washed-out into
>the grey direction.


It's not supposed to be so dark, no - but the wash out occurs with the focal
blur, and I've corrected it with resetting the assumed_gamma, which just
changes the color of the wash out I guess.

>Also I don't get the bright globe at the top. I guess it is some kind of
>lamp? Is it so blurry because of the focal blur or did you use media?
>


It's the light source, yes, an area light with a looks_like { sphere ..... }
statement. As for the blur, that is only due to the focal blur.

>So long,
>Johannes.
>


Thanks for your input :)

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Charles Krause wrote:
> 
> >For real realism, I suggest cylinders with bevelled/rounded edges. Some
> >scratches (ever so faint) would help too (that goes for all surfaces,
> >actually - especially the wood could use some roughening).
> 
> Good idea. How do you model this however? Rounding/bevelling I can see, but
> the scratches? Altering the texture somehow? I can see making the surface
> normal vary according to some pattern ( large scale agate? ), but that's not
> scatches.

A single scratch can be applied by using an image that is all white with
one or more black lines on it. Use this as a bump map in a normal statement.

-- 
Ken Tyler

mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net

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Charles Krause wrote in message <370f7806.0@news.povray.org>...
>
>Good idea. How do you model this however? Rounding/bevelling I can see, but
>the scratches? Altering the texture somehow? I can see making the surface
>normal vary according to some pattern ( large scale agate? ), but that's
not
>scatches.
>


In most cases, you have to use a slope_map to make both fine scratches and
grooves in a wood texture. For stone textures, I usually apply a slightly
turbulent crackle normal with very fine grooves.

Margus

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Camera settings are not where realism fails in most images, neither is
radiosity or lighting. I have followed almost every image posted here
and in the IRTC and the one thing that always bothers me is textures. If
you want to improve realism, consider spending time on getting the
phong/specular highlights, the diffuse and ambient settings right. For
example, in your image, you might consider playing around with the
settings to improve the depth shown by the shading, your spheres look
rather flat. This would probably be best remedied by decreasing the
ambient. Also consider increasing the brightness of the highlights in
your textures. Everything else falls into place naturally once you have
the textures looking right. What you have is an excellent start, keep up
the good work.

Charles Krause wrote:
> 
> Just tinkering with photo-realism, wanted to see what people thought as to
> what could be improved.
> 
> This image is NOT that exciting for content though :) I'm looking at the
> light/camera settings for maximum realism.
> 
> This image uses focal blur of 0.3, an area light, and standard level 5
> radiosity settings.
> 
> And this image took 6.5 hours for my P133 :(
> 
>  [Image]

-- 
Chris Maryan
mailto:cma### [at] geocitiescom
***
Will work for cash.
***
Email me if you are interested in donating
to the Chris Maryan needs money fund.
We will also accept donations to the Chris
needs a Pentium III or SGI workstation 
fund and the Chris needs a car fund.

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Hmmm - any better?

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Attachments:
Download 'camtestb.jpg' (11 KB)

Preview of image 'camtestb.jpg'

Slight improvement with the brightness. I think your diffuse and
brilliance might be too high, try the default settings of 0.6 and 1.0
respectively, as for ambient, I find the default of 0.1 to be
unrealistically low for typical situations, try 0.2-0.3. One of the
problems seems to be the contrast between the bright and dark parts of
the image, raising the ambient should fix this. In the example below, a
subtle highlight really helps the texture (after all, most wood surfaces
have some degree of polish), look at the specular and roughness
settings.

I fiddled around with something similar and came up with the attached
code. Sorry, jpg, just png, I all my conversion programs seem to be
crashing lately. Mine might be a little too dark. This is the code for
the wood (based on one of the textures in the Moray library, I added the
finish settings):

BTW: Anyone know why the background is patchy in the attached .png? It
seems to happen very often in my images.

#declare _auto_name_no_1_ = 
   texture  // txt_84
   {   
      pigment
      {
         wood
         color_map
         {
            [ 0.0     rgbft <1.0, 0.85, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0> ]
            [ 0.5     rgbft <0.9, 0.7, 0.46, 0.0, 0.0> ]
            [ 0.7     rgbft <0.9, 0.7, 0.46, 0.0, 0.0> ]
            [ 1.0     rgbft <1.0, 0.85, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0> ]
         }
         turbulence 0.02
         octaves 4
         lambda 3.0
         ramp_wave
         scale  0.175
         rotate    <2.0, 2.0, 0.0>
      }   
      finish
      {
         ambient 0.3066
         phong_size 0.0
         specular 0.155633
         roughness 0.014533
      }
   }
   texture  // txt_85
   {   
      pigment
      {
         wood
         color_map
         {
            [ 0.0     rgbft <1.0, 0.45, 0.1, 0.8, 0.0> ]
            [ 0.5     rgbft <0.85, 0.65, 0.4, 0.4, 0.0> ]
            [ 0.7     rgbft <0.85, 0.65, 0.4, 0.4, 0.0> ]
            [ 1.0     rgbft <1.0, 0.45, 0.1, 0.8, 0.0> ]
         }
         turbulence 0.02
         octaves 4
         lambda 2.8
         ramp_wave
         scale  <0.2, 0.2, 0.2>
         rotate    <2.0, 2.0, 0.0>
         translate    <0.0175, 0.0175, 0.0175>
      }
   }

-- 
Chris Maryan
mailto:cma### [at] geocitiescom
***
Will work for cash.
***
Email me if you are interested in donating
to the Chris Maryan needs money fund.
We will also accept donations to the Chris
needs a Pentium III or SGI workstation 
fund and the Chris needs a car fund.

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Attachments:
Download 'trial_1.png' (37 KB)

Preview of image 'trial_1.png'

Chris Maryan wrote:

> BTW: Anyone know why the background is patchy in the attached .png? It
> seems to happen very often in my images.

I have never seen that behaviour before in 4 years of using the program.
I also have not used the .png file output option and it might be related
to that. Another possibility is with all of the default setting that moray
has a tendancy to set for you. I use the standard pov defaults except
in very rare cases as they keep consistancy from scene to scene.

  I would like to try rendering your code and see if it manifests itself
on my system with tga output. If you provide the rest of the scene file
you used such as camera and lighting I will check to see if I can reproduce
it and will get back to you with the results. Also If you have moray created
ini file I would like to see what's in that as well.



-- 
Ken Tyler

mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net

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that's much better

Charles Krause wrote in message <370fb90e.0@news.povray.org>...
>Hmmm - any better?
>
>
>
>
>

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