Marc-Hendrik Bremer <Mar### [at] t-onlinede> wrote:

> [-- text/plain, encoding 7bit, 18 lines --]


> Christoph Hormann schrieb in Nachricht <3A9AA9E6.A6CCBDED@gmx.de>...

>>
>>A sample picture without the additional light sources might help.


> OK, here is a tiny picture without the extra light (and aa). I hope it's
> enough to see what's going on. It is much better than I remembered, but I
> changed some things since I tried it the last time without that additional
> light. And the shadows are still of constant brightness.

The shadows on the well look much better, though.  They're not so dark that
you can't make out details.  I like this a lot more than the previous shot. 
It's got a lot more realism.

> I still have to try your other suggestions. I'll also try to replace
> background {rgb <0.4,0.4,0.6>} with a big sphere with ambient 0.5 or
> something like that.

Actually, the background color does affect radiosity (take a look at my Door
into Summer pics recently posted.  The wall on the Summer side are blue,
despite the light being yellowish because of the sky) so I don't know that
that's necessary.

My one complaint, and this goes for many radiosity pics (including mine), is
that it looks a little plastic.  Adding appropriate finishes will probably
fix that, though.

Geoff

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I love what you've done, but I think it looks a bit dead, sort of like a
ghost town or something. It needs more signs of life here and there. It
isn't necessary to add human figures, but just things that show signs of
habitation. The bucket does this to an extent, but it needs more. Tools
wagons, plants, clay jars, anything.

It is still very good though, those are really great wood textures, I love
the fibonacci stones. Keep up the great work.

--
Dan D.

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ddombrow <ddo### [at] vtedu> wrote:

> I love what you've done, but I think it looks a bit dead, sort of like a
> ghost town or something. It needs more signs of life here and there. It
> isn't necessary to add human figures, but just things that show signs of
> habitation. The bucket does this to an extent, but it needs more. Tools
> wagons, plants, clay jars, anything.

> It is still very good though, those are really great wood textures, I love
> the fibonacci stones. Keep up the great work.

Hmm, depending on where you want to go, a couple of sprouts of grass in some
of the corners of the stone, might do nice things.  Then again, they might
add to the ghost town effect.

Geoff

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ddombrow schrieb in Nachricht <3a9bf161@news.povray.org>...
>I love what you've done, but I think it looks a bit dead, sort of like a
>ghost town or something.

You are right.

>It needs more signs of life here and there. It
>isn't necessary to add human figures, but just things that show signs of
>habitation. The bucket does this to an extent, but it needs more. Tools
>wagons, plants, clay jars, anything.
>

I'll see what I can do, I'm just working on a cart. I'm thinking about some
more things, but don't know which I'll do.

>It is still very good though, those are really great wood textures, I love
>the fibonacci stones.

The wood is just T_Wood8 - well not "just" it's first used as a
pigment-function for the iso. The fibonacci stones are superellipsoid-isos
(x^4+y^4+z^4-r^4) with a bit of noise3d and one of 20 pigments.


>Keep up the great work.

I'll try ...

Marc-Hendrik

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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.

Nice work.

- 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)

- 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 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." 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.

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.

Again, your image is beautiful! Keep up the good work!
D.J.

"Marc-Hendrik Bremer" <Mar### [at] t-onlinede> wrote in message
news:3a997860@news.povray.org...
> Hi!
>
> I've been working on this scene for a while now, and I would like to know,
> what you think about it.
>
> Thanks go to Alf Peak for the fibonacci-pattern code, which I used in a
> modified way. Seems like some thinks are remembered at the same time from
> different people, as it was already part of the scene when Yooper posted
his
> nice Fib beads.
>
> The scene took some 3 hours at 640x480 aa 0.3 with radiosity.
>
> Marc-Hendrik
>
>
>

Post a reply to this message

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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"Marc-Hendrik Bremer" <Mar### [at] t-onlinede> wrote in message
news:3a9e4625@news.povray.org...
>
> 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?

It's an RPG for the PC and PlayStation2. Pretty cool, but sometimes it seems
to drag out. But it was good enough to waste several days of my time. ;)

>
> >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.

It's kind of like the question, "If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is
around to hear it, does it make a sound?" When you're not looking at
something, what does it look like? When people look at something, they
generally only look at one small detail. Try looking at one word in this
message, and then trying to read a word three words to the left or right
with your prehipheral - there are few, if any, people that can do this. Too
much detail in an image is unnatural for people. Ever notice that when you
take a 3D game like Quake from an annoyingly low resolution like 320x200 to
a really high resolution like 1280x1024 (and assuming the framerates are the
same), the low resolution oddly looks more "realistic?" The higher
resolution image contains too much information, enough that the mind doesn't
have to make up details and "sees" the mistakes. When someone's mind has to
make up details to fill in the gaps, it accepts those made-up details as
real, and hence, they look real.

Focal blur occurs in human vision, except that the eyes adjust so quickly
that most of the time you don't notice. If you hold your fingers across your
vision up close, then "see" the computer screen through them while still
focusing on the fingers, the screen will be blurry. This test can be taken
to virtuall any "human" scale. This is hard to compensate for with your
goals in mind, as you're trying to convey a wholistic sense of your world.
Maybe create a series of images showing the microcosms of your world, and
large, encompassing images to give a sense of place.

>
> >- 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?

I would have to say clarity. Even very good radiosity solutions still have
artifacts. In your image, with all the details, they are not apparent,
though.

>
> >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.

Yeah, that's a little bit ambiguous. Maybe I should have said, "It has to
have some focul blur due to the -viewing- angle." In Pov-mode I think in
terms of "cameras" instead of "views." Too much context switching, I guess.
:)

>
> >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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D.J. Brown schrieb in Nachricht <3a9f0743@news.povray.org>...

>Focal blur occurs in human vision, except that the eyes adjust so quickly
>that most of the time you don't notice. If you hold your fingers across
your
>vision up close, then "see" the computer screen through them while still
>focusing on the fingers, the screen will be blurry. This test can be taken
>to virtuall any "human" scale. This is hard to compensate for with your
>goals in mind, as you're trying to convey a wholistic sense of your world.
>Maybe create a series of images showing the microcosms of your world, and
>large, encompassing images to give a sense of place.
>


OK, now I get it. When I heard focal blur I thought of that overdone and
intentional kind photographers do some times to emphasise the focus on one
item. I think you are referring to a much more subtle one. Much more like a
kind of haze, which hinds part of the details in the depth.

Is there any (more or less) empirical data, which is the actual "angle of
sharpness" for the human eye? I know that the human eye can only differ
between points which are more than a 1/90th of a degree apart. Does anyone
know, which is the  angle which is seen sharp in say 1 meter distance (since
it most likely differs with the focal point of the eye lenses, doesn't it?)?

Alas, focal blur and media take that long in Pov (though the post process FB
of MegaPov may work), so I don't think I'll realise it in this scene.

Marc-Hendrik

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Okay, I'm a university student in Advertising Design, and have taken quite a
few art classes, so this is mostly from that perspective...  I think your
scene looks really cold.  If your main light source were just a little
dimmer, it would look almost moonlit.  I would say that you could improve
your image a lot by putting a slightly yellow tint on your main light
source, and make it a little brighter, so it looks more like sunlight.  The
other thing that I think is a little off is your cropping.  It looks a
little strange to me that you are so zoomed in on the well (although I can
see why you'd want to... it's very nice).  If you backed up the camera
enough so that you could see the whole well, and a little more of the
backgournd, it would improve things a lot.  Make sure to keep the well off
center in your image.  It will look nicer that way.  Keep up the good work.
Great use of normals.

Stephen Bell
http://students.oc.edu/stephen.bell/

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Stephen Bell schrieb in Nachricht <3aa015ec@news.povray.org>...
> I think your scene looks really cold.  If your main light source were just
a little
>dimmer, it would look almost moonlit.  I would say that you could improve
>your image a lot by putting a slightly yellow tint on your main light
>source, and make it a little brighter, so it looks more like sunlight.

The light_source is already a little yellow tinted (as you can see an the
granite well-stones on the left). I'll try to bump it up a bit and see,
what's coming out. I don't think that this scene can take more light,
though. What makes it look so cold are the colors of the ground stones and
the walls, in addition to the radiosity tint from the blue background.
That's what makes it "moonlit", too, I think. I'll probably not change that,
because it's simply to much work and I have to admit that I realy want to
get to an end with one.

>The other thing that I think is a little off is your cropping.  It looks a
>little strange to me that you are so zoomed in on the well (although I can
>see why you'd want to... it's very nice).  If you backed up the camera
>enough so that you could see the whole well, and a little more of the
>backgournd, it would improve things a lot.  Make sure to keep the well off
>center in your image.  It will look nicer that way.  Keep up the good work.


It's not that easy :-) There is not much more of the surrounding buildings
as you can see. Well that's no excuse of course, but as I said I'm a bit
tired of this one. In addition I can't extend the ground tiling anymore
because my system can't take more of these isosurfaces. I could reorganize
the code to take predeclared stones, but I don't know if it would help.
Technical stuff and lazyness - that's always in my way.
But you are probably right, that it would look nicer. I've also thought
about another aspect ratio, too. In my opinion it would take another
"eye-catcher"at the well, perhaps a dandelion at the base or something.
Perhaps I'll try one day ... I'll definiately bear it in mind for future
scenes.

>Great use of normals.

Normals? Well there are not many normal-statements in that scene - most of
it are isosurfaces, to which I am addicted, I have to confess.

Thanks for your suggestions,

Marc-Hendrik

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