BC4-1810 Homework, Katerina Novakova

[Katerina Novakova]

@bun-bun Thank you. 🙂 I’ve been watching your thread and you are progressing with your render nicely. I especially enjoy the warm yellow light on the car, it really suits it. 

And as a side note, I have updated my car render to get rid of that pesky lighting artefact. The solution was to slightly increase the size of the reflection probe. But, as I was trying different things, I ended up baking the indirect light multiple times and I noticed that even when I don’t change anything in the scene, I get slightly different results in lighting. I guess the calculation still has its quirks…

[Katerina Novakova]

Week 2 – Act 2 (Lighting match)

I like to try several new things in every project, so this time I decided to have a look at procedural wood material (in the Shader forge) and lighting with textured lamps. I went for the shader course thinking that I had a decent understanding of the node editor and node wrangler. But holy cow, that course is packed with useful information! Three minutes in and my jaw was locked in a permanent gaping position. Changing coordinates by colour mixing? What kind of black magic is that? Can’t say I understood, or remembered, everything, but I can surely recommend the course.

One sad downside of using the wood material was that I couldn’t use Eevee for lighting. All I got was brown shiny… thing of a material. I still used 2.8 Cycles, though. I didn’t get as close to the target as I thought I could, partly because my mortars aren’t as visually interesting as the grinder, and partly because I ran out of ideas for what to try. So, here is what I’ve got.

The mortars I modelled myself, the goal image is from Pixabay.

EDIT: edited too many times…

[smurfmier1985]

@shiennar Lol, yeah that is kinda like black magic 😆 

I think they look very much alike, looks great! Good modeling too 😊

[John Sanderson]

@shiennar Good job!  The shader looks fantastic! As do the models.  Two notes on the lighting. The rim light doesn’t reach quite as far in yours, notice the cool highlights on the beans, and the shadows in the goal image are barey distinguishable.  There isn’t anything nearly so harsh as your foreground object’s shadow.

[Grady Pruitt]

Nice color on the car, Katerina. On the color match exercise, I think I agree with John.

[Katerina Novakova]

Thank you, @procyonlotor and @gradyp for your notes. I have played with the lights a bit more – the rim light now extends further, the shadows are slightly less harsh, and as a bonus, I was able to better show the procedural shadows on the table. I have updated the original post, but here is the comparison of both versions.

[smurfmier1985]

@shiennar oh wow much better! So cool that a couple of little tweaks of the lights can improve the look of a render so much. Awesome work this week Kate 😄

[Grady Pruitt]

Matching both? heheh 😀  I think this one is better, but the rim does seem a bit stronger in this one than in the original. and maybe just a bit more forward? 

Still, it looks great!

[Katerina Novakova]

@gradyp Yes, they are both matches. 🙂 The rim light is tricky here. If I want to extend it further, I either have to increase the intensity or make the lamp smaller. This will show up as stronger rim light on the areas that were already lit. I think the light you see on the beans is not actually the rim light, but an extra light thrown in for a good measure. But since my objects and materials are not directly comparable to the original, I don’t think I’ll be able to get a perfect match. (It’s difficult to say, but the top of the grinder might be metallic, in which case it will behave differently than wood when lit.)

[John Sanderson]

@shiennar Nice update!! I had a similar experience with the exercise, wondering whether certain effects were achieved with one light or multiple lights, and also having dissimilar geometry which made it tricky to know whether I had imitated the lighting accurately or not.  Either way, you came away with a beautiful render that has the same feel to it. Good work!  Edit: Also, upon closer inspection, the drawer and drawer handle in the source image are casting a pretty harsh shadow so I was wrong on that point.

[Katerina Novakova]

I distinctly remember that this was supposed to be a quick project since I need to work on other things as well. So, naturally, I made another version of this. The rim light was bothering me (mainly the fact that it was showing on both sides of the mortar). I’m going to update the original post once more, and as a bonus for your patience, I’m going to create a gif that shows the individual lights being added. I’ll put it in the gallery project once I finish writing this week’s blog post.

[silentheart00]

@shiennar Good work.

[Katerina Novakova]

Nah, I don’t want to feel like I’m click-baiting you to go to the gallery, so I’ll hide it here. Who would go to page three, right? 🙂

[Zsolt Cseh]

@shiennar Katerina especially likin g your lighting match exercise, there is so nice and warm atmosphere from the lighting, plus also the materials greatly support  it

[Kent Trammell]

@shiennar Once again, excellent work this week. You vehicle is notable as one of the most intentionally lit submissions. As you said, since you S&L’d the car during the June class, it seems you were freed to focus on lighting for mood and visual effect rather than simple realism. Good stuff.

And I really like your light match. Beyond being a close match, it’s interesting what you’ve uncovered about Eevee and Cycles node compatibility. It seems there’s still a lot of work to do before Eevee is truly compatible.

Lots of good work. An A in from me 👍

PS: THANK YOU for cutting week 2’s reel 🙇🏻‍♂️

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