Beginner's Dupe-A-Photo #01 - WIP Thread

[SandmanNinja]

Please post your questions, comments, and WIPs in here for this installment.

Thanks to Velvet Elvis, here are this week's selections.
There is no voting, simply pick one of the photos below that you feel comfortable working on, and show us your WIPs.

A Wire would be nice, as would a short sentence or two on how you did it, how you set it up, some techie details would be nice, too (render engine, fg, gi, textures used, etc).

We'll have at least 2 weeks, and up to 3 weeks to complete this round of photos. If you finish one and want to do another, feel free to do so.

If one photo strikes your fancy and you're not sure how to start it, please ask in here. There are an almost infinite number of ways to do the same exact thing in 3DS, so that means there is no right or wrong answer.

[VelvetElvis]

Starting with Photo-A. This is about an hour worth of work and as you can see there is still some work to be done. I really need to get more contrast out of the reflections on the copper spheres as well as line up my shadows. Once I get my textures dialed in, I'll post a higher res image. But for now, it's a start.

[SandmanNinja]

Looking great!

Yeah, I want to take a crack at that one myself. Looks like a great exercise in hdri reflections...


So, mental ray? v-ray? hdri? jpg thrown into the reflections channel?

[d4legend]

is it possible to create hdri images yourself or how do u get them

[VelvetElvis]

I guess I should mention I'm using Vray....

I happened to have a HDRI that was almost exactly like the reflection seen, where there is a guy taking a close up photo with the window of the room in the corner. For ease of control I applied the HDRI to a sphere, I checked visible to camera off but left visible to reflection/refraction on, around the scene. That way I can easily rotate the sphere to get the reflection exactly where I want it. The HDRI map on the sphere is self-illuminated and I'm controlling the overall intensity with the RGB Output control.

I took the same HDRI and am using it in the environment light for the scene, in this case a vray dome. It doesn't really add much, in fact I could probably get away with just a standard vray dome with a basic color instead of having to load the HDRI.

You can create HDRI images yourself, if you have a high quality camera. I won't go into the science of creating them, but you can google search it if you are interested. You can also find them off of the web, most good ones aren't free. However, there are a few sites that offer free HDRI's as a gimmick for you to buy thier other DVD's. There is one site that has great HDRI's and for whatever reason, I'm drawing a blank on it's name.

A third option is to create a "fake" HDRI from an existing photograph that was never intended to be an HDRI. It's a simple process and for reflections and even lighting works amazingly well. Here is the tutorial from Charley Carlat.

http://www.charleycarlat.com/Tests/FakeHDRI.jpg

[Jenks199]

Hi there. I’ve been meaning to get in on these challenges for a little while now. And I finally took the plunge on this one. So far i'm working on Photo c. As I’m sure you’ll agree lighting and texturing are two of the areas where I need to improve so hopefully in time by doing these challenges I can work on these. I’m having a little trouble getting the exact lighting for the scene and also the porcelain material for the sink is also eluding me. Any comments and crits are most welcome. I’ve included a render, wire and screen shot of the lighting (the area light shown in the ss is turned off).


Thanks

Jenks

[SandmanNinja]

wow... lots of participants and activity! That's very good to see. Welcome, David!

On my way out the door, but it looks good.

More comments later.

Thanks for the link and some background, Scott.

[VelvetElvis]

Jenks,

Modeling wise I think you are pretty much spot on. Lighting is close, with a few more adjustments to the photograph and I've think you got it. Lighting these is always tough, because it's a studio set-up to eliminate shadows and show the product.

I think your texturing is excellent, the only thing I would suggest is watch the edges of the top of the counter. You can see the wood grain stretch down the sides, almost as if your not using box mapping and using planar mapping. Maybe?

For the porcelain, what is your IOR? In the past I've used IOR's for porcelain anywhere from 6-12, even 18 once. So it's a super reflective material.

Other than those super-minor comments, I think you've duped a photo.

[d4legend]

gave this a quick go and this is what i came out with need softer shadows but was too busy to fix but did throw som water in there to add to it.thanks about hdri didnt understand them at all.

[TRex92]

Here's my go at photo-f have to work on the textures and lighting though