Starship Bridge WIP

[The Great Raja]

here's the simple question. How can I make this
http://www.firedragon.com/~lwg3d/pix/2003/05/30-355960_tn.jpg (http://www.firedragon.com/~lwg3d/pix/2003/05/30-355960.jpg)
look Better?

Any Ideas

[cathuria]

No complaints about the modeling; the weakness is mostly in the surfacing and lighting.

The surfaces are, generally, too simple and too few. The bulkheads all have a uniform finish and smoothness and everything seems the same color. I would suggest adding some extra layers to break up the uniformity of the color, and adding a little non-essential geometry or just select lines of poly's to apply a slightly different shade of the same surface to -- giving the impression of "trim" or just a different metal along those lines.

The lighting here flattens out your scene, and there are some odd foibles. For instance, the supports for the consoles on the rear seats (1st officer & counsellor?) seem to have luminous panels on the front and yet they are casting shadows. Go for broke -- use the "practical" lighting on the set and do a radiosity shot. Alternately, you could duplicate all the lit panels with area lights and see how that looks (although it might take just as long).

Anyhow, those are my impressions -- as always, some may be applicable, some not. On the whole, a very nice bridge set -- I was just nit-picking.

[starbase1]

I agree with Cathuria, the geometry seems sound, but the lighting and texuring needs more subtlety in a big way.

If you want one specific thing to target, the flat lemon yellow ceiling lights really need some subtle variation.

Go for something more like the marbled dome thingy stuck to the ceiling - spreading that subtley surfaced, unsaturated colur approach could work wonders.

And please show us the nxt stage!

Nick

[oxyg3n]

I would work more on the lighting, the bridge is never that dark. It is usually pretty bright unless they are in REd Alert.

[mrxd]

I think the modelling is great. I can almost see Spock's nostrils flare as he catches a whiff of fribble urine on the sensor screen. The lighting and textures need help.

The textures seem to be procedural and somewhat dull and blend into one another.

The dome in the ceiling is awesome. The ceiling lights don't appear to be lighting the bridge. Many of the lights (under the chairs) seem to have luminosity but don't seem to project any surrounding light.

[The Great Raja]

http://www.firedragon.com/~lwg3d/pix/2003/06/02-539208_tn.jpg (http://www.firedragon.com/~lwg3d/pix/2003/06/02-539208.jpg)

Better?

[oxyg3n]

The lighting is much better now. IMHO, I think that now you should change the color of the luminous panels so they do not have that yellow tint to them, they should be white.

Also, there are a couple of seams that you can see in the floor right in front of the captains chair.

And finally I would work more of the textures. Your bridge seems to dull and monotonous. Almost like the dull color scheme you would see on a Klingon ship. Maybe try adding some bluish tones to the metal and make the color on the chairs more contrasting with that of the surroundings. I think the image looks to grey.

Keep up the work.

[cathuria]

Much better -- although I still agree that the surfaces need more variety.

The lighting is a big improvement, but it doesn't stand up to close inspection. In particular, the lighting panels on the seats & consoles do not appear to be providing illumination, but are just projecting lit spots onto the floor -- which looks a tad odd.

Pretty please, I'd love to see how it looks with these settings: Turn off all your lights, set ambient to 4 to 6%, make sure all your illumination panels are indeed luminous surfaces, then use radiosity: interpolated at 0.2 tolerance with motion blur on.
If the rendering time on that is tolerable, kick the tolerance up a notch (0.15 or better, or increase rays if you're still seeing splotchiness) and set 2 bounces. Your best results would be with Monte Carlo radiosity (& no motion blur), of course, but the rendering time may be prohibitive.

[starbase1]

Got to agree with the other guys - coming along fast, major improvments noted, but more tweaks needed to perfect it.

I'd suggest just toning down the yellow in the ceiling lights a lot, rather than 100% white.

Also agree about more variation in tone - how about a slightly different colour for the seats? They look very similar to the walls - perhaps a blacker tone, and maybe a subtly different shade for the floor?

Nick

[oxyg3n]

cathuria


What would motion blur do to the radiosity? He doesnt have anything moving so this seems a bit odd to me.

[mrxd]

I think it would be cool to try Cathuria's suggestion. Just make sure that all of your panels have a high luminosity value. I'd really like to see it if you give it a try.

[cathuria]

oxyg3n: the motion blur is to smooth out the uneven illumination from the high-tolerance interpolated radiosity. I find it gives less blurry results than Shading Noise Reduction. It's a cheat to get radiosity in less time -- for many scenes, it looks pretty good.

[oxyg3n]

Thanks for the tip Ill have to try it out!

[The Great Raja]

http://www.firedragon.com/~lwg3d/pix/2003/06/06-928650_tn.jpg (http://www.firedragon.com/~lwg3d/pix/2003/06/06-928650.jpg)

Lighting By PeterPro of CgTalk

[starbase1]

Big improvements! Thanks for posting.

Nick

[cathuria]

Very nice -- I like this a lot better than the previous two. There's much less "CG" look and more apparent depth.

[mrxd]

very cool.