Reflected Light.

[djmj]

The purpose was to create something from simplicity. And for the people who can read Swedish, will understand the blues within this simple scene.

Cheers
Johan Sae-Thao

[*Pete*]

heh...yeah, depressive letters.
In norway they are yellow at the bottom half and we actually envy the swedish system as it never gets as "depressive" as it can become over here.

nice image.

[Cougar12dk]

I read a little bit of the letter, but the letters are really hard to read in that light and from that angle :) Oh you meant on the cigarette box? :) We have several different texts like that on the boxes here in Denmark. I don't think they're graphic enough. "Smoking can cause lung cancer"... hell every smoker out there will think: "Yeah......not me" and "smoking damages your the people around you", has the smokers saying: "Well, go somewhere else then".

I very much like the image though :)

[evenflcw]

Nice

But what is that in the glas? Water? Vodka? If it's hard liquor, a lesser amount and some icecubes might help break the ambiguity. Switching to a colored beverage like whisky/scotch might help aswell, but I guess it's abit of a cliché in cg by now. Or just show the bottom half of the bottle in the upper portion of the image. The surface properties look good for liquid but the jittery surface just looks weird. If you want more stuff happening, maybe stick icecubes, an umbrella or something else in there. :)

What's the location? The projection from the colored glas and the hard wood table almost suggests a cathedral or something...?

[djmj]

Yeah the window is from a cathedral.

BTW it´s whiskey in the glass. I like smooth whiskey, Lord Calvert umm, So the coloration is close enough if there is some water inside as well. I tend to fill up my glass so I dont have to go every five minute for more :)

Cheers
Johan Sae-Thao

[Steamthrower]

So what does the letter say, to those of us who aren't Swedish?

[Cougar12dk]

Something about someone's debt and how he can repay it. It's a letter from a company that claims people's debt for businesses, when people aren't paying their bills etc.

[Joe Battle]

What I like about this render is that while showing virtuosity of technique it also tells a story. You use your understanding of your tools to convey your theme. Your technique is exceptional, yet also the observations made about it are actuate and might help you to improve.
Imho it is great to see an image which causes us to think about not only how it is made, but also to reflect on what it is saying.
In this regard critique may touch on both on mastery of your toolset and also how successful that mastery has been to convey your theme idea.

[djmj]

Thanks for the crit Joe. Solid and analytic. :)

Cheers
Johan Sae-Thao

[4dartist]

I think it could use a little bit of cigarette particles laying around. Like when you pull a cigarette out of a pack there are always loose flakes of tobacco that kinda fall out, or maybe he ashed and missed and left a little ash particles clinging to things.. My point is your scene comes off extremely clean. It would be nice to see this scene look more dirtied up like real life. I never have a surface that clean in my life.. well.. not usually anyways hehe.

Also ash on top of the letter could show that maybe he was looking at it for a long while and was smoking over it. *shrug*

The cigarette box texture is very good.

:)

[djmj]

4dartist. Sounds like a good idea, I made this simple scene only as a small test scene for radiosity, caustic and glass etc.

I´ve been a max user trying to find something else. I know my knowhows in Maya, XSI and Modo to. The workflow and UI in Lightwave is outstanding. But very differant from 3dsmax.

My biggest problem in LW has always been how to make a nice render/mtrl setup. The new shader nodes are great though...

As a big fan of radiosity, (I love Lightscape) I really wanted to learn how to render in LW. Sometimes everything works out great, and sometimes not. I think the biggest problem I had was how the diffuse channel affect the overall shading of a material. The diffuse in 3dsmax are same as the color channel in Maya. The diffuse in LW is almost like the roughness of a surface.

I do a lot of architectural renderings and tried to find good mtrl presets on the net, no luck though. There is no tuts either. I meen photorealistic render tuts of various mtrl and light setups using lightwave. There is so mutch to learn...

I still dont understand how the FG sometimes work slower then MC. Montecarlo is a true raycaster for GI, and should always be slower then FG. If I have heavier scenes, usually MC is faster. strange....

Anyway. My conclusion is. I know 3dsmax ins and outs, but it´s a very boring software. When I use lightwave, everything is mutch more fun, dont know why.

There is many usefull features missing in LW, and full of bad default presets. But I feel LW boosting my artistic creativity. Iam happy everytime I get to use LW. Doesnt matter if I work faster in 3dsmax.

And I seen so many wounderfull architectural renderings using LW internal radiosity engine. I wanna be one of thoose guys.......
Hmm radiosity. Makes color bleeding look so smooth.

Doing architectural renderings right now btw.

Cheers
Johan Sae-Thao