Challenge: Francois Maree: South Africa

by **Paco_Morales** » 08 Jun 2006, 18:07

Looks nice everything

by **FMaree** » 09 Jun 2006, 00:52

Thanks for all the feedback guys. Yeah, I was thinking of giving the frame a bit of a rusty look to show the outdoor weathering.

I also finally managed to sort out the grass rendering problem. It does render now, and I even added some grass at the opposite side too. But the render times without any light setup shot up to 1 hour 47 minutes, so all test renders from now on are without grass.

Busy putting a couple of leaves on the ground then on to the light setup, and the final texture tweaks. I should have a test render up really soon.

by **FMaree** » 09 Jun 2006, 03:29

Ok. Test render is here. This is my modelling done. Next up is the texturing and lighting.

As usual, feedback is welcome.

by **ashras99** » 09 Jun 2006, 10:01

Like this everything is fine, you can try to change the camera angle and lower the camera for the dramatic feel.

But if the grass taking a lots of render time, then why dont you hide the grass and show textured one because that's give much better idea.

by **FMaree** » 09 Jun 2006, 11:50

Yeah the grass is fine, so i will temporarily disable them until the final render.

As for the camera angle I will play with that once everything else is done. Maybe I find a better POV.

Thanks for the feedback.

by **raulFabi** » 09 Jun 2006, 12:35

Nice modeling, cool work.
Can't await test renders.
Bye!

by **warpv** » 09 Jun 2006, 14:44

It's coming along great! Keep us updated!

by **the_joker** » 10 Jun 2006, 09:02

I love what ure doeing with ior scene and the fact that ure showing us its grey w.i.p.
But will it only be that bench and the rest nature????

by **FMaree** » 10 Jun 2006, 10:10

Yeah only the bench, the rest nature.

by **thhcreate** » 20 Jun 2006, 06:46

wow. i can't wait to see the 120 trees either.

pretty huge idea...

good luck

by **FMaree** » 20 Jun 2006, 16:25

Errrr yeah.... about those 120 trees, they had to get chopped. My render times went up tremendously. And to make things even more fun, my main PC's hard drive decided to leave this life and go into the afterlife. ;-)

So it was a scramble to get a replacement drive and reinstall Windows. I also lost about 3 days of work, but I got most of all that back now.

I realise that time is running very short now so it's full time working on the scene now. I took a couple of days leave from work to sort this out. Here are two renders. I'm not sure which one I like. The one with or without the bushes? What do you guys think? Oh yes, grass will be added in the final render.

I will be working on the lights now and check back later today to see what the verdict is before I start my final render.

Oh yes ashras, I just want to double check something with you. You said that the deadline for the competition is 21 June at midnight 12:00 GMT. Wouldn't that be 00:00 GMT? Because 12:00 GMT would be mid day. I am in Dublin so our times here are GMT and I just want to make 100% sure of the closing time of the entries.

by **ashras99** » 20 Jun 2006, 17:46

Yes you are right midnight 00:00, that's why i add midnight before 12:00 because some have problem with 00:00

by **warpv** » 20 Jun 2006, 19:32

Hey FMaree! Great to see you back! s#$@s about your hard drive though! Scene is starting to look great! I prefer the one with the bushes. Is there any way you could randomize the color of the leaves in each tree in the bg? I mean, each tree is one color of leaves, is there a way you could have a gradient of colors in each tree?! I think that would make them even more realistic, cause trees in autumn usually have different colors in them... Just a sugestion. I can't wait to see the final with the grass and all! Keep it up, only a few hours left now!

by **FMaree** » 20 Jun 2006, 20:07

ashras: Ok cool. So I got at leat another 24 hours left. *phew* Might be able to do some small tweaks like the randomizing of the leave colours like warpv said.

warpv: Yes you're right, the leaves do need a bit of randomization. I'm gonna do my light setup now (I'm aiming for a late afternoon dusk like setup). I also like the bushes in there now that I look more and more at it because it breaks up the bit where the ground end and the mountain start. You can barely see the mountain anyways.

Once I'm satisfied with that I will render out my final piece. If I still have time left I will do tweakings like the leaves etc. Otherwise I will post the final render of the one without the tweaks.

Didn't expect my hard drive to go belly up. At least now I had an excuse to throw it out and put a shiny new 400 Gb SATA in it's place.

So tonight will become an all-nighter for me and I see you guys on the flip side.

by **FMaree** » 21 Jun 2006, 20:27

Ok, I'm still busy rendering the final image with the final grass, but I don't think it's gonna make the deadline of midnight. So here goes second best. What I would have liked to improve in this one is the lighting, and depth of field. If I don't upload another image in the next 2 hours and 35 minutes, then this will be my final entry, and I will send the required image to ashras.

I will however be better prepared for the next contest (Love) and have a backup solution in place that backs up to a second PC, and I have setup a trial version of Max 8 on that one so for the next 30 days if something goes wrong I can fall back onto that one, maybe it's a bit slower but I won't lose 3 - 4 days of work.

Challenge: Francois Maree: South Africa

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