OTOY Forums

Starting to come along...sorta.
I still need to work on the materials and textures.
I'm still working on adding objects to the scene and building up a realistic layout.
All rendered in direct-lighting.

you see, is a pleasure to watch without watermarks)

When rendering with direct light it is a good idea to increase the AO distance to a very large range, this pushes the ao look away and you get closer to a GI look, this works for interior stuff as well.

If you need more explaination, do tell.

You can render out an AO pass with a relativly small distance and comp that in to refine small selfshadow items in addition.

To Elvis...Yehhh...i decided to take everyones advice on the watermark. Does look a hell of a lot better.
And to GK, thanks for the tip. I haven't really understood a lot of the options available and so haven't implemented them.
I'll try your tip right now. Again, much appreciated.

Any tips on determining just how much to raise/lower the AO? Any simple rules of thumb for it?
Also, last time I was told that I need to perform renders with interesting shot placement. Do these photo's have an interesting angle?
How could I improve the "shots"?

If by shot placement you mean scene compostion, then I would recommend that you check out the art section in one of the larger bookstores. I have been searching for information like this myself and found some books that are helping me a lot.

As strange as it may seem, the books that have the best information have been books on oil painting, and of course drawing fundamentals. There are also entire books on composition as well. In my opinion these books are much better than the college texts I have. The texts cover a lot of technical background and scientific theory, but these newer books are getting to the heart of the matter.

I hesitate to recommend a particular title, though I will if you want me too, because I think that can often be a personal preference. Also being given pointers on a particular shot is great, but it may not actually leave you with an understanding of why you would want to do a certain thing.

I have signed up for the borders rewards program which sends out emails with 33 to 40 percent discounts on a regular basis.

JoryRFerrell wrote:Any tips on determining just how much to raise/lower the AO? Any simple rules of thumb for it?
Also, last time I was told that I need to perform renders with interesting shot placement. Do these photo's have an interesting angle?
How could I improve the "shots"?

It all depends on what you want to focus in your shot, if it is to cover the entire room then you need to take a shot with a certain camera fov, let's say 35mm or 28mm the very best but not too low than that, usually it brings back that perspective feelings and you can try to tilt the camera too (see my last post), again if it is details or an object in the room that you need to focus on then diverse rules can apply, again it is very personal and being a good photographer it's not something that you learn easy or quickly, just browse around and see what sort of shots other users got to, I'm sure you'll get the idea.