FROM THE COMMUNITY COLLECTION
12 Noon by the Pool revised
Sorry to drag you all into this scene again. As complex as the scene is, it is a super fast 10 hour render, so I have the benefit of rendering it lots of times if needed. This is the last version. The original had secondaries set too low, in this version their intensities are doubled at least. The cottages look much better, no doubt. The sky blue color of the secondaries and the red color of the sun are not obvious because they are low saturation colors, but still colored. No white lights! The sun is set very very high at 85degrees, about as high as the sun ever really goes in nature except on the longest day of the summer when the sun might actually reach 90degrees for a full minute. The vegetation with it's transparency responds alot to the secondary lights. It gives them very even light, almost too even for my tasetes which I guess is what kept me from raising their intensities earlier. The vegetation is probably more lifelike than I can admit just because it looks different than I'm used to. Feedback please.
Comments 8
A conversation around the artworkSign in to join the conversation.
Well, Rashad, I still think that the first (original) version was the best of all entries. I kept following all of them until now and decided to share a word too. You've put so much effort to get this scene real. And they all look real. As "real" as Bryce can handle this job. I feel this final image too much like lit by a spot-light projector. I see the "12 Noon" in the title but still feels too bright all of the environment. In the original version the special leaves respond more naturally to the lighting applied then here. I miss my soft shadows, the beautiful clouds of yours. There's something about the yellow-ish light in the first Afternoon by the Pool which made all of the materials used to look "baked" by a real sun, as if the light keeps bouncing... As I said before - I wish you to upgrade as soon as possible, because the ibl could really be an answer. And what about the postwork David is suggesting? :)
hmm Brilliant! The only issue would be figuring out the lighting intensity and direction, but as I have faked .hdr's before I can try it again. Due to the spherical nature of the probe it is difficult to get the light to come from this high of an angle. It would likely come in at around 45 degrees, more afternoon than noon, but hey, it's ibl and yes, I think it will work. I already have a faked beach probe lighting arrangement. The lighting is simple in that particular .hdr compared to other's with so many intense spots faking it would be impossible. I will look into it. Thanks for the great suggestion!
Maybe some postwork is the answer, replace the water in IBL with a sheet of black and then patch in the water from your previous render to get the best of both worlds?
angle Yes David, that too is a thought that occurred to me. Perhaps during the summer solstice the sun gets above 80 or so, but only briefly. I could have set the sun at 75degress, it would be much more flattering for the models, and still have named it 12 noon. What this scene wants is ibl. There are really only 2 secondary lights so if they were to cast shadows they would be seriously obvious and odd, so they don't cast shadows. ibl would give me the benefit of lots of lights and their shadowsm "fixing" the lighting. But what can one do when the scene is so full of transparent water. The specularity is a big part of the effect of this water and it would be lost with most hdrs
transparency The Primary sun is very high up and intensly bright. Alone it does not cause any issues and the foliage handles it well because it casts shadows. The secondary lights on the other hand, are at the horizon level and do not cast shadows and are a touch bright themselves. This lack of shadows prevents the transparency from being able to do it's magic, and yes, in the final tally it looks a bit of ambient. I could have done away with the transparency in this version as the secondary lights are bright enough give the impression of the transparency on their own. In the taller trees the thicker branches shadows are helping to keep the transparency busy, but in some of the other smaller plants, the stems are too thin to cast any useful shadows within the plant. Also diffussion. The plants with the lowest diffussion values did best in this version, as there was more "headroom" for the added brightness before reaching burn out, as some of the leaves did here.
I'm still not convinced by this lighting angle, I know you will have worked hard and pondered long on the overall lighting balanced used and it's not easy to say how it could be "corrected" or even if it is indeed wrong in some way. I just don't feel it is working... maybe the sun position is just too unusual for me to judge it properly, I don't think where I am in the world the sun ever gets itself into this position so maybe this is how it really is and I've just never experianced it?
. The plants are starting to look like they have ambient chanel on. Too much transp.?
It is certainly better than the previous version. I still don't like it very much. I prefer the last version of the Afternoon by the pool, which is strikingly natural.