Too Much Food!

mium ! The steak is very butterized. lol Salut les colories ! Very impressive work congretulations !

From an artistic point of view, this is a rather astonishing work. Your modeling and texture work are handled quite effectively, giving the image real world look and feel while maintaining the nuances that let the viewer know it is indeed a computer generated scene. As I have always felt, if you wanted photo realism, you would have taken a photo. Let us marvel in the complexity of the image and not lose sight of the fact that this is truly a product of many hours of dedication on your part.

Ah - the table cloth - or whatever. Great idea of Richter. It could hide the shadow banding.

A lot's been said. Congratulations about the contest! With all these meals there sure isn't any doubt in winning. What I can add is that along with the future improvements you mentioned I'd only wish to have a nice table-cloth or some sort of hi-res texture cover beneath the dishes, to fill the grey space. Working under time-pressure may often leave you with some things unfinished, but it may also improve your strategy of choosing the best workflow within the time limits. I wish you many more won contests!

I was sure you've seen those details yourself, Rashad and thought you were either fed up with the scene or were under time pressure. You hit the nail on its head with your observation about a blurred HDRI for nice reflections isn't that good at lighting the scene. I've experimented with huge spheres with a LDRI version of the HDRI mapped on it and made it partly transparent for the real HDRI to shine through. I haven't found the final solution yet, but you might also want to experiment with this thought at a later time.

Hey, Rashad, congratulations with your victory! This is very good render! Yet some food have a bit plastical apearence, let think this is because of sauce used to cook it. I think You could make gapes a bit transparent to improve them. In general very good modeling, texturing, and, especialy, lightning (as usual)!

Thanks Anurin, bullit, and Horo! This piece was fun and very challenging. I agree, Horo this piece is not yet fully complete to the level I would have desired. I was runnning very close to the deadline so i submitted the piece as best I could produce it. Glad to know that you and I both realize this piece is not quite up to the level I would usually aspire toward. It is almost like appoaching light speed, there is a big difference in the energy required to reach different velocities between 90% and 91% even though they seem very similar conceptually. The finer details need alot of attention and would require alot of work. This piece has potential to be very realistic I think. A scene like this is a two edged sword. On the one hand, everyone knows exactly what food should look like, so scrutiny will be maximum. And yet because everyone knows what to look for, even if I fail to produce an effect fully and properly, the viewers will probably still understand what I was after, in a sense providing as viewers what I did not achieve in the actual piece. Viewers can take a hint then use their own experience to "fill in the blanks" and that is what this image demonstrates to me as I compile the various feedback from the various forums. The reflections and the light were major considerations. Wise observation, Horo. I wanted to have a really cool reflection pattern but I found that the hdris that give good reflections give poor light coverage, too many dark areas creating shadows I would then need to place numerous radials to remedy. Without a true light boucnce to take full advantage of the IBLlight and spread it to otherwise dark areas, these super high contrast hdri can actually cause problems from an illumination standpoint. I looked at David's scene too, and I found that he used the hdri as a reflection only, he lit the scene with other means. That makes sense. Assuming that some sort of surround lighting would be needed for a scene like this regardless of the reflections, I was afraid that a dome of radials might take longer than IBL if used as a lightsource. So I went in this case with the highly uniform IBL as light that gave me the best model coverage, even though it lacks the drama of the bright reflections. I need to look more at reflection mapping, a way to have well distributed light from an hdri and still have power in the reflections. The shrimp need to be deveined. The mushrooms need to be carmalized. The bread needs to appear soft like the slices are flexible to fold over one another and have weight and are not stiff. The baked potato needs a pat of butter melting in the seam. The steak and mushrooms needed some metaball sauce on them to help bridge the gap between the texture effects and the specular effects to avoid the plastic look. in fact I would say that sauses are lacking on almost all plates and sauces are key, this was because I ran out of time, not because I did not know any better. The fruit in the bowl and the flowers would have benefitted from some reflective water droplests so they look "fresh" in that way advertisers use water drops. Richter did this for his clematis render with amazing results. I probably should go back and work on this some more but for now I will move on to other projects. I will likely perfect the modeling and uv mapping for the food eventually and make said models available to everyone. Much thanks once again!

Congrats Rashad for winning the contest. I look at this render at a time when I cannot think of eating. Three hours from now it'll better. But this helps looking at it without being distracted from wanting to eat. You won the contest, there are issues nevertheless, which I wouldn't point out if this wasn't by you. But you're the reality guy. So here we go. Many things look very good, the strawberries and the wine are excellent, so are the tomatoes and the cucumber. And come to think of it, the peas and the apple as well. The steak and the mushrooms above it have to much specularity and look like plastic. The carrots also have ample specularity, the patato, too. The deserts look a bit wooden. The bread looks quite old and dry. Cuttlery and plates look very good. What would improve the impression of the overal lighting and reflection would be a specular convolved HDRI from a room (actually, a small diameter HDRI would serve as specular map here, too). Here is a good example to show what I mean: http://www.bryce5.com/details.php?image_id=2555 - from the light distribution we can infer that this is in a room and we would expect to see this room better represented through the blurry reflections on the plates, cutlery and glasses. Again, I couldn't have done such a nice render and I'm pointing out these things only to help you get still better.

I am really hungry and I wind up here.Amazing Rashad! The only thing I can see is the mushrooms need to be a little darker under the caps. Yes I am a shroon expert...Ha Ha

I can see why you won! I'm getting hungry just looking at this image! I have only two issues with it. One the sauce on the pasta dish in the back right corner looks off. Two, the texture on the bread seems a bit flat, maybe you should apply a bump map. Other than that this is amazing work! Good job!