I'm sorry for being gone so long, and I really appreciate all of your efforts. I had managed to squeak by with the renderings I had, so I just gave up trying to get better, consistent results. I've now been asked to revisit this project and spice it up. I understand and agree with most of what you guys are saying, just a couple points I don't get. I still don't understand about the colors, we seem to be saying the same thing, but meaning different things somehow - maybe I'm just doing it wrong, idk. I have no idea how to tell if a face is reversed; I saw that somewhere in a forum, and started trying to reverse faces to see if it helped me, but couldn't see any difference, now I don't know what WAS reversed, what I reversed myself, or even how to tell the difference btw reversed and normal. I know that I am woefully under-trained to undertake such an ambitious task, but I've watched TONS of tutorials on everything out there, and I'm usually a quick study. I've done mechanical drawing and cadd, but I stumbled upon SU when looking for a free cadd program, so the whole world of modeling/rendering is new to me as of the start of this project. I've been an amateur photographer, so I have a $400 camera, but I've never taken a class. I have a basic understanding of lighting and scene composition, but there's no alpha channel and z-depth in real life (as far as I know), so many of the settings make no sense to me. I've dl'ed spherical bg's and still could not get good lighting on my building. I have a colored sky bc that was advice from one of the posts I read. ask a million ppl ,and you will get a million answers, and that is why I'm back here to ask you guys, rather than starting down a new rabbit-trail.
I can't copy the skipjack settings, bc I'm not trying to render a toy in a showroom, I'm trying to render a building in the sunlight. I want it to look like a bldg with sun pouring in, not a home-shopping-channel offering, but my point is, these images look REAL, not some cheesy cartoon version (which is all I can seem to produce). How can I make my scene look REAL? Where can I look for training? What settings do I need to focus on and learn? I'm not asking anyone to do the work for me, but please point me to the training I need, based on the mistakes I'm making. I'll research "reversed faces", and see what answers I can glean, but as far as; 1) setting lighting/alpha/z-depth and whatever I need to render an outdoor scene with lots of sunlight, reflective metals and transparency, 2) setting up a similar scene, but looking out from an indoor area that is essentially an outdoor area bc of all the windows and open roof.
Of all the lexicon of knowledge on the subject, I have to imagine that this is at most a couple chapters in the book of rendering, am I wrong? Is it so hard to learn how to make one kind of scene? I don't need to prepare to create any imaginable situation, and choose the right tool, just one kind of scene will get me thru this (at one point, I wanted to put the bldg in rain, snow and sun - day and night. I've given up on this dream). Searching on my own has led to many differing opinions, which pull me in opposite directions
Direct response to posts(in order since my last post):
I haven't read the manual, but I will start thu it today, I just dl'ed the 55 page pdf.
If I'm saying I have an aliminum surface, and I change the template to copper, yet there is no color change in SU, how is that realistic and desired? a grey/silver color does not indicate the copper color, so why would i NOT want the template to change the color when appropriate? If it just CAN'T, then fine, but you're telling me this is desired, and I don't understand why. I understand there are reflective colors, but a metal DOES have a base color, gold and silver are not just meatal with reflections, but colors on crayons, as well. they are very different from each other, so how can you say only the reflective layers matter?
I understand that the lighting may not be ideal, but a quarter in a dull environment will not suddenly look like a piece of green cloth. Even without anything in frame to reflect, a metal can still look metal. I know I'm horrible at this, but isn't there some base-line for reality? How is it that there are just hard edges leading into new colors on one face? No softening or blending, shading? Just switch from brown to green on a dime bc my lighting environment is not bright enough? Seems unrealistic to me, but I'm willing to learn if you can explain briefly why this is.
Your pics of metals were very nice, but proved both of our points, imo. Yes, the most impressive images were where the metal was reflecting something, and I would love that effect, but even where there was nothing reflecting, all those materials looked like metal, not some abstract picasso painting. Look at the 1st image, where the silver or gold have either no light, and just look like their plain colors, or where only light is reflected (my scene may not have been extremely bright, but there was light, I've seen metals reflect, even on an overcast day or with minimal indoor light); Pic 3 showed similar qualities on the knife blades, whitch only had a modest amount of light to reflect; Images 5 and 6 had many spots where the texture of the gold or silver were quite dramatially representing the metallic qualities without reflecting anything of note, just light and shadow. I had problems with hdr bg's, natural sun, all of them. the reason I had that grey bg, as i clearly stated in the post with the pictures, was to try to remedy the problem of contantly having a blue hue in the copper reflection, so it didn't even look copper. gold will look like gold, even in green light or purple light, I see no reason why my copper was always blue just bc the sky was blue, but I followed a post on this forum to try to fix that problem, and THAT'S why my lighting was so dull. I've tried everything from car showroom hdr's with fluorescent lighting to sunny fields of bright sun, to adjusting every aspect of the internal sun and daytime settings, but nothing worked right.
I understand that this takes practice, but when I can produce decent results like:
, and
, and
, but can't duplicate the success upon further attempts, even after hours and hours of practice and forum reading, I'm looking for a more focused area of study to just finish things off. Ikea would be nice, but I'd expect at least ready-to-assemble, with coherent directions. If I gotta chop down my own tree to build a birdhouse, then I don't see the benefit.
As I said, this was my first model, so I'll try to get help over there on how to get the model right, but I've had as much success there as I have here. I've dl'ed thom-thom's model checker tools, begged the forums there for help just as I have here, and tried to find/fix every irregularity, but every problem I tediously manage to solve seems to uncover a whole new LAYER of issues, somehow.
Actually, I have the engine and the materials, as the materials come mostly from twilight, right? I've got good materials, I can't vouch for the integrity of my model, but that leaves lighting. Seems like one issue should be pretty easy to fix, right? How to light one type of scene, so that I can make renders from a few different viewpoints within that scene. Can someone please help me with that? Just tell me what I need to do, and I'll do it. Meanwhile, I'll see what I can do to improve the model, and I'll read the <gasp> whole user's manual.
Thanks for putting up with me. If my exes' opinions count at all, then I can be a tough guy to work with, so sorry