Alien problem

[TerryG]

Hi guys, I wonder if anybody can give me any tips here? The glass ball the alien sits in is very dark and hard to see through. Fresnel is on in materials. I put a light in the ball which helps but still too dark. It works a little better when the background is switched on in the HDRI, but obviously I don't want him in a hotel lobby. Any ideas?

Also, does anyone know how to make the red and blue lights on the ship look like they're on? Thanks.

[Andreu]

Just one thought. Is the glass, let's say, real glass? Like does it have thickness? If not, it would be like putting the little fella inside a solid glass ball. That might explain the dark, deep shadows. As for the glow for the lights, try an emissive material and don't forget to use Radiosity. If this does not work, try pointing an individual point light at each lightbulb, unchecking shadows.

[podperson]

Make sure lights are set to raytrace + transparency.

[TerryG]

Thanks Andreu. Yes the thickness of the glass, silly mistake. So now he's in a wine glass which sorts out the warp problem and some of the shadows. Then I added a few more lights. And yes of course emissive materials for the shiny lights. Bingo! This render is not what I was looking for, but a happy accident. Podperson, tried raytrace + transparency, still looked the same, but thanks.

I've attached the original Alien that was done in Illustrator (the client liked it) just to show the power of Cheetah. There's no comparison really.

[alvordr]

Another cool render from Terry! Good job! One other thing you can do for glass is to change the transparency color. If it's already on white, then this won't help much, but I found that if you're using a transparency color, making it a lighter shade helps to make it more translucent (which makes sense).


Take a look at the shots here, concentrating on the wine. It's not a perfect render and something I'm working on, but you can see how changing the shade of wine color made it seem a bit more translucent.

Oh...and sorry to hear that you're having an alien problem...nothing a little Invader-B-Gone won't solve.

[TerryG]

Originally Posted by alvordr

Another cool render from Terry! Good job! One other thing you can do for glass is to change the transparency color. If it's already on white, then this won't help much, but I found that if you're using a transparency color, making it a lighter shade helps to make it more translucent (which makes sense).


Take a look at the shots here, concentrating on the wine. It's not a perfect render and something I'm working on, but you can see how changing the shade of wine color made it seem a bit more translucent.

Oh...and sorry to hear that you're having an alien problem...nothing a little Invader-B-Gone won't solve.

No transparency color, Robert. But thanks.

[frank beckmann]

Just set the amount of specular scatterings to at least 1.0. in the radiosity tag.

Cheers
Frank

[podperson]

I'd try a more neutral, or abstract, lighting setup ... the image you're using creates very busy reflections which don't really suit the style of the model.

If you're in a hurry, grab one of my lighting setups and use one of the product shot setups. This example was created with the AO product shot setup. (And yes, I spent *way* too much time on the alien spokesmodel.)

[TerryG]

Originally Posted by podperson

I'd try a more neutral, or abstract, lighting setup ... the image you're using creates very busy reflections which don't really suit the style of the model.

If you're in a hurry, grab one of my lighting setups and use one of the product shot setups. This example was created with the AO product shot setup. (And yes, I spent *way* too much time on the alien spokesmodel.)

I agree Podperson. I like the lighting just because it has a wow effect! But my client would never go for it, neither would I as a final render. Can't see the alien. Grab one of your lighting setups? How would I do that?

Cheers
Terry

[Martin]

Hi Terry,
you can also attach a "Render Tag" to the glas cover and disable "visible in radiosity". That will rendere a little bit faster then increasing the specular scatterings in the "Radiosity" tag.

Bye,
Martin