This might help ..... Go on and try some.

[Lightship69]

There have been a lot of posts just lately where people have been told to go back to basic shapes like balls and cones etc. to get a handle on light and form etc.

So I spent a little while messing in my 3D package and spewed out these, just to help out those who cant find anything to play with. Now you are better trying to find tubes and suchlike yourself and drawing them in real life because its much better and you can look closely at them but for the terminaly lazy amongst us these will do for a start.

P.S. If anyone wants a specific shape adding or a texture then tell me what you want and I will put it up as soon as I can Ok!?

here we go.

[JeffX99]

Those are great Lightship...I have one important observation though - they don't have any reflected light? OK, another...the shadows don't behave as true shadows. Would it be a huge effort to set up the renders/lighting to behave a little more naturally?

I also think a variety of material (surface) treatments would be very helpful: matte, specular, etc. Really good start, just needs to go another step or two I think. And I'm glad you included a torus!

[DanielBodinof]

im with jeff on the reflected light, there doesn't seem to be a core shadow either, there seems to be just 1 shadow tone for everything, even the cast shadow.

[Lightship69]

Yep no problem guys just tell me exactly what you want and I will set it up.

Its all simple shapes so far, no textures and no real reflections. I thought we could do it in stages, to do the basic shape and the light on it then add another element,...... hmmm I can see the flaw in that as I write.

I will do the next set with a reflective surface to bounce some light back, I can set the reflectiveness (for want of a better word) to whatever level we like.

I tried some of these myself, that was the main reason for creating them actually and buggered them up something awful, if you fancy a laugh have a look at my sketchbook, god but it was embarrassing, the ones there are the ones I dared show. LOL

All the best guys and I will get on with another set.

P.S. let me know which ones you think are must haves in the set.

[Lightship69]

Ok guys I am not sure if this is what you meant but here are some that have been lit from a single lightsource (spotlight) and are sat on a 20% reflective surface for bounceback and a secondary reflection thingy.





















again just tell me what else to add and I will if I can, Remember though this is artificial and natural light on a real subject is always better.

all the best

[JeffX99]

These look better - but still lack the reflected light bouncing into the shadow. You could fake it with a really low intensity light easiest probably, shining back into the shadow 180 degrees opposite the main light sorce.

My list of "primary objects" is: cube, sphere, cone, cylinder, torus...I also like that you've added the tube/open cylinder. A pyramid isn't a bad one either, or the octahedron, truncated cylinder/cone as well.

[Lightship69]

Yep I will try but its proving to be a pain, I will crack on and try though.

All the best my mate!

[lobote]

What are you using to make these? I think in 3dsmax there are special 'raytrace' materials which should allow you to get light reflected back.

[Lightship69]

Hi

The software I use for my 3D stuff is "Bryce 5" its quick and easy to throw together shapes and suchlike if I cant get my head around something, like perspective or layout

I cant afford or justify the cost of 3D studio max, I have a family to support and wont use pirate software, its a personal standpoint I just dont think its right.

Plus as a Multimedia developer It hacks me off something awful when your stuff gets nicked and you get no money for something you worked hard on.

All the best

[Lightship69]

yes jeff my mate I shall up the reflection on the objects themselves and see if I can cut the absorbtion of the material. Shall keep you posted.

[ChristerMLB]

Made an attempt myself, but I don't know if it's appropriate to post that in your thread. Anyway: Blender is free, and with equally free raytracing plugins, you can do amazing stuff. It may have a kind of sharp learning curve, though.

[Lightship69]

Hi there matey,
yeah post away if youlike I started this in response to some of the pro- artists saying go back to fundamentals and lights etc etc. I just thought it would help.
If you have any or indeed if anyone has any of these that could help then yes please post them. If you can see if you can provide the ones on Jeff's list.

I loook forward to your post mate, all the best to you

[ChristerMLB]

Well here's one. I made the floor red to make it clear which light is reflected.

[ChristerMLB]

And here's some more. Now, someone has given my last post a 2 out of 10, which is either really good, or really bad. Which is it here?

[JeffX99]

Those are outstanding Christer! I would only suggest changing the table/surface color - I would maybe do a neutral gray set and maybe a mid-dark green (like a pool table). Whish light and shadow setting did you use? Because that is very close to reality it seems to me. Good job!

And glad you recommended Blender to Lightship - it isn't terribly difficult to use.

[ChristerMLB]

Glad I could help If you want the light to bounce off things, you need to enable some sort of global illumination. That's pretty much it.

I like using blender for modelling, but still don't quite get Yafaray. I'm using an educational version of Cinema 4D for these.

Edit:

[Lightship69]

Well done indeed mate these look great!, now all we need is for some folks to get on and try them out and post the results in here for all the world to see as practice shots. It really is worth doing some of these from time to time just to remind yourself how light settles on 3d shapes

Long live the basics, and er shapes and stuff......... and lights..........

come on folks have a go!

[element1988]

Gave it a shot, getting the selection for some of the shapes was really hard. Most of these are fail... but w/e.

[Black Spot]

Stickied. Thanks and I might have a go myself.

[Jetpack]

You should be more aggressive with your title

[Lightship69]

Sorry Jetpack

I dont do aggressive any more! but I did change the title a little bit, is it better!?

P.s. WOW I got stickied!! or rather we did Thanks again Christer, Good Job!!

[thegiffman]

Speaking as someone with an M.S. degree in Computer Graphics, but who inexplicably doesn't currently own a 3D package ready to go, I can offer a critique on the rendering. To do what we really want here, you need to do a render with real indirect lighting - what is often (slightly incorrectly - in that it sometimes lacks caustics) called "global illumination". Mental ray can do that. It would also greatly help to use an area light, rather than a point light.

Here is a raytrace without global illumination:



And here is one with it:



You really see the difference in the areas that are not directly lit. Observe the caustic created on the wall by the focusing effect of the glass sphere on the light. Note the color bleeding on the walls next to the darker tiles. And most importantly, notice all the ambient occlusion in the back, where things get darker near little cracks.

Working in CG is actually the reason that I, who have only practiced drawing all my life, suddenly find myself, upon trying out digital painting, to be reasonably good at using color. The artist actually has to ask the same sorts of questions that the computer does - which really shouldn't be surprising. The trick is to think of a single point on any surface and then ask what the entire scene looks from that point looking straight out. The average of all the color coming in at that point will be the diffuse lighting value.

If this CG way of thinking is helpful for any of you other artists, I can try to explain in more detail - but fundamentally they are the same concepts folks talk about here.

[thegiffman]

Actually, the classic "Cornell Box" - the basic global illumination demo scene - would probably make a great drawing exercise. Here are a couple - have at em!

[ChristerMLB]

Hey, thanks for the sticky!

This one is more about perspective than lighting. I hope it's useful:

[Diarum]

Awesome thread, Added it to my Tutorial thread. Cheers

[Vaejoun]

Hi, nice renderings.
Reflected light is something that still gives me trouble.

For example the sky, a strong blue sky affects the shadows of an object pretty strongly, but how far, does it get blue only in the shadows that are faced to the sky? And how does it change values? I would guess that its still darker than the dark parts in the direct light, but still higher in value than the shadow without the reflected light.

[thegiffman]

Hi Vaejoun,

I wonder if I can give you a few pointers on that that may help. A great way to observe this in life is to look at the shadow created by a big truck on the highway on a clear sunny day around 5PM. That's a great example of a hard shadow created by yellow direct lighting and a soft one created by a blue indirect light. I did a google search and found a photo here that shows a bit of what I mean, though to get a lot of the subtle color changes you'd be better looking at a real one.

You'll notice that the direct shadow is far bluer, except that it fades to a yellower and darker hue the further you get under the truck (and reduce the amount of sky that could be "seen" from that point). Late in the day, you can even observe how directly under the truck you can have areas lit by the sun that are nevertheless slightly darker and yellower, because they get a lot less blue sky.

From a technical standpoint, what you need to think about is how the hemisphere would look like looking straight up from the point you are rendering. What would dominate your view? The average color across the hemisphere is the indirect lighting component...Well, I suppose it's also the direct component - it's just that direct lights are normally so much brighter that it's good to separate them out in our minds. We certainly do in 3D rendering.

I did an example from another Cornell box to demonstrate what I mean. Here is the scene rendered with ONLY the indirect lighting (you can't get a photo of that from life - yey computers!). The full lighting solution would need to add the direct. I've eyeballed what I think the scene might look like viewed straight up from two different points. Then I've averaged the color using the photoshop average filter. I didn't cheat, I swear. The colors are slightly off, but actually I predicted the real colors pretty well indeed.

That's sort of what you need to do in your mind - think about how the scene is changing when viewed across the surface of an object. What comes out of view and what comes into view? And how bright are these objects? Thankfully the eye is VERY forgiving of mistakes in indirect lighting - it's really subtle. If you even have a ballpark notion of how things ought to change across a surface, it will probably be fine.

[Angel Intheuk]

Thanks guys this is extremely useful I'm inspired to set up a little light studio type thing on my desk.

[Jon_Dog]

oh hey something I recently learnt how to do in 3ds max, I could possibly do some of these renders, might even make a video of rotation

[Lightship69]

Hi there matey

If you can produce an accurate render then thats fine, great even! post some the more realistic the better.

The point of this though was to give people some shapes to draw and paint and generally practice with to get the fundamentals of light and shape and all the other little bits and bobs that are quite important. I am not so sure that a fly around or rotation would help, I am not sure to be honest, lets get a vote on it!!

Thanks for the input matey