[p2sta] Little render competition

[Manitou]

Here's an alternate render I did, decided on a different one to use as the entry.

I guess you can't tell too much since the bike is farther away, but I spent a good amount of time on the shaders/materials on the bike and wheels.

You do something wrong with specular map?

[twistmoto]

^^^
The spec mapping when using blender cycles is pretty tough to use. Doesn't always look right.

On another note this contest helped me figure out how to create displacement maps from normals in photoshop for the use in the cycles engine. Hopefully with the next contest I can apply all I learned to create a much better render.

[yzmxer608]

You do something wrong with specular map?

For the bike?

[Kording]

So does this mean you use the vray blend material ?

nope, blend material is used when you have more layered material. For example I used it for car paint. You have base layer with color, layer with those tiny sparkle things and then one layer of clear reflective material

if you want more materials for one object. just select the polygons you want to apply the material to and drag it on the model.
Example wheel: you put a regular non reflective material on the whole wheel. then select just rim and hub and add reflective material to it. Then select spokes and add chrome material.

oh ok thank you for this tipp. So if i understand this right you basicly create your own spacmap in 3ds max. But do you still use the specmap that comes with the wheels for example ?

[p2sta]

you need to edit the actual mxs spec map to work properly in 3ds max.
Its easier for me to not use it at all.
What I do is:
create a base material without any specularity or reflections, apply it to the whole bike
then create a material with some small reflections and specularity, aplly it to rubbers/hoses/etc
one more material for plastics with stronger reflections, and the last for more shiny parts like frame/exhaust/forks, etc

this way you pretty much replace the spec map, its not a good solution, because if you would like to do it properly you will need a lot of materials, so spec map will be better, but I'm too lazy to edit it to the right form. And with 4 materials you can get the bike pretty sweet looking. Same for wheels/helmets/gear

[Kording]

yeah awsome thanks. I got it. Now i understand why your renders look so inanse. It is impressive how long a good render can take.

[wakeymatt]

I'm really impressed with how well people have done the shaders and its really helping me learn so much, can't thank P2sta enough for putting this on I only had a short time to work on my entry and will definatly be going back and sorting out all my errors !

[EH801]

Here is a breakdown of my image for the contest!

Software used:

-Maya with vray
-Photoshop




For the helmet, i did a separate goldshader and then i used the vrayblendmaterial to mix the orginal helmetshader with my goldshader. Then i used a mask to define where i wanted the gold to shine thru.
For the lightning, i did a soft studiosetup with a couple Area/Rec lights (whatever you wanna to call them) with some variation in the colors.
I used a vrayPhysicalCamera to get real camera settings to play with. Obviously this make your 3D camera to behave more like a real camera.





I usually render out my imgage as a few renderpasses, this method allows me to have WAY more control of each individual part the final image in Photoshop/Nuke/whateryouliketouse, without have to rerender the image in your 3D aplication several times to get where you want.

Basic explanation of each Pass

Color: This pass contains only the colors form my textures, nothing else!
Gi:Global illumination, this pass does only contains the lightbounces and colorbleed form the objects in the scene.
Light: Just the light, obviously.
Reflection: Only reflections.
Specular: Only specular highlights.
Shadow: This pass looks little wierd. for some reason vray choose to render this one inverted. so you have to invert it back and blur it a tiny bit to make it rock.
Occlusion: This is a nice pass that is commonly used in the computer graphics world, helps you bring out more detail in your model. Some people call it contactshadows.


I basicly merged all the passes together in photoshop with a variety of blendmodes, did the adjustments i preferred and throw in a slight colorgrade.





I really enjoyed doing this and it was fun to see the other renders! Good job everyone!

More rendercontests!

Cheers!

/EH, http://cargocollective.com/erikhellmouth

[p2sta]

very nice man! Thanks for this I believe it will help lots of people

[p2sta]

!!!!RESULTS!!!!

First of all thanks to everybody who take a part in this competition. Thanks to all participants, to all judges, to all voter, to all creators their models/textures were used!

As you can see in the picture the top 5 came out following:


You can see the entries here

Congrats to the winners and thanks to all. Hope this help to move your forward a bit and you will take a part i next one as well
Erik - send me a personal message with your name/number you would like to have on the gear and possible sponsor logos if you want any
Matt and Paul - send me info about the renders you would like (gear/bike/helmet/numbers/names/ideas)

Here are the results divided into each judge so you will believe I didn't make them up

#1 Public voting (Facebook)
1.Matt Burton (Wakeymatt)
2.Alanas Šaulys Manitou)
3.Paul Richan (paulr093)
4.Benjamin Ahlm (Benjii)
5.Erik Hellmouth (EH801)

#2 Patrick Evans (he came with the idea of render competition)
1st. Nate Zaworski (yzmxer608)
2nd. Paul Richan (paulr093)
3rd. Erik Hellmouth (EH801)
4th. Matt Burton (Wakeymatt)
5th. Benjamin Ahlm (Benjii)
Why Nate for first place: The perfect cleanness of the render in general. His attention to detail like the riders hand on the seat and the perfect smoothing on the bike and wheels.

#3 Stanislav Bažant (my close friend, working with architecture visualizations)
1. Matt Burton (Wakeymatt)
2. Erik Hellmouth (EH801)
3. Benjamin Ahlm (Benjii)
4. Paul Richan (paulr093)
5. NateZaworski (yzmxer608)
Why Matt for first place: The picture has strongest feeling and even tho his entry is technically and compositionally weaker then 2nd and 3rd place I like it the most. Also with some photoshop magic it will be possible to make great picture from it.

#4 John van de Lest (well known JVDL)
John
1. Erik Hellmouth (EH801)
2. Benjamin Ahlm (Benjii)
3. Paul Richan (paulr093)
4. Matt Burton (Wakeymatt)
5. NateZaworski (yzmxer608)

JVDL's Render Competition #1 Review.

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who entered the competition. Without you, this simply wouldn't have been possible, now would it? *grin* You all did a awesome job at making your bike and rider stand out. I tip my hat to you!

Secondly, I'd like to thank everyone who has voted. We really appreciate that you took the time to make the tough decision on who your own personal winner is from all of these strong entrants.


It was difficult and very close, but here is my personal top 5 for this render competition:

1/ Erik Hellmouth (EH801): All the materials are sharp, fresh and well lit, making it possible to spot every single detail on these great models and textures. This in combination with a angle I have a weak for, and the rider staring you down, is just delicious.

2/ Benjamin Ahlm (Benjii): I'm really keen on the darkness in this scene. Having the touch of an active field of view is definitely adding to the complete image. If the field of view was just a little more defined in combination with slightly more highlights on the bike and rider to define the shapes better, this would have been a shared first place in my opinion!

3/ Paul Richan (paulr093): Very original and fresh to have the rider maintaining his bike, respect! The scene does miss the actual "whoa" factor a bit though. Could have used a bit more light, and would have been more complete if the wheels would have been there (or at least the rear wheel to take care of the now floating chain). All in all, good stuff.

4/ Matt Burton (Wakeymatt): The cinematic and slight mysterious feeling to this scene is seriously awesome! What kept this entry from being top 3 for me is that the materials used did not get as much attention as they deserved. Combined with the misplaced geometry smooth on the bike it really hurt the score.

5/ NateZaworski (yzmxer608): Even though this scene looks a little boring to the bare eye, the attention of detail is phenomenal. If only the scene itself would have had more to it and did not look so pale, it would definitely be top 3.


I'd still like to congratulate every single one of you! even if you did not make it into my personal top 5, you did push yourself to the max on the very first render competition for MX Simulator. This is something that deserves a winner's badge itself and I highly appreciate your efforts. Thank you once more, and onto the second addition of this competition!

JVDL.

#5 Zbyněk Hlava (myself, P2sta)
1.Erik Hellmouth (EH801)
2.Lennard Kording (Kording)
3.Mauricio Antonio Castillo Ellwanger (no idea whats his nickname on forum, sorry)
4.Matt Burton (Wakeymatt)
5.Paul Richan (paulr093)

Erik - Only one who did pretty much everything, good lighting, different materials with reflections, interesting came angle/fov and also some photoshop editing (thats really important step to make the render complete) IMO. Even tho the gold helmet doesn't look much like a gold, he still manage to make it looks interesting

Lennard - I feel like this one is pretty close to what Erik did. He doesn't have reflections on the bike tho (at least they are not visible). I like the fact he used different colored lights, then just white. Helmet looks bit more like a gold helmet, but its bit bright for my taste

Mauricio - I really like the feel of this image, not really sure why tho. IMO one of the best bikes from the whole field. Reflections looks right, it also looks like he did some smoothing to few parts. Reflections on the neckbrace are bit strong tho and the camera is pretty much without any idea, which is a bit of shame, would place better if you get some interesting angle

Matt - Great idea, awesome feel from the picture, that mysterious feel is simply great. But sadly thats pretty much only good thing about the render. Sadly the fact you provided link to hd image hurts your entry more then it helps for me. On the bad quality image from facebook its not that visible, but on the high resolution one its obvious. You have inverted normal maps. You also tried to smooth the bike with some subdivision tool, which ruined the whole look of the bike. Its wasn't bad idea, but you need to pay a lot more attention to what can be smoothed and what not. Still the idea and mood of the pic was so big it makes my top5 and overall 2nd place!

Paul - another great idea. You take your time and moved the parts from the bike(two clutch covers and floating chain tho) also you get the rider into that position (I'm kinda suspicious if you really used the rider provided in the obj tho, but I can't prove opposite and I believe you want to play fair so you did). Helmet looks pretty good too. But the whole picture is really dark. if you edit it in photoshop a bit, it will help a lot. Also materials on the bike looks kinda stock, which is a pitty. You also forgot the wheels as mentioned, so thats why you did only 5th place in by voting.


I will write all of the participants tips in the comments of their entries on facebook to help them out a bit for next one


Thanks once again guys! Hope next time we will get even better renders

P.S. if I forgot something, let me know!

[Kording]

Nice competition. Glad i entered and i hope there will be more of this. (I thought paul was disqualified for not using the wheels in his scene? )

[yzmxer608]

Thanks for this p2sta! Hopefully the next one I can spend more time on it, can't wait for it!

[wakeymatt]

Ah really cool and detailed feedback thank you everybody for the constructive critique
I had very little time to spend on this entry and id never even used a UV texture before this so it was a steep learning curve for sure !
I've learn't so much and I can't wait to spend some time fixing all the mistakes that I made with this render, we only learn from the mistakes so I learned a lot haha.
Anyhows i'm looking forward to more comps like this and hope to put in a stronger entry next time so watch out

[p2sta]

Kording - I didn't notice that when he send it to me and told him his entry is ok. After I put it on faceook people noticed it. so its kinda my fault as well, since if I notice it, he will edit it and send fixed picture. I put him 2 places lower in by voting for that tho, since he should notice it too

Matt - i'm happy you take it in a good way If you need any help, let me know on faceook or a pm here on the forum, you looks like a talented guy

yzed - I really hope you will get more time for next one!

[mace-x]

thanks p2staa, i´m Mauricio
i´ll make sure to make a better camera angle next time, it´s a shame i setup everything and didnt came with a good scenario/camera xD
never tought the scene could be edited so much tho, there are some sick renders, great job everyone!

now´s time for outdoors i guess?