Shifty's Projects - Experimental Trials-Lightcycle! | Forums

[rlmergeuser]

Great work yet again, Mr Samurai! That cloth looks a bit strange in the final render, though. Could just be the image size since it looks good in the larger pic.

[RetiredRonin]

That cloth looks weird because I actually had to make the material Self-Illuminated. For some strange reason MentalRay
was rendering it almost a black color. so I increased it's Self-Illumination, turned off the light properties from it t acted
like a radioactive glowing rag), and rendered it out. The shadows on it are weak and it's far too bright compared to the
other elements in the scene. Using the Z pass for camera blur REALLY helped out, but blurring an object doesn't remove
most of the problems that the rag caused, and in some cases I wouldn't be able to use blur, so I did the following to try
to stamp out some more of the problem.

I used a Curves adjustment and removed a ton of red and green from the channel, then knocked down the RGB channel,
for contrast and to knock out some more of the Radioactive color as well. I added my lens flares, then a vignette (the
darkened corners) and then color corrected the whole thing until I was happy with it.

I don't know if someone unfamiliar with AE will understand what I am saying, but I have no problems explaining how to do
anything seen in my pictures/videos if someone else is trying to learn. The problem is that, for example, in Trials Evolution,
I was told that the rider, without clothing, is around 8k polygons. In the image included at the bottom of this post, I am
using over 1 million polygons. So much more could have been accomplished if I were more familiar with using mesh
smooth, and making my materials do the work for me in the renderer.

My tire rubber is over 100k polys per instance. In theory, I could knock that down to just the basic tire shape, around 200
polys, and then assign a tire tread image to the material so that it looks like a flat tire with some black and grey designs.
Then if I add the same image, in high contrast black and white, to the Bump Map slot, I would end up with a FINAL result,
after rendering, that would look almost identical to what I have now, only with a much smaller poly count.

Blah Blah Blah... Here's the image I promised.

[rlmergeuser]

Get your Trials stuff out of my sub forum! ha ha ha ha Just kidding, Shifty Hamster. Great picture. I prefer short posts, I've said this before to you, it's Just my preference.

[RetiredRonin]

Do 3D renderings of low-profile sports car tires belong in a different forum? This isn't just about Trials stuff, but whatever I happen to be creating at the time.

This topic probably won't have too many short posts by me, for some reason I like explaining how/why I made a picture instead of just posting the picture.

[rlmergeuser]

I was kidding. Do I have to put it in bold large font for ya?

[RetiredRonin]

Same scene, different materials. Just getting a feel for how DoF works with Lens Blur.



I think bobozilla likes purplish-type colors. I made it with his tag because he has been
pretty active with encouragement and feedback. Thanks a ton bobozilla!

This is the same scene at a slightly different perspective. Lights and items are in the
same position.



Exactly the same scene as the ShiftySamurai tires, I just change the text on the
center hubs. Because I used instances instead of copies, I only had to change the
text or material for one of the tires and the others updated auto-magically (the
tune-up way!)

These two images have some weird noise in them, but that's cause by using
VideoCopilot.net presets for color correction. They host a valuable site, but in this
regard I think I will do color correction myself from now on.

Anyhow: Willy likes red, and I made this one because he, I guess, offers me
feedback in chat.

Anyhow. If anyone has some ideas as for projects I might be able to try, I'm all for it.

Thanks for looking!

Edit: Wow, the formatting of this post is awful. I hope you guys can navigate
through it and see my meaning.

[willyums]

not exactly sure why, but those wheels look so much better than the first 2 sets you posted. in fact they look damn fine

[rlmergeuser]

good work shifty thats tight

[rlmergeuser]

AWESOME!!!! New wallpaper!!

[johnsalis]

Great stuff Shifty! You have some serious skills.