Colvillesque

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Colvillesque

Postby blindsaypatten » Fri Jun 30, 2017 7:09 pm

Here's a scene I've been working on:
ApoScene3UHD.jpg


I started with a scene from a TV drama:
VideoFrame1.png


But tried to give it an Alex Colville esthetic. The painting on the wall is an example, here's a sampling:
https://www.google.ca/search?q=alex+col ... 0&bih=1324
I think MakeHuman can be used to produce a similar style.

I need to change the wardrobe on the woman. I found it surprising that the hair could make her look so blocky when in fact she is crazy curvaceous:
ApoSceneSideView.jpg

The low cut of the tights also misleads the eye. I also want to see if I can shorten the hair.

My attempt at a metalic window frames isn't working so far.

I'm not sure whether I will redo his wardrobe, if not I'll at least run a cloth simulation on the tshirt to get a better drape. In that regard I discovered that cloth
simulations work much better with the sort of size you get when you export with dm scale than with 1m.

Suggestions for improvements would be very welcome.
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Re: Colvillesque

Postby blindsaypatten » Sat Jul 01, 2017 8:16 pm

I replaced her outfit with the skirt from Female elegantsuit01 and the shirt from Female casualsuit02, and shrunk her hair.
NewOutfit.jpg

I think it's an improvement, but I wish it wasn't so perfectly smooth.

I also wish the hair didn't have that perfectly straight line change in color too.
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Re: Colvillesque

Postby loki1950 » Sat Jul 01, 2017 10:10 pm

You are getting the Colville style.

Enjoy the Choice :)
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Re: Colvillesque

Postby blindsaypatten » Sun Jul 02, 2017 4:48 pm

Deleted.
Last edited by blindsaypatten on Sun Jul 02, 2017 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Colvillesque

Postby blindsaypatten » Sun Jul 02, 2017 4:52 pm

loki1950 wrote:You are getting the Colville style.


Thanks! I'm hopeful that I can take it further.
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Re: Colvillesque

Postby blindsaypatten » Sun Jul 02, 2017 4:56 pm

One of the cool things with CGI is the ability to change viewpoints and zoom in on details.
ApoScene4HeadZoom.jpg

At that level of zoom I notice the reflection of the woman in his eye, so...
ApoScene4EyeZoom.png

The bright lines are where I left a gap in the roof to create a brighter atmosphere. I guess I should put in a proper window.
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Re: Colvillesque

Postby punkduck » Sun Jul 02, 2017 7:26 pm

blindsaypatten wrote:At that level of zoom I notice the reflection of the woman in his eye, so...

In real life you can sometimes see the photographer in the eyes, at least you can normally count the number of light sources ... :D
blindsaypatten wrote:The bright lines are where I left a gap in the roof to create a brighter atmosphere. I guess I should put in a proper window.


Did you use filmic log encoding base (you proposed it to us ... 8-) )? With that method I got always better results for indoor pictures.

When I look at the shadow of your table, light also comes from the front. For unvisible walls behind the camera I sometimes used low light emissions to brighten things up, if it was too dark, but that was before I used the filmic base.

Just because I'm interrested: In the original picture are very clear shadows on the wall. I think that's hard to achieve in such a bright room in Blender. Did you try that also?

But looking at your picture, the style itself looks convincing to me ... ;)
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Re: Colvillesque

Postby blindsaypatten » Mon Jul 03, 2017 5:17 pm

punkduck wrote:
blindsaypatten wrote:The bright lines are where I left a gap in the roof to create a brighter atmosphere. I guess I should put in a proper window.


Did you use filmic log encoding base (you proposed it to us ... 8-) )? With that method I got always better results for indoor pictures.


Yes, I set up filmic blender in my startup file so it is pretty much always in use. This scene doesn't have any light sources in the room, just a single sun, which is set fairly bright. All the lighting is indirect.

punkduck wrote:When I look at the shadow of your table, light also comes from the front. For unvisible walls behind the camera I sometimes used low light emissions to brighten things up, if it was too dark, but that was before I used the filmic base.


On the oppose side of the room I left a strip of the ceiling off to bring in the sunlight, that created a very bright patch on the floor, which has a slight gloss, which then indirectly lit up the room, along with the window in the back. I've now replaced the, lets call it a big skylight, with a window in the wall, and lowered the angle of the sun. I ran a render overnight with the sun cranked up a lot, but it just washed things out.

punkduck wrote:Just because I'm interrested: In the original picture are very clear shadows on the wall. I think that's hard to achieve in such a bright room in Blender. Did you try that also?


You got me curious so I found a scene that shows more of the room:
LockerRoom.png

So I adjusted my scene:
WideAngleLowSun2.jpg

The result was:
ApoScene5Shadows.jpg

But I had to remove the glass from the window to get sharp(er) shadows, and then I had to reduce the strength of the sun by a factor of about five. As you can see, there's nothing like the harsh rays of the sun to totally expose the CG nature of your models.

In the original image from the video, there's a patch of light under the table and chair that seems to come from a different angle, and the angle from the edge of the table to its shadow on the wall, and the angle from the top of his head to its shadow are quite different. I think they used multiple artificial lights, which is normal for video, but a little out of place in a painting, or faux painting.

Colville is usually big on shading and short on shadows, so I'm going to claim artistic license and stick with my low-shadow diffuse lighting. I wonder if I did a save before messing it up...

punkduck wrote:But looking at your picture, the style itself looks convincing to me ... ;)


Thanks.

I also used the cloth simulator to get a better drape on his tshirt, it's a shame that the best draping effect is in his lap where you can't see it. I will probably have to add some curvature to his back as his posture now looks a little too stiff.
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Re: Colvillesque

Postby punkduck » Mon Jul 03, 2017 8:33 pm

blindsaypatten wrote:
You got me curious so I found a scene that shows more of the room ...


Hard to believe but the room in the scene also seems to have windows everywhere (or a big mirror on the wall or a roof-light). The lockers are also lightened?

blindsaypatten wrote:But I had to remove the glass from the window to get sharp(er) shadows, and then I had to reduce the strength of the sun by a factor of about five. As you can see, there's nothing like the harsh rays of the sun to totally expose the CG nature of your models.


Especially the glass shader is doing weird things, you are right. But even a glossy/transparent shader combination for the window may create disappointing effects. Remember the first picture I did with this filmic render method, the nude girl behind the shutter? I had to delete the glass of the window, otherwise the effect I desperately looked for did not work. For the shadow: the size of the sun determines, how sharp the shadow is, as far as I know you can reduce it to (nearly?) zero.

blindsaypatten wrote:In the original image from the video, there's a patch of light under the table and chair that seems to come from a different angle, and the angle from the edge of the table to its shadow on the wall, and the angle from the top of his head to its shadow are quite different. I think they used multiple artificial lights, which is normal for video, but a little out of place in a painting, or faux painting.


Okay, this is an explanation. In my country it is called "künstlerische Freiheit" which exactly means "artistic lisense" as far as I remember, you are right, we should not complain ...

Are you using the cloth simulation directly on the exported clothes or did you apply a subdivision surface modifier before? I'm interrested in your experience. Applying cloth simulation to exported clothes which will not fall apart (zipper, buttons, buckles of my clothes are single geometries and will obviously create problems) will be a good idea for future advanced assets ...
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Re: Colvillesque

Postby blindsaypatten » Tue Jul 04, 2017 12:31 am

punkduck wrote:
blindsaypatten wrote:
You got me curious so I found a scene that shows more of the room ...


Hard to believe but the room in the scene also seems to have windows everywhere (or a big mirror on the wall or a roof-light). The lockers are also lightened?

blindsaypatten wrote:But I had to remove the glass from the window to get sharp(er) shadows, and then I had to reduce the strength of the sun by a factor of about five. As you can see, there's nothing like the harsh rays of the sun to totally expose the CG nature of your models.


Especially the glass shader is doing weird things, you are right. But even a glossy/transparent shader combination for the window may create disappointing effects. Remember the first picture I did with this filmic render method, the nude girl behind the shutter? I had to delete the glass of the window, otherwise the effect I desperately looked for did not work. For the shadow: the size of the sun determines, how sharp the shadow is, as far as I know you can reduce it to (nearly?) zero.

After stepping away to eat I looked at my scene and realized that the large area of the floor that is being brightly lit will act like a big area lamp and create very diffuse shadows. There's likely a nice sharp shadow on the wall, it just has diffuse fuzzy shadow on top of it.

punkduck wrote:Are you using the cloth simulation directly on the exported clothes or did you apply a subdivision surface modifier before? I'm interrested in your experience. Applying cloth simulation to exported clothes which will not fall apart (zipper, buttons, buckles of my clothes are single geometries and will obviously create problems) will be a good idea for future advanced assets ...


Since you are interested in my experience, excuse me if I ramble.

Whether you need a subsurface modifier depends on how fine the original mesh is and what size wrinkles you want. Bends in the fabric only occur along edges of the mesh so if you have a low poly mesh you will get very limited bending. It's a little like the mesh is made up of somewhat rigid faces, with the structural parameter determining how much the faces will distort and the bendy parameter determining how easily two adjacent faces will bend along the shared edge. With the tshirt in suit06 the mesh was fine enough to produce the draping that I'm using now, I'm trying again with a subsurf to see whether the difference is worth the much increased simulation time. [returns after animation/simulation competes] The size of the wrinkles with subsurf does look more realistic for a cotton fabric.

For the sitting position in this scene I animated the body from a standing pose to the seated pose in order for the cloth simulation to be able to produce something natural looking, just starting with the posed position often won't produce much. In this case, the front of the shirt is pulled way down between the legs when simply posed. On the other hand, so far the jeans have always exploded if I try to animate movement, I think that bending at the hip produces more stretch than I've allowed for. In earlier experiments I found that too much stretch (structural parameter) and the clothes either sag or actually ooze off the body like slime!

Simulations are scale sensitive, I think due to the distance parameters in the Cloth Collision properties. I will have to try dividing those by ten, up to now I've been scaling my model up by ten. I usually export at 1 BU = 1m and with the default parameters clothes either hover away from the body or downright explode.

Once any part of the clothes penetrates the body or non-simulated clothing the simulation is almost certain to fail. The challenge here is poses, or intermediate positions, where body parts overlap, whether it be arms at the side so that the arm and the clothing penetrates the body, joints that have formed a crease when bent, or a finger momentarily moving through another body part/the simulated cloth.

If you do animate into the final pose you will find that the simulation is speed sensitive, move two fast and the body will leave the cloth behind, I used 200 frames to move into the sitting position. There is a trade off between speed of movement and the quality/velocity parameters, but if the movement jumps to far quality won't solve it.

I think the cloth simulation has enough features to deal with your zippers and so forth, but I haven't tried those feature yet.

I hope you got something useful out of all that!
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