Harpsichord Project
 

Hi everybody.

This is my first post here at Simply Maya and I am very happy to participate on this. Considering I'm a noobie in every aspect, I hope you feel free to make any kind of advice or C+C as you wish regarding any issue of my posts.

So let's get to the point. At the moment I'm working on this Harpsichord Project. The model is one I did some time ago, actually it was my first model. So here I'm trying to deal only with Rendering issues that I should list: Lighting, Texturing, Shader tweaking and Rendering itself with Mental Ray.

I really don't want to mess with the model itself, because that's not where I'm focusing on right now.

I started some tests that I'm posting right away.

First image: This is from where I want to start discussion...
I guess most important issues are the following:

GI with Spot Light emitting Photons.
Raytrace turned on for reflections.

I was not satisfied because of the "Plastic mood" I think got here.

Thanks to everybody.

Seejee.

Sorry, I did something wrogn whe attaching image.
Hope now this works...

Now, heres the subsequent one.

Added Blur to the reflections, but still need tweaking to avoid graininess.
Also better Anti-Aliasing.

Third image.

Changed GI and Lighting settings to get into a darker mood.

I like better this mood.

Problem I couldn't solve:
The grainy look at the floor. I guess that this have something to do with GI settings, but couldn't figure out how to fix.

Actually it looks like a carpet, but it wasn't my intention...

Fourth.

No more GI to reduce render time. Just the 2 lights and Mental Ray just to get the Blurred Reflection effect (quite render time consuming also)
I'm quite satisfied with look without GI.

Added:
Floor and wall Textures, Bump Maps
Grid Map to the Light Color to simulate shadows of a window
Warm (yellow) point Light at the center of the scene.
Teaks to the Blurred Reflections.

Problems:
Strange geometric spots appeared on both textures (wall and floor)
Overall lighting I think it's a little too dark (some friends said that the image was way too dark to see on their monitors).
I wanted to achieve some kind "if-batman-had-a-Harpsichord at-his-BatCave" Lighting mood, so I imagine it quite dark anyway.
Render time: Around 8 hours for frame. It's getting difficult to do the tests.

Fifth.

I artificially cranked the overall lighting using post-processing with photoshop. I adjusted the contrast of the image.

I liked better the result.

Guess the image lost some quality and since I'm a noobie Photoshop user also, I guess I maybe did something wrong with the adjusting or the use of image formats

I'm rendering final images (from Maya) as .jpg.

Last one for today.

I tried to achieve the same result I got in the last image, but tweaking the warm PointLight Intensity instead of postprocessing.

It's still a little too dark.

Thanks everybody.


Seejee.

Hey, great work, how long have you been working with maya? Just curiuous, and something that bugs me is the keys, the are so black that they seem to blend into one.

To get better result inrease the anti-aliasing and don't save as jpg in Maya. Save it uncompressed and then save it as jpg from photoshop.

Hi Alienscience!

Thanks. I've been studying Maya in a more discontinued manner than I wish, but it has been since the release of Maya 5.0.

Oh, and I agree with you about the Black Keys. It really bugs me also. I'll try to fix that. Maybe changing the color of the shader to a lighter color.... What would you suggest?

Here are one of the Photos I used for "rough" reference (I didn't quite copied it). I also noticed that the White Keys are not actually white...hehe. Maybe I should fix that also...

Thanks.

Hi DJ BLazer!

I usually use this settings for Mental Ray Anti Aliasing:
Min Sample Level: 2
Max Sample Level: 0
Mitchell Filter preset.

What do you think of this settings?
Should I try others?

And thanks for the tip about uncompression.

Thanks for comments.

Seejee.

ok, that should be enough. It may be because of the jpg-quality some edges look rough then.

Hi!

This one is less dark...

And with less smooth reflections.

I want to add some fog effect to give the image that look of dust being illuminated by the spot. I tried to use the SpotLight fog, but I did not liked the results. Maybe I should use other technique?