Slums - WIP
 

This is my attempt at making a "slummy alley way". I just added a back door to a pub on the right, I will finish the details on that next render. The faded image that you see on the left side of the wall is a WW2 propaganda pic that I added in hopes of making the scene look worn and older. Be critical. What is it that will make this look photo real?
-flipfl0p

Looking good. nice pavement. the briks, ya can tell there tiled to much. maybe luseing the gray ones will help it not be so noticable.

Thanks pony, I will run the texture through photoshop.

If its supposed to be the Slums, it sure dosent look it. Its way to clean to be slums. Dirty it up abit. :)

I was thinking we'll get in to the details of it as we go.. more dirt definely ! . like that paint on the wall. it could be flaked off in places.

Now that you guys mention it, it definetly could use more dirty stuff, I'll probably add some more garbage scraps and dirty the walls further. I painted the brick texture and made it seamless in photoshop, I'm looking for thick white walls, I rendered this image before I went to work, was just experiementing with seamless stuff

test render, removed the color and diffuse map on the wall, left the bump, extremly crappy quality, but i like, I'm going to add an alpha channel to the WW2 pic, and add scratches and little marks on the wall....
sorry for crappy quality but this took 5 min to render on my AMD 2100+, 1.5GB ram =(

Only one crit at this point. Why is it getting brighter and brighter? Might be my personal taste but I'd like to see it in a moody night time lighting env. Dark bluish ambient with couple of streelights lighting the details you want to show plus strong and tall shadows... things like that... Only a suggestion :)

yeah its getting there.. good job on the seemless bricks.. but I would make them a bit smaller....

Okay, here is what I have come up with as far as "greyish" bricks, I like this more than the colored ones, there is no color map, only a bump. I know I over-did it on the paper on the ground, will re-touch that later. The main problem I'm having is getting transparencies to render correctly with mental ray. I brought some images through the connection editor, Out Alpha-->Transparency RGB, And I inverted the alpha colors. Maya renderer renders my transparency maps correctly, however, mental ray does not seem to respond to the transparency settings as well. How can I go about adding smears of dirt, paint, etc... on the brick wall? Can paint effects let me do this? anyways... back to work =)

I like the white-washed bring look better myself.. I agree with kbrown on the lighting though. The paint-effects would probably get you what you need, depending on how good you are with the paint tools. I've used them very seldom, though, so I don't know if its possible to add on an existing 2d texture map? Another suggestion would be maybe adding some chips or missing pieces of bricks to the corners of the doorway..Just to add to the old slum look you're going for :bgreen:

Well Im done with exams for this semester, so I'll have lots of time to finish this scene. Here is what I have now. I completely rebuilt the wall, stairs, and door area. I added chips and dents in the wall. most importantly, I created a really dirty texture for my wall in photoshop. here it is...

yep yep.. better and better.. I was thinking with that much rust on the dumpster there will be stains on the pavement.

Okay finally after TEN HOURS of render time, this frame is finally done. I used 3000 FG rays... probably too much. Pony, I agree about the dumpster, I think I need to re-model it completly as it seems to lack definition. There is something about the texture on it that makes it look a lil unbelieveable. I decided to board up the door. I'm also noticing that the light bulb has way too much incandesence, and the texture for the light fixture is disrupted. Anyways, I think I'm done for the night
-flipfl0p
:bgreen:

Looking really good m8... How about a splash of graffiti on the wall?

10 houres render time ??? dude tell use about all you have in that sean. If it takes 10 houres with just 3000 rays, somethings wrong.

BTW it looks great.. but I would like to see the retern of that painting on the wall..

lol, basically every texture is at least 1MB, and the wall texture is like 16 MB, that could be part of the problem. My min and max samples is -2 and 2, jitter, with gauss filter. My FG radius on that render I think was .25-10. Next time I'm cranking it all the way down. Also, I'll put that picture back on the wall too. Anyways.. back to modeling!
-flipfl0p :bgreen:

that's not really that big to be honest with you... :) in fact that's pretty darn tiny. What res is that? for some of the productino stuff we have been doing I've seen 500mb textures believe it or not ;)

Even 16Mbs is fairly acceptable. and what I would say about that is how comes it's 16 mbs? it's repeated a few times over the wall right? you dont need to do that (as it's fairly obvious that it repeats). I would make the texture repeat in Photoshop and then edit it using clone and offset to reduce the obviousness of the repetition.

Alan

I'm thinking the 16mb would be for the pavement or the painting on the wall.. But at anyrait like Pure said. though sizes shouldn't be a problem. what is your ram like ? Yeah I would start with the defalt lower numbers on your render and gradualy take them up.
On your output window.. what dose your triangle count say ?
Was also wandering your not using a bump map as a displacment are ya ??

Your latest image seems, to me, to be capturing your true intent- it looks really cool!!! My only real concern is that the dumpster is too small, and square with the wall. Maybe add an angle to the placement, conveying a sloppy placement by a truck that empties it, and a few skids around it on the ground to show it is lifted up and down, I am a noob, so these are just asthetic comments.
Probably if you just group the dumpster and surroundnig debi, and scale it up it will help.
I agree the light needs blurring and translucence.

This image TOTALLY inspires me to attempt my first scene - thanks for the inspiration.

That stuffs Great good job dude, you said you were n00b?????

Thank you guys so much for your feedbackYes, I agree about the dumpster, right now I have maya opened up, I'm making a new dumpster, trying not to be disgusted with my scene. I read your comments, it's hard to believe, but... thank you for the positive feedback seriously, I'm inspired as well!
-flipfl0p

okay here is my new dumpster prototype, one thing I'm noticing is that since it's so big, you can't see down the rest of the alley. Anyways... I made a new texture for it, probably gonna do some more work on it. here it is...

Hey, have a look at my thread (http://forums.simplymaya.com/showthr...&pagenumber=2, the last non-wire pic at the bottom) and see if it is to your liking... I *think* I am going for the same feel as you, and the method I'm using renders uber-fast. AIM me at Ragtimer38 if you're interested... it seems a fast rendering method would be usefull to you :):):)

This is really getting better. Your rendertimes seem extreme for this sort of pic. When doing final render, crank up the params, but for WiP's just go for as low as possible (100 rays or something).

Some suggestions: Some sort of grafitti or something in the midpart of the image, since now the composition frames (with the dumpster, door and cable) what is essentially a white brick wall. You could also try adding dirt smears around where it would be likely to have accumulated. That is, near ground level, around the stairs, around and below the lights, electrical thingy. If you do it as Pure suggested you'd be able to do them in photoshop if not you can layer them on. Overall, try to break up the repetitiveness off the wall texture.

Keep it up and it will look awesome. :thumbsup:

omg I just realized I forgot to say awsome job mate! srry, I sometimes criticize while leaving out the good parts :eek:...

Okay here is where Im at. Since fall is my favorite season, I made some leaves and scattered them against everything. Re-did the wall and side wall texture, along with tweaking some metal textures, transparencies, etc... I have placed a piece of WW2 propaganda once again to the far left, and have added a lot of stains and smears like you guys suggested, I really like it so far. Heres the small pic, will render a larger one over night! Thanks for the comments!
-flipfl0p

Oh yeah, it is rocking! I would watch the dispersement of light on the door, it seems too bright there to not have light splashing down the alley, or gleaning off the edge of the dumpster. I have started my scene!!!!!!! months.. lol

flipfl0p: that is looking so good compared to the first render you started this thread with. The leaves are a great touch.

Can I suggest that, at the point where the wall meets the ground (i.e. under the leaves), you put maybe a damp spot ... as if it rained a couple of days ago.

Idea for a neat short anim: make a night scene with some orange "sodium" light coming down the alley way - no need to show the source and then flicker the lightbulb above the door. I could really dig that atmosphere!

damn you guys got good ideas. Yeah I am going to put a dirty damp spot towards the bottom, anyways, here is where I'm at, it's just a larger version of the previous pic.

Yeah now its looking even better... oh just noticed though, there is streaching on the texture of the dumpster. the lids..

Update... I think I'm going to get rid of the top of the dumpster completely and do something else with it, anyways.. here it is...

Just felt like posting this too, was messing around in photoshop with the above image....

Last 2 pic's are good !.

OK my comments...

I love this scene so much, your textures on the smaller models are superb.

(1) Lightbulb is too opaque, color is not good. I think you need a better glass shader for that and then dirty it up a bit.

(2) The wire shadows are a too defined. I doubt that under "real world" lighting they would cast any shadows unless it was a bright sunny say or artificially lit at night.

But then I guess you could tweek a scene like this to death...!

Huxley this one's for you:

flipflop, dunno if you're interested but here's some good graffiti pics that you can probably pick out and put onto your wall if you're feelin it. just as far as a composition standpoint, your picture has a lot of really good stuff in it, but it's all on the sides, leaving a repetitive wall texture in the center where most people would first focus their eyes. first inclination is to put some graffiti there since it seems a sort of derelict city alley. it would fill space and give viewers something to see at first glace, before they work their way out to the awesome texture work you got going on with the dumpster and the door frame

http://www.intenseyouth.com/3d/giant01.jpg

http://www.intenseyouth.com/3d/kudose.jpg

http://www.intenseyouth.com/3d/tags_praez1.jpg

Awsome!!
this is really going well.
the one shading comment I would make is that it seems your bump is a bit much... the human eye can see past a bump after a certain amount, and it looks just a little off. I just realized another possiblilty- most of the smudges on your wall are in grayscale, so maybe that is what makes the bump more pronounced (e.g. the wall is all grayscale just like an actual bump map). A little hint of colour should fix this.

that's really the only bug I see.

Great job, keep up the good work! :)

What era of slum is that? If it's a 1942 slum then you're pretty much on point except for the dumpster as those types of trash recepticles didn't exist back then. If it's a modern slum, then the WW2 propaganda pic would have been painted over long ago, especially with some of the graffiti that soulcialism added. :D

Okay, played with the lights, added some graffiti, removed the lightbulb, and replaced it with torn wires which are hard to see in this low-rez render. Added a few more leaves. Used 100 Fg rays, lowest quality anti-alias. Here it is.... :/