August "Idea" Challenge Voting

[Rigel]

August "Idea Challenge" Poll

We have some excellent ideas that came in for the August Idea Challenge of "Lighthouse".

Now comes the real challenge; for you, our loyal readers, to choose just 3 of these beauties! So use the poll up top and rank your first, second and third choice.

Here are the August 2009 entries:


Michigan Sunset by Delta

http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/private/2009/08/34-28-506257_tn.jpg (http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/private/2009/08/34-28-506257.jpg)



U.S.S. South Carolina by Bishop

http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/private/2009/08/34-31-769571_tn.jpg (http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/private/2009/08/34-31-769571.jpg)



House of Light by Bill Simon.

http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/general/2009/08/8-22-962532_tn.jpg (http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/general/2009/08/8-22-962532.jpg)



Idea by VK08

http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/general/2009/08/4634-22-982510_tn.jpg (http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/general/2009/08/4634-22-982510.jpg)



First Turn by Kionel

http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/private/2009/08/34-28-506150_tn.jpg (http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/private/2009/08/34-28-506150.jpg)



House Light by Alflud

http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/private/2009/08/34-28-506183_tn.jpg (http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/private/2009/08/34-28-506183.jpg)





Escargot by Cymro

http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/private/2009/08/34-31-769645_tn.jpg (http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/private/2009/08/34-31-769645.jpg)

[BillS]

We gotta do something to make this easier..........

[DELTA]

We gotta do something to make this easier..........

How do you mean Bill?

[Jonesy]

Voted.

Some neat ideas there. Well done everyone.:tu:

[Epiphany]

Voted :) But it wasn't easy, Great work by everyone:)

[RonGC]

Did my vote thing, well done everyone.:tu:

Ron

[David Myers]

Congratulations everyone. A great first challenge.

Bill (Ethengar), your church window was supurb, especially the volumetric lighting. It actually looks like an illustration would look for Anne Rice's fifth book ("Memnoch the Devil") in her series "The Vampire Chronicals" - best known from its first book - "Interview with the Vampire". One of the central characters is a nun with mystical influences and beliefs who owns an old church and rectory and talks to spirits as well as God and the vampire Lestat, in her own chaple. An excellent read, by the way. Anne's favorite vampire, Lestat is recruited by the Devil (rather the Devil makes an attempt to recruit Lestate) to be his Lieutenant in Hell. Lestate is not easily persuaded so the Devil takes him to heaven to meet God in order to help convince Lestate to work for him (the Devil). Ann Rice sure knows her Christian mythology. It is a fascinating debate on good, evil, and free choice as well as a excellent portrayal of the fabled "wars in heaven" that led to Lucifer's fall.

Alflud, your compositing was first class and your texturing is pretty damn good:cool:, and all I can say is that's the kind of outhouse I would pick . . . if I was picking an outhouse;).

Cymro, they are so beautiful, but the closest snail has the most texture detail (as per depth of field and proximity) and I think it could benefit with a bit slimier texture on the whole of the peudopod. The cast shadow of the ship is brilliant - totally makes the scene! What kind of light did you use to cast the ship's shadows with a gobo? I would love to see an animation of this but recognize the problems of making a short animation of a snail crawling ;-) Perhaps a scene with the camera angle from above, showing each snail in a different branch of a low level maze (the prize at the end of the maze could be a stein of cold beer with a ramp leading up to the full-to-the-brim stein. Anyway, I'd love to see the three snails lighting their way through an interesting terrain allowing the maximum display of the radiosity(?) effects. Did you also use glow or bloom on the snails' shells? I think, personally I would appreciate the blue and green shells to have a little less white wash-out of the color - more like the yellow snail, so that the blue and green colors would be a bit darker or, rather, richer - you might be able to accomplish this by increasing the diffusion of those two shells? I really think it could be both an errie and a beautiful animation.
Great work everyone.:cool:

David Myers (aka CthuluSucksVoids)

[Tenement 01]

Really stunning work from all involved. My hat is off to you all.

[BillS]

How do you mean Bill?

Make the rest of them really really bad :)

[Starbase1]

How does the scoring work?!?! I voted but was surprised to see a leading score of 0.87?!

[SteveMoody]

How does the scoring work?!?! I voted but was surprised to see a leading score of 0.87?!

The score is calculated from the number of votes and the rank rather than just a simple count of the votes.

[Cymro]

Cymro, they are so beautiful, but the closest snail has the most texture detail (as per depth of field and proximity) and I think it could benefit with a bit slimier texture on the whole of the peudopod.

I agree, in fact I doubt there's a criticism you could make that I wouldn't agree with. I only came up with the concept last week and that render ended up being a rush job because of a few problems I ran into. Had I more time, I'd have done a lot more tweaking, and possibly modelled on some scales.

What kind of light did you use to cast the ship's shadows with a gobo?

A simple spotlight, with this basic ship mesh that I just made for the silhouette. I went over the shadows afterward with the blur tool in Photoshop, and in fact the whole render would have come out much better had I not spent so much time failing to make the spinning light trick work.

http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/general/2009/09/5095-01-815142_tn.jpg (http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/general/2009/09/5095-01-815142.jpg)

Did you also use glow or bloom on the snails' shells?

No, the effect was achieved by placing several point lights inside the shells, and ironically I chose not to use any glow or Corona because it washed out the colour.

I think, personally I would appreciate the blue and green shells to have a little less white wash-out of the color - more like the yellow snail, so that the blue and green colors would be a bit darker or, rather, richer - you might be able to accomplish this by increasing the diffusion of those two shells?

So would I. The wash out was caused by the added illumination of the spotlight I used to project the shadow of the ship, and was exacerbated when I upped the contrast and the red channel in Photoshop (The floor was originally blue-gray, not violet). I forgot to exclude the shells from the effect of the spotlight and didn't have time to render another.

Basically what happened was I had a whole different scene set up, where the snails were climbing up a garden wall, and there was the silhouette of a window with a model ship on the sill projected onto the wall. But I just couldn't get it to look right, and so I made the scene we have now in a kind of rush panic to meet the deadline.

[DELTA]

Considering the short amount of time you spent on this it turned out very well. There are always things we want to (fix) in our work but never have the time. I seem to work better when it's crunch time... I loved all the concepts that came out of this challenge. That is the point of the IDEA CHALLENGE. It's more about getting their creative juices flowing and to challenge yourself... but throwing everyone else into the mix makes it more fun!

I would love to see the scene files for all the entries to learn from the setups...

[Cymro]

Considering the short amount of time you spent on this it turned out very well. There are always things we want to (fix) in our work but never have the time. I seem to work better when it's crunch time... I loved all the concepts that came out of this challenge. That is the point of the IDEA CHALLENGE. It's more about getting their creative juices flowing and to challenge yourself... but throwing everyone else into the mix makes it more fun!

I would love to see the scene files for all the entries to learn from the setups...

Oh no, I'm shocked it turned out as good as it did considering my fairly low level of skill and the time alloted.

And since you asked for it, here's the .zip of the project files I've made for my archives, complete with all the junk I generated, though I doubt there's anything you could learn from it. Snail.lws is the main scene file.

escargot.zip (http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/general/2009/09/5095-01-820222.zip)

[DELTA]

Oh no, I'm shocked it turned out as good as it did considering my fairly low level of skill and the time alloted.

And since you asked for it, here's the .zip of the project files I've made for my archives, complete with all the junk I generated, though I doubt there's anything you could learn from it. Snail.lws is the main scene file.

escargot.zip (http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/general/2009/09/5095-01-820222.zip)


You would be surprised what to one is an every day occurance is another mans apifiny...

And, Thank you!

[Bishop]

Here's mine. The setup is a little cluttered. I had a few different versions of files that are in there - the ship object is in there twice, because I used the ship layer from one .LWO and the water layer from a different one. With more time off from work, I probably could have set it up a little better, and done more on the textures as well ... :p

(but hey, it's not supposed to be a hero model!)

[DELTA]

Thank you.

We should add them to the resources and keep our library growing ;)


I will package mine up and post it later...

[alflud]

:where: I can't believe I'm placed. Thank you whoever gave me a vote - I'm more than a little surprised and delighted too :D hehehe First time I've ever done well in anything like this. They're all great entries though I have to say and I'm sure the next challenge will attract even more participants and produce some pretty fine images too - way to go Rigel & Delta ;)

... your texturing is pretty damn good:cool:
Thanks David - very much appreciated - but I can't take credit for the texturing I'm afraid :) Well, some of it is wholly mine but the brick and roof textures are tweaked presets I downloaded from preset central.

[David Myers]

Cymro, thanks for the detailed answers to my questions and especially for the zip file of the scene. I'm going to enjoy playing with that and seeing how it was all set up.:D

[David Myers]

I whole heartedly approve of the idea of putting zipped scene files (all the files needed to create the image) for those who are willing to share them, in the resources section. They are tremendous learning tools, particularly for newbies, but I think anyone can learn something from them. They could be filed along with the image they created. I don't really know what to call them because scene files makes it sound like it is only .lws scene files when the meaning intended is all of the scene, object, and image files necessary to create the image.

[Rigel]

A lot of our meshes in the resources do come with scene files included.

Guys, I appreciate everyone saying thank you, but, I should clarify that this "Idea" challenge is entirely Delta's idea and doing. He only dragged me into to do the initial posting and set up the poll (until he figures out how to do it himself). I really cannot take any credit for this.

So, Delta, congratulations on having your idea take off so well.

[Starbase1]

:where: I can't believe I'm placed. Thank you whoever gave me a vote - I'm more than a little surprised and delighted too :D hehehe First time I've ever done well in anything like this.

Well it was one of my picks, because:

Neat concept.
Smoothly executed
With what looks like flawless compositing to me!Nick

[alflud]

Heh heh - cheers Nick :) Here's the scene & objects to play around with anyway. For any who download it - it's a lightwave scene/object & in lightwave the finished render will show a weird border around the image - this is a due to the front mapped ground plane extending to the edges of the camera (I think) so I just made the camera size a little bigger (hence the strange resolution) and cropped it then and resized it photoshop. The .psd is included in the rar file as are all the texturemaps that were used and a copy of the final rendered and shopped image.

I included the directory structure in the rar so all you need to do is extract it to your project folder and then set it as a new content directory LW and everything should load just fine :)

Note: none of the included texturemaps or reflectionmaps are my own but they are free to use in any non-commercial projects. I'll get around to looking up the owners for proper credit later on.

edit: do we have to upload again to the resource section or can they moved there by an admin? In any case I really don't mind what anyone does with this - enjoy :)

[BillS]

I don't know that there is anything you can pick up from it but if others are going to.. Who am I to say no. :)

HouseofLight.rar (http://www.foundation3d.com/uploads/general/2009/09/8-02-935041.rar) ~7.7 meg

[DELTA]

Here's mine... added some reference shots and test progress renders. Enjoy


Maybe we can have Bob setup an IDEA Challenge area in the recourses section we can upload them to?

[David Myers]

Delta,
I think that's a great idea - setting up an area in resources to store scene files for entries. I know that I'm going to load up each and everyone of them that's been posted for this month and I'll learn something from each of them.

Alflud,
I appreciate your including the psd file - it helped me understand how you managed to composite your object into the background picture so well. Oh and with regards to my previous comments about liking your building as an out house, that was triggered by a misreading of the sign that you had to photoshop both to put it back in over the rendering of your building and to get rid of the realitor's name. I misread the adjusted sign as saying "toilet" instead of "to let".:o I just thought that, since some of the writing was breaking up a bit, that the "i" in toilet had been a casualty. After I saw the realitor's name in the pdf file I realized the words were "to let" - kind of funny anyway.;)

[alflud]

lmao :D I see what you mean though - does kinda look like 'toilet' haha I never noticed 'til you mentioned it. Hey, maybe we can have an idea challenge with the word toilet some day!!! lol Would be cool then to produce a piece of crap :D

[DELTA]

You never know! I am pleased with what every one did on the first challenge...

Just remember the Vulcan IDIC

"Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations"

[DELTA]

We only have 38 votes... Come on people... show your support Vote and join the next challenge underway!

[Tenement 01]

H'mmm, Pointy stick time!

[BillS]

The lights dim..........


charging now :)

[DELTA]

Keep it up Bill we have 39 now!

[DELTA]

Well everyone, today is the last day to VOTE! So if you haven't voted yet please do so!!!

[Rigel]

Thank you to everyone who voted. I am sure that artists appreciate your participation.

[alflud]

Yup! We sure do :) Congratulations to Cymro on a well deserved win - super cool idea and very well brought to life ;)

[Cymro]

Thanks to everyone for taking part.

[DELTA]

Congratulations Cymro!

I have to say we had a lot of very nice entries for this challenge and I would like to thank everyone that participated.

Hope the IDEAS are flowing for the next challenge....

[deg3D]

Indeed, congrats, Cymro! And to all with your entires! :)

deg

[BillS]

Congrats to Cymro and to everyone else that took part and a big thanks to those that took the time to vote. Thanks everyone.