My first cartoony 3D BG for C&C

[InCreator]

I tried to emulate LucasArts' cartoony style and find some simplistic, good-looking way to create backgrounds in 3D... (my current 2D techniques are WAY too complex for me to ever finish any game).

notes:

* the wallpaper tiling is off because there's no UVW map assigned: but assigning one will ignore the wacky angle of walls and makes it straight... which looks worse. I'm still searching for solution to this one.
* The fuzziness of armchair texture is not a bumpmap nor intended thing: It's because of photons and I decided to keep it that way, because it looks cool

So, what do you think?
And what simple could be done to improve this heavily? I'm sure there's something...

[Boney]

All of your square shapes are widest in the top (the door, the doorhandle, the bookcase, the window and the wall). Maybe you could play a bit around with the shapes to make them more different. the bookcase, i think, would look cool if it was wider in the bottom.

[InCreator]

Sounds like a good idea.


* Fixed camera to a bit more adventure game friendly position
* Added ship in a bottle
* Added ceiling light (awful shadow! Still figuring out how to fix)
* Used UVW map on walls. Better? Worse?
* Fixed desk light a bit
* (temporarily?) removed all reflective materials (I just don't have the patience for 40 hour render)
* Tuned down frontmost light so its more ambient now
* Figured out how to use FFD boxes to squeeze everything simply

Ah, and I'm using 3ds Max 8 + mental ray renderer (Global Illumination + Final Gather)

[MadReizka]

I think it looks quite nice, even though you should redo the wall texture, so it wont look so... bizarre.
Mayby some "heavier" or darker shadows so it wont be so plain. Keep it up.

[The Ivy]

In the first image you can see the reflection of the wall corner in the desk, so the desk almost looks see-through.

[Alynn]

Hrm, as an idea for the back wall, could you possibly have the black lines fan out so they don't look cut off. out of all of it, that seems the only thing that is off to me.

So it would be something like this \  |  / with the other lines in between at increasing angles

[ManicMatt]

I liked it until you added that ceiling lamp in! Maybe if you just had it switched off..

And, if you insist of a ceiling light switched on, would the light in the middle of the room still look like that? I'm no expert as you know, but it looks weird now!

Also, the light on the ceiling is now so bright my eyes look at that before anything else, so it detracts my eyes from the rest of the background.

I would love to play a game with these kinda backgrounds though! Can't wait to see a character!

[thewalrus]

     Aye, I think it looks awesome! Keep up the great art work!!! You rock!!!

[Theme]

Nice 3d background. I guess you put the green material of the lamp too transparent or is it a lightleak through the top?

o/

[Neil Dnuma]

I think it's a nice room. I like the design on some of the stuff, the phone table in particular.

You've mentioned the shade on the roof, it is indeed very disturbing.

I'm really no good with 3D, but made some suggestions anyway. I thought the red was too saturated, and threw in a couple of ideas for detailing;


I could have added more stuff, like something on the desk, maybe some variations in the bookshef, and perhaps a different color on the phone..


As already said, you should fix the texture on the back wall. Even edit the map in a paint program if you can't get the UVW right.

Keep up the good work!

[ildu]

Wall textures:

1. Add a UVW Unwrap modifier to the walls.
2. Select the walls and press 'EDIT' from the modifier rollout.
3. Change the UVW's manually from there

[Da_Elf]

last image is looking ok. but the walls were best in the 1st image.
as for your lighting it leaves much to be desired but thats only becuase i work in the architectural visualisation field and im used to rendering with GI photorealistically.

[LimpingFish]

What kind of light are you using for the ceiling light? And have you made the bulb transparent? If it is transparent, then it should be set to not cast or receive any shadows. A transparent object that casts shadows could account for that ugly ceiling projection. Here's how I set a room to be lit by a single light:



Positioning the light just beneath the bulb itself retains the appearance of light eminating from the bulb, but does away with a problems you might have if the light was positioned inside the bulb geometry.

You can then set the bulb with a luminace and glow shader, to give the illusion of light.

The shadows cast by a single light in a room might prove a little too deep, so an extra ambient light that doesn't cast shadows, positioned in the centre of the room, will make the shadows lighter.

Edit: Of course lighting a room for a static image is about 90% fakery. You'll probably have to add a number of lights, to simulate light bounce or colour bleed, before you're happy with an image.

[Da_Elf]

well. you dont need to fake if your using GI. here is a typical image I'm workingon for a client right now. this is a preview render I'm waiting on the approval on before i do the final image. The living room contains 6 down lighters, 3 under cabinate lights. 4 down lights in the bedroom to the left and the rest is fill light from the sun and sky outside. I didnt bother with ies lighting since i know the client wouldnt even recognise the difference (forgive the technical gargon)

http://www.elfpro3d.com/Asterix/int03.jpg


edit
ah. now i know what it is thats bugging me about the scene. in reality there are veeery few hard edge corners. alot of the corners in my scenes will have a tiiiny bevel on them, however in cartoony stuff you need to really over exadurate the "balloony" feel to the objects. your going in the right direction with making things not quite 90 degrees however the edges are still too sharp.

[InCreator]

Thanks for comments so far!
For my very first try to make 3D room I didn't expect so much feedback.
Earlier, I used 3ds max only to create random unlit room with simple boxes just for reference for my 2D backgrounds.
Next version is here.



Lighting in 3D is still a hardcore mystery for me. Maybe you could give me some real tips, da_elf? Like, where to put lights, what type and what intensity?

Main problem is that any kind of adjust & try with such powerful things as GI and photon lighting is almost impossible due looooong rendering time, even if I render only 100x75 size image. So it's pure guesswork.

This particular image took about 18 minutes to render, though I have quite powerful system.

Better? Worse?

I'm NOT aiming for realism, but good looks.
And I personally prefer the more colorful (saturated) variant I did earlier: Color and cartoon goes together.
Also, I think that desk is way too "straight" and decreases cartoony effect, but it's quite hard to change it.

I DON'T know what lighting anomaly is near bottle. It just rendered there somehow.
This room has 4 lights right now, and 2 of them cast raytraced shadows.
I did bevel here and there, though due my lazy - or rather hasty - modelling, it didn't turn out too good at some places. (sp?).
Light-colored ceiling seems to hate photons - it reflects almost any color in room, resulting in dirty look.

Can't wait to see a character!

er... CHARACTER?!
** shudders

[CaptainBinky]

Not sure how you've produced your wacky 3D shapes, but hopefully you've not modelled them that way. The easiest way to produce the effect on single meshes is to add an FFD or Taper modifier. If you want to apply this effect to compound objects (like the bookcase and all the books on it) then again, the simplest way is to group all those objects and then apply one of those modifiers to the group.

Regarding the texturing of the walls, like ildu says, you want to edit the UVs so that the UV coordinates of the wall look like this:

0,0 -------- 1,0
     |         |
     |         |
0,1 -------- 1,1

Even if the wall is tapered, the UV coordinates should still look like that in the UnWrap modifier. You may need to subdivide the wall so that the UVs don't distort across the triangles.

Personally, I think Global Illumination for a style like this might be a bit overkill - just a sure-fire way to cripple your render times. I would personally just use the standard renderer until you're comfortable with lighting. Something cartooney doesn't want beautiful soft shadows and indirect lighting on it anyway does it?

Cheers,

Cap'n Binky

[Ubel]

Wow, it looks really awesome! This would look great in a game! Good job!

[Mordalles]

hey, increator, looks great. just wanted to add that considering the wacky shapes of everything in the room, the desk chair and desk seems a bit unwacky. 

edit:  oh, you already mentioned it yourself.  sorry.

[Da_Elf]

lighting in 3d is honestly the exact same as lighting in real life for me with GI. and people might think GI is too high in render time but these days its not. the image i showed above was a 1 hour render time on only one of my computer. i could have gotten it down to 10 minutes if i used my farm. Im pretty sure your scene would render in about 5 minutes with GI
normally my technique is to start with the empty room and calubrate exterior light commin in the windows. the tricky part for realism is the fact that exterior light is soooo much brighter than interior light. so normally when you expose for interior scenes anything outside gets very bright. The only way to counteract that is to bring in lots of high powered flash lights which will brighten inside alot leaving outside closer to the exposure range. these are techniques that can be gotten from photography or film books.
then i go ahead and setup my interior lighting fixtures. im not sure if its still there but www.erco.com used to have a manual about lighting techniques. typically downlights (built into the roof) leave a darker overall feel to the room. Wall mounted light fixtures tent to get a more overall even light distribution.
Due to the fact that my GI stuff is physically based from the camera, the lights, the materials it takes alot of paying attention to how the lights are setup.

[InCreator]

Well, when I started this room - and I have mentioned enough that it's my very first one, I had no clue what taper or FFD modifier is! All I could do before this one, was making boxes. And cylinders.

Now, the room isn't "wacked" by any modifiers, but simple vertex moving.
Then again, bookcase and some latter objects are.

I have never understood how to make unwrap UV stuff work (got most of things done by simple UVW box or face map), but I guess I'll give it a try.

Global Illumination? Well, It looks just soooo sweet if I'd get it to work properly. Same room with standard scanline renderer and my non-existant lighting skills looks like pure crap.

Then again, I've almost given up on getting it to work properly. Adjusting a single variable and waiting 20 minutes just to try again is damn stupid. Not to mention discouraging.

Seems that I have to borrow computer from NASA, because only 30000 triangles is still too much for 2x2,18 GHz dualcore processor with 7900GT Geforce card?

[Theme]

wow 1hour render? it's too long i think.
InCreator you might be using the settings for the render too high.
One good render solution is Kerkythea: http://www.mfbb.net/kerkythea/kerkythea.html
it's very fast

edit: but you 'll have to do some exporting stuff

o/

[LimpingFish]

I'd agree that GI is overkill, and is really only needed for photorealistic professional work. I find that, for a small room, an omni light such as the one in my image, along with some key lights, will be perfectly adequet for a scene such as InCreator's.

As I've mentioned (many times ) before, I use Cinema 4D XL 6. It doesn't support GI , but never once have I felt at a loss when lighting a scene. It has enough light types (omni, spot, area, parallel, etc) and enough flexibility in shadow types for almost any scene. Plus it has a really fast render system.

Back to the scene...

Looks really nice, but where is that light source above the telephone eminating from?

[Da_Elf]

why are people so afraid of GI? heck he said it took him 7 minutes to render his scene. and after talking to him i found out his computer was stronger than the one im doing this test on.

[LimpingFish]

Looks fine, if a bit sterile.
And the lack of contrast between shadows make it look a little flat.

Now light it as if the bulb is illuminating the room.

[CaptainBinky]

why are people so afraid of GI?

Nobody's afraid of it. I just questioned it from a stylistic perspective.

[Da_Elf]

true. it does ahve its own style.
i couldnt help fooling around with the scene

night 1 light (middle of roof) needs to be brighter to light the room so its giving a hotspot




night with the roof light plus other lights out of view mounted as wall mounted lights. (less of a hotspot)




night skylight only




and since i was bored enough i couldnt resist.

[thewalrus]

     Wow, awesome improvements!!!

[InCreator]

Near-finished!
I'm using Vray instead of Mental ray now (thanks, da_elf!).

I think I have successfully achieved that cozy, colorful cartoony look I wanted, so I'm quite satisfied with this room now. Some additional details are still missing (I'll add them later), but hard part is over now.

Of course, my room is nowhere near these realistic renders da_elf did, but realism was never my objective at the first place.

As I make more rooms and improve on lighting, I may improve this one aswell.
To be honest, I'm extremely happy that I learned something so cool and new... and maybe a bit proud too. 
Thanks for C&C, everyone.

[Da_Elf]

this strikes me as a night time shot. if so you might want to turn off your outside light as well as make the background color dark

[InCreator]

Evening shot.
Once I decide the color of evening sky (which I will use also in other rooms), I'll rerender it here too.

[Da_Elf]

ah ok. and dont forget another part of mood is also color of your lighting.

[LimpingFish]

Looking great. Nice improvements. 

[MadReizka]

Da_Elf:
What renderer did you use?
Vray, Brazil or somethingelse?

[Cluey]

God I wish I could do my lighting that realistic. Do you guys have an links to tutorials and such? I'm good at outdoor lighting, but indoor I find tricky.

[Da_Elf]

Da_Elf:
What renderer did you use?
Vray, Brazil or somethingelse?

Im a vray beta tester

[Da_Elf]

Strange. it says that my message is posted but its not showing up for me. still shows cluey as the last post. anyhow. i was saying that i was a vray beta tester thats my software of choice. as for learning about lighting, when you get to the level of physical renderers all you need to do is pick up a book on lighting for photography or lighting for film. Once your materials are all set up properly you can just insert your lights and your camera and use the same camera peramiters as a snap shot camera since vrays camera comes with all those peramiters.

edit. must have been the computer i was on i can see it now. can someone delete my post above this one

[Lad]

I know I shouldn`t crit Da_elf work, but there should be a little glow from the laptops monitor.(as it was working)(last pic of his)

[Da_Elf]

actually in contrast to the brightness of the exterior light the light from a laptop is extreamly dim not to mention that whats wrong with the laptop is that at that viewing angle the screen should be even duller due to the nature of LCD screens. where i should have put glow is at the window since its so bright. normally when doing a job for a client i will tend to put in some glow but sometimes clients are actually bothered by it even though the glow is closer to realism and we all know the rule that the clients always right. The great thing is usually i work with an interior designer so my job is just to put the scenes together and i dont even need to worry about furniture possition or selection or color (:

[SpacePirateCaine]

One thing I noticed about this background that may stand to be mentioned is that with the exception of your couch and the front of the desk, your lines are straight. Though it'll significantly increase your poly count and make rendering take a while longer, you might want to look into some curving - lines that are nice and straight, though they don't take away from the overall cartoony ambience, seem a bit sterile. Your mundane objects are all warped, which looks great, but you may want to take it one step further, and add just a little bit of Bill Bryson style curve to the art.

For reference:

Note how all of the lines have subtle curves. (Screenshot borrowed from World of Monkey Island.)

I've been looking at some other 'cartoony' 3D rendered games (MI4, Sam & Max 2), and they don't really use this technique very much either, so I can't predict how it'll look ultimately, but I think it could benefit you in the long run insofar as adding a little more 'cartoony' flavor to the images. Might be worth a try, at least.