Hannes' desperate WIP thread. Finally done! (page 4)

[FrankB]

That's great Hannes!
I love the reflectivity! Seems spot on! Not easy to do.

[Dune]

Nice iteration. I can imagine something very alien he's staring at. How on earth did you get those power/phone lines to connect to each other. I've been thinking about that, and got the idea to end the lines at 0 (zero), so I would know where to put the next pole. But what if a road goes uphill?

[Hannes]

Thank you!
@Frank: it's a simple reflective shader with the right balance of reflectivity and specular roughness.
@Dune: I didn't connect these in TG. That would have been really difficult. Actually I imported the terrain into 3ds max (I had to exaggerate the road's boundary displacement to see it there). In Max I created a spline next to the road and duplicated the pole along this spline. I created another spline and connected two points of the pole, converted it into a mesh and applied a bend modifier. I moved the pivot of this "cable" to the first end of it. So by duplicating it several times I could move the cables easily and rotate it to find the next pole. Of course I had to adjust the length each time.
It's quite hard to explain!
When I was finished I exported the whole array of poles and lines as a single mesh and imported it into TG, tweaked the textures properly and voilá. If the road would go uphill, it would have been more complicated, but possible doing it the same way. But it would be overkill to do that in TG I think.

[FrankB]

Interesting, but I think doing it manually in TG2 might have been even simpler, given the fact that only 9 poles are visible, and the wires and their connections are really only visible between the first 2. For the ones further in the background, it would have been enough to place them approximately correct. I think.

[Hannes]

That really depends on resolution. Actually there are 22 poles with four lines each. For this image I used the quick render settings, and the sun's glow might hide a lot of them and their lines, but in higher resolution you would see if you haven't worked correctly.
Here is a simple render of the poles alone rendered in 3ds max.

[Dune]

Thanks for explaining, Hannes. That would indeed be the only way, but quite a 'way round'. 

[Hannes]

Here is the actual version with added stuff. I found the barn model at turbosquid. It's free and nicely detailed. I had to tweak the textures a lot to fit into the scene.
Some weird patterns in the clouds in the upper middle directly above the sun. I think I can solve this by tweaking the acceleration cache.
I'll be taking care about the part on the right side now.
Still no object to stare at...

[Dune]

That's might realistic already. Perhaps some more (tufts of) grass in the left verge, where the shrub are? The guy is just staring at the car that's not coming. It's kind of intriguing this way, the viewer is searching the image for a clue to the guy's behavior. Don't make it too obvious, but hide some hidden gem somewhere! His spitting image coming from the other side? 

[Tangled-Universe]

Looking good so far Hannes. I agree with Ulco about the "what's up with the guy" part.

The cloud pattern is due to acceleration cache. Disabling removes the blocky artifacts, but the result will probably be a bit noisy, so you probably need to increase cloud quality.

[Hannes]

Thank you, guys, I'll keep that in mind!!!

[masonspappy]

That looks seriously darn good.

[Oshyan]

I agree, looking very good. The pose of the guy seems a bit stiff, though I'm honestly not so bothered by the lack of something for him to look at. If it were me, I'd just be looking at that beautiful sky!

- Oshyan

[Jo Kariboo]

Very nice ! I like your image. I see strange line in the skin texture on legs and arm of the guy. Not sure perhaps my monitor.

[Oshyan]

I do see some roughness or lines, especially on the legs. Could be the "hairs" that were mentioned in a previous posting of this, not sure. That kind of detail is pretty superfluous in this case. But I do very much like how the figure is lit.

- Oshyan

[Hannes]

Thanks again. Here is a larger crop render of that guy. Inkydigit mentioned in my "mosquitos" thread that it might be scabies 
Actually there is a skin texture with some red spots and pores. The mapping of the legs is cylindrically. Maybe the texture is a bit too stretched there.
It's on my ToDo list for the final touches.