The Great Pumpkin

[Harvey Birdman]

Here's the WIP of a little project I've been messing with. This was done with no GI (quality~1, AA~4); there's an identical one with GI that's... not quite done yet.



The 'clouds through horizon' issue referenced here appears in two places in spite of my attempts to eliminate it. The bottom of the column directly to the right of the pedestal is slightly discolored, and there's a hole in the top edge of the fog to the left of the pedestal. The bottom of the column would be easy enough to fix with postwork, but the other one is a bit tougher.

The tree is the free XFrog Silver Maple w/out any leaves, the fence is Ogre's, the pedestal, church and weeds are from planit3d, the grass is the built-in stuff, the pumpkin is my own and I can't remember where I got the monument.

C&C's are welcome. On one of the monitors I've looked at this with, the lighting seems good. On the other, the pumpkin was way too bright, so I figure I'm going to do one more pass on this, so this is a good time to get in your best shot.... errr, suggestions.

[Kevin F]

I think that's pretty cool Harvey. The blemishes you mention are hardly visible and don't detract from the overall atmosphere of the piece which very effective. Nice one!
Kevin F.

[cyphyr]

This is real cool /evil grin smiley here/
Remember if you want to get more control out of your lighting save out as exr and edit in CS3, Photomatrix or any of the other HDR manipulation packages
HDR Software overview
Richard

[Will]

great runes there been making such things more myself recently.

[rcallicotte]

I like this a lot.  May I suggest using some source lights for a very dim fill?  Sometimes a little light like that can fool the eye into thinking the pupil has simply dilated to let in more light. 

[old_blaggard]

Great job!  The balance of the scene is perfect in my opinion - exemplary Halloween shot .

[dhavalmistry]

very nice....I like the grass

[Seth]

cooool ! i love it ^^

[Harvey Birdman]

Thanks, guys! So apparently no-one thinks the pumpkin is too bright, eh? Well, fine, then. We'll call this one good - I have an idea for my next one. I'll post the GI'd version of this for comparison when it finished.

Cyphyr - I'll check it out. My knowledge of post-work technique is limited to cropping and replacing.



Calico - I want to see what the GI'd version looks like. I think it'll probably fill in nicely. It's just a matter of time...

[sjefen]

Very nice work Harvey Birdman.
I don't think the pumpkin is too bright, but does the light source cast shadows? I can't se any shadows from it.

[Harvey Birdman]

There are actually 3 sources contributing to the pumpkin. One is inside, and it is set to cast shadows. The other 2 are outside and they aren't. The inside one is casting shadows, I expect, but you don't see them - if I put fog right in front of the pumpkin's face I expect there'd be beams coming out, though.

Hmmmmmmm.....     

[cyphyr]

My knowledge of Post Process is none too great either but with using exr images in the apps listed in the links roughly speaking you can tweak the shadow, highlight and tones much more effectively than you can in photoshop, just a matter of fiddling about with some sliders. Theres colour and tone information in a Terragen render its spent hours (sometimes days ~ shudder) rendering, seems a shame to just throw it away lol.
Richard

[Dark Fire]

I love the picture. I think everything except for the pumpkin could do with a bit of brightening though. I'd love to see how spooky it looks with fog in front of the pumpkin's face...