Old West - Minor Adjustments

I just modified a few things for comparison:

Increased the indoor saloon lights a little
Added some heat distortion in the distance
Added a bit more reflection in the saloon windows on the second floor

Western Scene Update

Updated scene:

• adjusted the lighting a little and composited it together.
• Moved a few objects around in the background - mainly to avoid making the cowboy have stuff sticking out of his head.
• Adjusted the displacement a bit on the ground
• Did some comp painting for shadows and such
• Added a bit of glare glow around bell tower
• bunch of other stuff I can't remember.. HA!

Maya Work - Boat

Did some learning today and some work on the boat.

Added a mesh of rope, and played with the canopy tent.  I also added little details here and there.

Most of the rope and cloth stuff was done with NCloth.

Threw on basic materials just so I could see the different objects better.

Minor Western Fixes

Just a few updates today.

• I updated the tree for a few more branches.  I also added some segments and roughness to some of the larger branches.  I added a bump map to the bark as well.
• I angled some of the branches more toward the focus of the scene.
• Adjusted the Final Gather lighting a little.
• Adjusted the ground plane texture a little.
• Changed the texture of the mid-ground wagon.  I made it grayer and older looking so it did not blend with the buildings behind it.
• Added a few extra shrubs in the background.

An Old Dusty Road

What a day... Today was one of those days that I felt I worked and worked and barely accomplished anything.   I worked on re-making the ground plane wagon tracks today.   Still not sure I am happy with what I ended up with.  Will have to wait for some critique.  I need fresh eyes on it.

Maya - Working on the Boat

Took a break from the western scene while I wait for crits.

Worked mainly in Maya and modeling today.  Still can model about 4-6 times as fast in Max.  Mainly because of the many tools that make modeling easy in Max... they don't exist in Maya without scripts.  Very odd.

Fishing Boat

Some more progress on this boat.  Not as much as I would like, but I had to go back and fix some mistakes that were made... and then Maya crashed and had to do a bunch of it again...sigh... Maya doesn't autobak like Max does either.

Western Scene - new composition

Updated the composition a little:

• Moved the cowboy around a bit
• Adjusted the horse in background and added another.
• Removed a couple of things that were interfering with the cowboy.
• Moved the foreground tree to become more prominent.
• Adjusted some of the church and post office textures so they don't "glow."

Continued to play with lighting:

• Blued the shadows some.
• Lengthened the shadows
• Tried a new composition method by dividing FG, Direct Light, and Sun FG and compositing together.

Maya Effects

working on sparks ...in Maya

Quick update

Continuing to work in Maya's Effects.  Nothing wild and crazy.. just watching lots of instruction.

Continuing to tweak the Western scene as well.  I liked the previous posts, but got some really good critiques that I will be applying in the next day or so.  More then.

Western Scene Update

Some work with compositing.   This image is the adjusted composition with the color of the render.

Basic Composition

 This image is with the generic sepia applied... Just showing this for contrast purposes

Generic Sepia applied

 I did not want to use just plain sepia.  I want color in the image as well.  I want more focus into the depth of the scene, so am bringing the color forward with a z-depth application of the sepia look.

Z-depth Sepia

 Same as above with the windows' color brought out more for contrast.

Z-Depth Sepia and Window Adjustment

May work on a bit of scratches and old photo edges.. .not sure.

Maya - Dock

some work in Maya
Very basic (and bad) lighting I just threw in so I could see stuff
Boat is incomplete
Nothing is really textured.

Adding Horse to new Camera Angle

Added the horse, tweaked a bit in Photoshop with various adjustment layers.

Camera Angle and Lighting

Working on the composition of image some more.

Moved the Wagon around a bit as well as the camera.

Still tweaking...

but am stopping for the day and wanted to post something up.

Worked on some models and materials of the buildings.
Worked on position, lighting, and materials of cowboy and horse.

Threw together very quick comp to see how it is coming along....

Materials & Composition.

Today I am working on modifying the composition of the western scene.  I like the focal point of the cowboy, but he is getting lost in all the textures of the background.  I am considering a couple of things.

• Manipulating the models' position a bit to get better composition
• Changing some of the distant materials to be more plain and desaturated.
• Adjusting the cowboy's texture.
• Adding the cowboy as a layer instead of rendering as part of scene - enable me to adjust background easier.

Working with Global Illumination

Some lighting updates.   worked with Global Illumination and photons.  Lots of rendering and waiting today.

Final Gather Based on HDRI image

Global Illumination only.  10,000,000 photons 

Final Gather and Global Illumination combined.

And as I finished this... I realized I had not unhidden some of the models:  curtains, posters, pebbles, shrubs.  NUTS!   Those Global Illumination calculations take about 3/4 hour to render!

Basic Composition Update

Put in the sunset.
No depth of field yet.
Added Ambient Occlusion
Little bit of dust/depth fog.
Little bit of color adjustment
Added a bit of glare around the church top.

Adjusted Lighting

tweaked the lighting some based on some critique.

New Composition

Some things done recently:
Added the new horse and rider
Added a couple of tumbleweeds
Adjusted the comp so the lit windows are only on the unlit side of the building
Added some Ambient Occlusion - subtle shadows
Added a bit of glare from the sun.
And the usual composition stuff:  Saturation, DOF, Dust layer, etc.

I may also post various locations and direction of the horse and rider later.

Adding the Horse and Rider.

Couple of things on this update
Threw in a quick rider and horse. Very basic texture - just some basic matte with multi-subobject material on character. Very basic pose and horse is not posed at all yet. I need to bring the horse's head to the camera left a bit and down as well as adjusting the legs some. No saddle has been added either. I just wanted to throw this up to see how the focus is looking. I think I may need to actually push the rider and horse back into the scene a bit more.

I don't think I will need much detail in the texture for the sunset shot, but the daylight one, I will need it more. I will also need more work on the modeling for the daylight scene.

I also dropped the light in the saloon another 30%.