Hey…

This may seem like a really simple question, so I apologise in advance if I’ve overlooked the obvious, but this has been bugging me for a while…

Basically I want to know how people create those untextured yet nice looking basic renders, that have this sort of plastic feel to them, shadows are nicely done, and the shader or basic texture makes them look detailed despite a total absence of obvious textures. I don’t know if it’s special lighting or what.

I’ve included this image to demonstrate what I mean, the top image is by another artist and demonstrates what I’m talking about, notice the diffuse shadows and clear edge definition, whilst still giving the object a much more detailed appearance as opposed to the lower image which I created. I’ve used global illumination and final gathering with a single point light source above the object.

It uses only a lambert shader, and is very basic, I really don’t have a lot of experience, so any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

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Try out the ambient occlusion shader, with the right amount of tweeking you should get what you want!

Thanks for the tip… it’s rendering as I type… but I noticed the shadow under the object is the same as before… do you know how to achieve that kind of soft shadow?

Thx!

turn off shadows on your lights, let the ambient occlusion shader give you a false shadow based on it’s distance to other objects

it’s not really a shadow its just a matter of adjusting the spread value and max distance.

Okay, thanks for those tips, i will fiddle and see what i come up with, but so far it look better…

do you know if this is the same technique that is used a lot during say concept stages for competitions such as those held over at cgnetworks.com / cgsociety.org?

i’ve seen it around A LOT but never new how to do it… could it also be a combination of shaders or is it just the ambient occlusion one?

will test the shadows, thanks again!

Here’s an early result from using the ambient occlusion shader… looks a lot more like what I was after… so thanks!

would be nice to know if there are any other things I can do to make it look more like the example image.

thx!

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make sure you adjust the number of samples slider the default is 16 - too low in most cases.
Yes this technique is very widely used, it’s almost like a fast final gathering look or GI look.
cheers!

Awesome, yeh that’s it once I upped the number of samples it seems this is definitely the way to go… excellent, i’ve been wanting to know how to do this for sooo long!

thanks pavanz for your speedy and accurate response!

okay, so not much joy with the shadows… i have them on in the point light settings and shadow ticked with umbra set to 0. see image… anyway it looks good with increased samples. cheers again.

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try an area light… theres a whole new world of settings there! and watch out for those [B]Cassowaries![/B]