Spad 13 Re Work

[Tim West]

After some constructive correspondence with Aaron Weaver and the help of others here at this board, I decided to overhaul my Spad 13 model.

The model had some scale flaws and the general fuse shape was not correct. Also the model was remapped and new materials have been created to better represent canvas and metal surfaces.

Various other small details have been added and some preliminary work on a new pilot model has been started.Overtime I hope to do some new renders with the Spad and rework the profiles I have already done.


Here is a profile comparison between the old and new models. Big difference. Note the corrected Bleriot scheme




Please excuse the experimental lighting and green wind screen

All in all the model looks much more like a Spad than it did before.

[Mark_Miller]

Tim
That's a big improvement - Very nice.
I have found that re-working models done several years ago can be very rewarding.
Nice to be able to see personal growth.

That render looks pretty darn good too - regardles of the green windsheild
I'd say that "experimental lighting" worked out pretty well B)

Mark

[Tim West]

Thanks Mark, I like it better too B) Well worth the time now that its done. Maybe now I can leave this model alone for awhile now.

I like the lighting too, its a revamped copy of the lighting I used for some of the Le Rhone renders, but still its a little dark. I like the gritty look.

Heh, I am not sure why the glass is green, it was not supposed to be

[Mark_Miller]

The lighting setup you have is interesting in that the light source is indefinite.
I can't realy tell where the sun is.

So i think if you merge it with a background image of a hazy overcast day it might be pretty convincing.
But, that is a trial and error sort of thing.

My lighting is entirely different in that I generaly have a very definite light source. Which works out well for me because I like to play with the shadows.
I'm not sure how to achieve that hazy lighting in my rendering software.
In fact I need to try some different lighting setups.
Up till now I've stuck in a pretty narrow range.

nightime scenes - early morning
interior with artificial light
lots of possibilities - but my biggest limiting factor is the abscence of reflected light.
which makes interior scenes particularly problematic.

but, it could be done convincingly i think
Mark

[Tim West]

There are so many lighting possibilities. My problem is that when
trying stuff out, I am not very scientific about it. So its hard
some time to reproduce something that I liked

Your right about the above lighting looking early morning on a
overcast and misty day. Hmm kind of like where I live. Maybe I
can do something with that. Any idea on how bad the conditions
had to be for WWI pilots would not to fly in?

Ever since Alan asked about times of day and scene lighting I
have been trying to add color and mood to my lighting.



Sort of got it here, but its hard to tell if its dawn or dusk.

Mark, your light reminds me very much of mid day in winter. I think it works nicely.

Reflected light would be helpful for interior renders. Maybe
thats what I need is a off camera reflected light source to
light up areas of interest in my renders.

[Kirby]

OUTSTANDING!

[Mark_Miller]

Originally posted by Tim West@Jun 6 2004, 04:12 PM
[b]There are so many lighting possibilities. My problem is that when
trying stuff out, I am not very scientific about it. So its hard
some time to reproduce something that I liked

Tim
I know what you mean.
Sometimes it is difficult to figure out exactly what you did to make something happen.

back 15 years ago or so, when i was first experimenting with this software.
I had a lot of trouble figuring out what was going on.
The one thing that helped the most was isolating variables.
The problem comes from the fact that there are to many things you can change.
I know it might sound obvious - but the key is to just change one thing at a time - and then check for results.
Like I said - pretty obvious
But it took me a ridiculously long time to figure it out

Once I started using this more methodical approach my renderings improved rather dramaticly.
Another thing that helps a lot is to have a PC with enough crunching power to be able to rapidly render to screen.
If you have to wait 15 minutes to see the results of your actions it would take forever.