For an image like this, light ended up being the primary driver to manage hierarchy and eye movement. Below is a little breakdown of how I used light to place the focal point exactly where I wanted it to be.
Rendering Shadows
This article will walk through how to render shadows in a 3D scene. You may follow along by loading Media:3D_render.toe in TouchDesigner. Jump to the end of the article for the completed shadow example.
- 1 Step 1 – Turn on Shadows
- 2 Step 2 – Removing Shadow Artifacts
- 3 Step 3 – Shadow Detail
- 4 Step 4 – Tweaking other Shadow Parameters
Step 1 – Turn on Shadows edit
In the light1, go to it’s ‘Shadows’ parameter page and change the Shadow Type to ‘Hard, 2D Mapped’. You’ll see shadows but they don’t quite look right. This is because geometry from the light/camera is casting a shadow. Change the ‘Shadow Casters’ parameter to be just geo1 instead of * and only the objects in geo1 will cast a shadow.
Sometimes there is a “moire” effect artifact covering the geometry with the default settings for the shadows. There won’t be in this case, but you can see them if you change the Polygon Offset Factor in the light’s shadow parameter to something lower. If you experience these artifacts you will need to adjust the polygon offset values until they go away.
Step 3 – Shadow Detail edit
Shadow detail can be optimized by adjusting the shadow map to use its resolution most effectively. Using the light’s Focal Length and Aperture parameters (or FOV), try to fill as much of the depth map as possible with the geometry.
You can visualize what the shadow map looks like by pointing a Depth TOP at the light. The shadow map may be very faint, too faint to see the geometry (the depth data is still valid, but the floating point values may be too hard to see visually in the image). Increase the light’s Near parameter until the geometry is visible. For light1, a value of 2 works in this example.
Now adjust Focal Length and/or Aperture until the geometry fills the maximum amount of the depth map. While adjusting these parameters, watch the viewer of the depth1 TOP and inspect the shadow’s detail. Go as far as possible without clipping the shadows. Return light1′s Near parameter to the previous value when done.
TIP: Double-check animated scenes when changing these settings.
1. Model and Base Rendering
Above, a screenshot of the Sketchup model. The model itself is simple and much of my time went into building some textures.
Above, the V-Ray base rendering shows the dappled light effect obtained by adding some simple, light low poly trees. I knew I would be replacing these out with Photoshop trees, I was only concerned about getting the shadows to read properly.
When setting up the sun location, I was focused on drawing attention to the bridge. 1- Therefore, I placed the back of the building in shadow, 2- left a portion of the bridge directly in the sun, 3- and then slowly fading the bridge back to dark using the tree shadows.
2. Inserting some Context
Next I added in some context. I stitched in some mountains and followed that with trees flanking both sides of the bridge.
The context trees are crucial to this image because they provide the frame that help draw attention back to the bridge. 1-The trees themselves were darkened considerably so that the bridge and background mountains remained the only objects in direct light. 2- I also used the trees as a way to create some strong diagonals in the composition to help naturally draw the eye back to the bridge in the center of the image.
3. Vegetation
I am showing the image with all of the vegetation in place, but no toning done to the individual layers. I wanted to show just how much some of the colors, contrast, and levels were adjusted from the original tree and shrub textures. More than anything, it shows how flat an image can be if time is not spent thinking about light and shadow in vegetation.
Above is the exact same image, but now with the vegetation fully toned. Some of the trees moved to almost pure black, with just a little detail. Little things like adding small highlights along the edge of the green wall give the vegetation dimension, but also add to the cozy feeling of the early morning bridge experience.
