Still life

Concept

We wanted to make close detailed shot, capturing small amount of space. Still life work is what we came to, while looking for ideas. We like the spirit of such art, in spite the shot is still, it often hides story behind it. This image is definitely can bring more emotions for a person who familiar with russian culture.

Leading role on the scene dedicated to the shot glass and cucumber. Other objects was added to balance the scene and to strengthen the composition.

Strategy

Main goal of our project is to produce a real looking image. Subtle details are crucial to achieve certain level of realism. Proportions of the objects, high-poly geometry, details such as small facets on edges, well chosen detailed textures and materials, color correction, gamma and lens effects, all this aspects are more than important in producing convincing result.

Technical details
Images were rendered on Intel Core i5, 2.7 GHz.
Small image: 20m, with 512 samples per pixel
Large image: 2h 30m, with 256 samples per pixel

Bump

In spite we had bump implemented during assignments, we additionally extended *.obj importer class and reconfigure triangle intersection class to support bump mapping.

Gamma correction

Sharp shadows and incorrect lighting gradients are result of linear color space. We decided to use gamma correction in our pipeline to make light more realistic.

BVH with SAH

The amount of primitives in our final scene is over 500 000. Without SAH acceleration method it would take way more time to get feedback and customize the scene.

Depth of filed

Since we have pretty close shot of the objects, camera DoF effect makes the picture look more appealing and focus attention on the object.

Lighting

Point and spot lights give sharp shadows, which is not natural for scenes captured indoors. We use area lights with warm and cold colors, simulating sky and room lighting.

Multithreading

Multithreading significantly redused rendering time and gave us more time to tweak the scene itself, producing more draft images.

Precedurally generated maps

Final diffusse and bump maps of the pickle cosist of many layers of procedural maps combimations, with ability to tweak each parameter separately.

Correct water/glass surfaces

To receive realistic refraction between two solids, we modelled water the way it would intersect the glass. Additionally it is important to simulate water surface tension, closer to glass faces.

Reflection of a guy with a camera*

To create a feeling of a real photo, we also modelled a person who stays behind the camera. Whose reflection you can see on glass and water.

Used 3D models
Parsley and cutting board
Tomato
Fork
*and there is no guy with camera, it is just a joke :)

Source of inspiration and tutorial about creating a pickle: render.ru

STILL LIFE