Maxwell Render

keep in mind, that in a real life studio photo environment many things are not done in a single shot. They are done in multiple shots using various exposures then combined in photoshop.

If this iPod were real, and it were not sitting on a fully backlit plexiglass sweep, the photographer would likely do at least two shots if her weren't able to get this fully white with highlight clean look.

One shot to make the iPod look perfect, not caring what the reflection looked like. and a second shot to make the reflection look perfect and not care about wth the iPod looked like. Then combine the two in photoshop.

I do alot of liquor bottle product renderings and I know that when my company uses a real photographer to shoot a bottle they'll use 4 or 5 differen't lighting setups and combine in the end.

here's a list of common shots they combine

1 Lighting just for the cap
2 Lighting just for the label
3 Lighting for the actual bottle
4 Lighting for the base of the bottle

They don't always do it like this, but it's not an uncommon thing, and is something to keep in mind when you can't get that perfect shot right out of maxwell.

I personally always do a bottle render, then do a separate render just for the floor/background and combine the two in photosohp.

Just thinking about what you are saying itsallgood, and this can be achieved with one multilight render, saving the two images and automating in photoshop to combine the two images with an object ID render output.

When I do 100's or 1000's of product shots I don't have time to manually combine images in post render work. So, automating this process in Photoshop would be ideal and allows for more control over the white background and render subject.

I will test this next week and post results. I will also post the process.

This is why I always laugh when I hear about renders that are as "easy as taking a picture."


@Blitzor: You can achieve some of those things with ML, but a lot generally depends upon moving lights around to achieve optimal results for different objects and surfaces. If your 100-1000 shapes are identical, or largely so, you may get away with it, but it would not necessarily be quite the same thing as what itsallgoode9 is referring to.

b

_________________
Brett Simms
http://www.heavyartillery.com

I can always achieve a white background and fairly good renders on the subject using one image. What I normally have to do though (especially for jewelry), is darken the reflectance of the metals a bit so the white floor doesn't burn out the metal. But you can avoid using altered materials and use stock materials by seperating the images and doing post photoshop work.

I also noticed as well the diamonds get a bit washed out sometimes with a white floor. And you have no control over the amount of refractiveness on a diamond material if you use the ior files. Again, this wouldn't be the case with two images.

[quote="hyltom"]Many people already asked me how can they achieved such render in maxwell. Actually it's not that complicated and most of the time it doesn't request any postwork. First and maybe the most important component is the floor material. Most of the time after explaining the technics, user always comeback to me and ask me why they can't get the same floor as mine. Theirs was always looking grey but not white. So to avoid waste of time and long test, here is the material for the floor : [url]http://www.divshare.com/download/2401974-b44[/url]
Then the other component is the environment. Having a white environment is not necessary true in that case. I fund that the most important is to have a light burning the background behind the object you are shooting. To make it easier, here is what i' m using as environment : [url]http://www.divshare.com/download/2402030-cfc[/url]. It's a homemade LDR. The quality is not really great, but it can give good result. One thing is that you have to put the intensity of the environment to 2. Than set the the ISO to 400, the shutter to 4 and the f-stop to 22. These setting should be correct for a product shoot (like a coffee maker). Another important thing is to position the LDR in the good way. The black part should be behind the camera.
I have used this technics during a long time, so if i remember well, all this component should give you the right lighing setup. And don't worry about the wash out, if all your material are well calibrated, everything should looks good.[/quote]


Hi Hyltom,

I've been following the settings above to render an iPod dock that I am designing.

I'm sure I have got all the settings correct, but the images look bleached out, do you have any suggestions of where I am going wrong???


I can send you a picture if that would help.

Cheers

Scott

Hi Scott,
Can you show me your picture and maybe also some screen capture of your scene in order to understand your lighting.

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Hyltom, Industrial Designer,
Rhino3D 4.0 - Maxwell 1.7.1 ... Q9400 - 4GB RAM

@hyltom

Do you have a twitter account? Thanks!

@cyberfish_fred

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F. Peters Cyberfish