Day and Night

Member : redbeard

Image description
Day and night, country and city, rounded and sharp, living and inanimate. Contrast in many ways, all at once.

Description of how this image was created
My first idea was of a split screen - one side light one side dark. That was quickly followed by the idea of hills or mountains on the light side and a dark cityscape on the dark side. So, I did a few test renders to see if I could do the split screen in a single render. It worked, but then I had to figure out how to support radiosity. Got that going and then spent a lot of time on a few detail buildings. Then I decided I really needed some hills and played with isosurfaces and the beta distribution function to sort of sculpt some out. I used Gilles Tran's maketree macro for the tree and Rune's furtex macro for the grass. I really wanted to do real grass, but I ran out of time. I started putting it all together last night. The city wasn't full enough so I wrote a macro that plopped rectangular buildings around, using trace() to make sure they didn't hit the prebuilt ones. Finally, I started to work on the lighting. This was tough, since I was running the radiosity on my nice system at work while sitting at home on a not-quite-fast-enough net connection. So I'd render there and transfer here to look at it. Add into that family obligations and this particular render isn't quite as good as I'd like. I'm running with full anti-aliasing at a higher res right now, but I know the deadline is almost here... so here's a rougher version. But if this one makes it in, this is the first time I've been able to actually enter a RTC!

General statistics
No of ratings	:	14
Min. overall rating	:	11 (5 / 5 / 1)
Max. overall rating	:	43 (14 / 15 / 14)
Sum of rating	:	405 / 840
Date uploaded	:	2008-08-16 22:43:32

Specific details Note: The maximum value below is misleading as the voting system has changed. If the member votes for all the entries and has created one him/herself, there is an automatic 20/20/20 score added to the value (This encourages all members who enter to vote).
Rating type	:	Min : Max : Sum : Out of
Artistic	:	4 : 20 : 125 : 280
Concept	:	5 : 20 : 154 : 280
Technical	:	1 : 20 : 126 : 280
Overall	:	11 : 60 : 405 : 840

Comments by members when rating this image

1.   30-08-2008 Sorry, this is just too basic look&feel for me. I can't stand large areas of uniform color. When a picture is split like that, it strongly suggests the presence of an underground world (such as large cave or ocean). In your case, it would have been better to split vertically, and blend the nature with the city from left to right, in such a way that trees become skyscrapers. The sky would have shown a sun on the left, and stars on the right, etc. But please use a bit of blending to avoid such a clean-cut separating line. The idea for random rectangles is smart, but it didn't really work. Finally, I want to congratulate you for very first rendering competition. 2.   28-08-2008 Great idea! Although the image looks basic, it certainly works for contrast. 3.   27-08-2008 I think I understand the concept. The only problem I find with the image is that it simply looks like two disparate images stuck together instead of one that looks cohesively like one image. Good work in getting an image done though. I missed the deadline. 4.   18-08-2008 The concept has real promise and definitely demonstrates clear contrasts however the outworking of that concept could probably do with a bit more work. 5.   18-08-2008 I think you got the idea right and I hope you will expand a bit on this, time and possibilities being there of course. You chose a very effective way to picture the theme. Try to put some more trees maybe, and use POV-tree as that works with mesh2 objects. 6.   17-08-2008 The concept is interesting - and challenging. This is just a suggestion, but I would maybe have sacrificed the night element, to accentuate more the other contrasts. 7.   17-08-2008 Congrats on getting an image done for entry! That's the hardest step for me :) I think you had a neat concept here, and with practice, I believe your raytracing skills will definitely progress. Artistically, the compsition of the image is a bit off. The tree at the top is cut off (and it is also rather obviously the default tree, for anyone who has used the macro). The horizontal line in the middle makes the image appear even narrower than it is. Reducing the width of the image would make it feel more balanced, I think. Radiosity was rather wasted on the picture, in my opinion. You could have reduced your render time immensely without it. It's useful for adding highlights and reflective color, but that doesn't really come into play in this image. Also, the big yellow window (?) at the bottom is distracting. I do like the buildings with their scattered lights, though. It keeps the bottom from being impossible to see. 8.   17-08-2008 A good idea and well done but the lights in the dark are too contrasty