Send your Roll Call entry here

[Onkel Neal]

Ahoy maties,

We are putting the finishing touches on the 2008 Submarine Almanac, and we will be including a few pages of Roll Call, like we did in the last book. I invite you to submit your entry in the book. Here's how you do it:

Send an e-mail to subsim@subsim.com with the subject: Neal, here's my Roll Call entry.

In your e-mail, write a short paragraph. It can be

• about yourself
• an cool moment in your subsim gaming experience
• some observation about one of your favorite or first subsims
• or some general thoughts about submarines, sub games, or the Subsim community

The 2007 Almanac featured guys discussing "how they found Subsim", so in this edition, I would like to feature your thoughts on sub games, sub history, and submarines.

Keep it short, 150-175 words max.

I want to include as many as I can, and it will be best if you can include your real name and Subsim nickname. Of course, if you're in the FBI Witness Protection program or hiding from an ex-wife or three, you could make up a real name, I won't know. But if you want to show the book to your kids, friends, or family, your real name will make a better impression.

thanks!
Neal

Here is a sheet from the 2007 Submarine Almanac to give you an example

[Kapitan_Phillips]

That last pictures messing with my mind. Its one of those "Thats computer generated." "But wait.."

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Kapitan_Phillips

That last pictures messing with my mind. Its one of those "Thats computer generated." "But wait.."

Oh yes!
Thats rather good! I didn't notice it was CGI until I read your post.

Max and Vray?

[Onkel Neal]

How can you tell it's CG?

[fatty]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

How can you tell it's CG?

Lighting is a little unnatural, the books seem a little flat, and there are some jaggies on the model and pencil. It's pretty good though

[d@rk51d3]

Jaggies on the lounge arm backs, and the cup looks a little out too.

Mind you, you need to look twice.

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

How can you tell it's CG?

The AA is a little too sharp and this is made worse by *.jpg compression.

Suggestions:
Render in higher res then re-size in a good graphics program? <most effective
Use a wider AA filter?
Less *.jpg compression?


The Gloss on the chair isn't right.

Suggestions:
Is it false gloss or a golssy reflection? Does your renderer support reflective gloss?

The bump map looks a little strong. This dramatical changes the gloss.

Is there any texture on the chair material? It looks a little like you have used a bump
map to make up for lack of a detailed texture.

*edit* Did you use a real bump map or just a noise generator?


Looks like some clipping on the chair arm?

Also on the back of the chair.I could be wrong about this, but even if I can't tell for sure; if it is clipping or a bit of
a low polly count then it will make the image look less real, even if you can't tell for
sure.

Floor meets wall too neatly.

Suggestions:
Try moving the floor a few mm away from the wall
Use a dirt texture to slightly darken the floor or wall at the bottom

Mug model to fat round the rim.
Even the biggest are not quite that big.

Shadows too Dark.
Shadows in a lit room rarely go below 20:20:20 (Red:Green:Blue) in photos.
Your shadows are twice as dark even tho the scene is well lit elsewhere.
If you use indirect lighting:
Bump up the multiplier
Use reflective gloss in more materials if your renderer supports it
Use a bounce count above 2
Be sure to have lit objects behind the camera
If you do not use indirect lighting:
Decrease the shadow intensity

Books could use a subtle, large scale bump map and some gloss.


Please not that I am being ultra fussy and I may be wrong about any of these.
I had to do a lot of guessing because I don't know what software you used.
I go for artistic effect rather than realism in my 3d images.

It's all in the tiny details that give a image away of course. Always remember that
you can't have enough source images!

*edit*
Did you use a slightly yellow colour for the light?
Some studio lights are 100% white, but most are off white.

*edit2*
The wood on the table legs looks a bit plastic. Not sure why.

*edit3*
The semi-tori round the table legs look like they are clipping the table. Either bevel the join or use a curve on the join between leg and semi-torus when drawing the spline for the leg. (if you made it via spline lathe)

*edit4*
Something 3d from me


Thr spot light on th ring is too bright and does not light the water correctly.

*edit5* Sorry, you have taken me way off topic!

[Kapitan_Phillips]

Who made that picture anyway? (The Almanac one)

[Onkel Neal]

Mighty Spence, artiste extrodinairre.

And for the record, the jaggies don't give away anything, that's simply a result of shrinking the pic down to web size.

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

And for the record, the jaggies don't give away anything, that's simply a result of shrinking the pic down to web size.

Yes and no, that's only part of the story.

Here is a render with no textures from a surveillance camera from a project I started
yesterday.
I have rendered the whole image 3 times with different settings on the render resolution and AA filter.
I have then optimised the images very heavily for web use. Like in the image you posted.

Worse:
This one looks jagged because the filter was too sharp and it was only rendered to
800x600. Sharp filters do not work well at low res and they usually react badly to
*.jpg compression.

Fair:
This one looks better because a wide filter was used. Wide filters work best when
the finished product is low res and/or is going to be web optimised. There are still
jagged edges on the left.

Best:
This one has been rendered with a wide filter at medium/high res (2048x1536).
Post render it was re-sized and then optimised the same as the other two images.
The result is far smother.

To show the differences the samples have been cropped and then re-sized by pixel
resize by 150%.



*edit* I know the deform on the corner is a little off.

[kiwi_2005]

Blokes can start a conversation about anything, the thread starts of with an invite to add yourself to subsim book then gets further down the page and we're talking about jagged edges.

"Jagged edges"

[Onkel Neal]

Yeah, I know what you mean. At least it got a slew of guys to send in their Roll Call piece, I thank you for that.

[Letum]

Seeing as this topic isn't in use for anything.......
Getting there, but I still need lots of work on the details.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Letum

Seeing as this topic isn't in use for anything.......
Getting there, but I still need lots of work on the details.

Yeah, sure why not? :rotfl:

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Yeah, sure why not? :rotfl:

I'm loveing the topic titles!