Grand Prize!

Well, I guess it all paid off :)

Final Image

Well, here it is...the final image that I'll be submitting to the competition on Monday:

I'm honestly extremely happy with this image!  I never thought that I'd be able to get something that looks this good.  Sure, the ship isn't perfectly real-looking, and sure, the gas could be a teensy bit crisper.  But wow, I really feel like I achieved a piece of space concept art!

Regardless of what happens at the competition, I've achieved my goal.  I made an image that I'm proud of, and I did so using a lot of cool technology, including a new procedural modeling language and GPU path tracer (with Metropolis!).  And I learned sooooo much during the course of the past two months!

It took so, so many hours of work.  But I think it was worth it.  We'll see if the judges agree!

:)

Getting Close

Yes, Progress.

I'm actually really happy with this image!  That may be a first :)

The grayish blue backdrop really makes the ship look more realistic.  It doesn't look quite as cool, but I'll take the realism instead.

I think the ship is locked in place!  I like that shape.  Still need to attach the emblem and a few more guns in strategic locations, maybe even some greeble if I have time.  Also need to find the right asteroids.

At the risk of blowing my luck, things seem to be coming together nicely and on schedule for the competition!

Progress?

Not bad.  Unfortunately, I think I'm going to have to settle for a dim ship.  That's just the way that it's going to have to be....it looks more real and more natural (and more ominous).

You can still see detail, though.  And you can even see the Fresnel effect if you look carefully at the behavior of the metal, which is nice.

Good Idea

Place the ship so that it cuts the top half of the sun, allowing the sun to reflect off of the bottom.  At a grazing angle, the metal will be highly reflective thanks to Fresnel.  The sun can be used to demonstrate the reflectivity of the hull, giving a much more realistic impression to the easily-trickable eye.

Cool! I'll continue to experiment with this.

Better

That nasty glossy scattering function had to go.  Replaced it with Gaussian distribution.  No-brainer.  At 20% diffuse, 80% glossy, the ship is looking a little better.  Still looks cheap and cartoon-ish, though.

I actually think it's getting too close to the camera.  I should push it back a bit...

Oh...and the front of the ship...what the heck is with that???  Total garbage...

Still Can't Get the Ship Right

But at least the other stuff is looking really good...

Reformation

I'm shifting the tone of this project.  The last image was just too cool to ignore.  I've got to focus on real-looking scenes, and the second-to-last image that I posted just didn't come near the last one in terms of believability.  I think emphasizing the gas is critical, and the beam just isn't working out.

Here's my current attempt to change the direction of the project:

I added a postprocess kernel to the tracer that (finally) performs tonemapping.  The tonemapping is quite nice; I used the filmic (global) tonemapping operator given in the Uncharted 2 lighting presentation.  It works really well! I also added a bloom filter to give the sun a "brighter" feel, as well as to hide those jaggies.  I'd say everything is looking much more polished.

Next step is to play with asteroids and see if they're going to fit into this new composition.  I really hope so, as I don't want all of my old work to go to waste (I mean...you already can't see the beautiful ship detail/metal BRDF...)