Making A Material Difference

Great Models Are Only Part Of Great Computer Graphics

For a while now I have been working on some conceptual art projects and it made me contemplate what makes an image work or not work. I have been involved with creating digital art for around 20 years. Over that time I have used all kinds of different software to model objects almost always striving to create models with the highest level of realism that I could. Sometimes this requires computer models that have really detailed geometry and therefore high numbers of polygons. This can take up vast amounts of memory to process and render.

Enter The Materials

Often the it is just as important to have good textures and materials along with your models. These materials often add realism that could not be achieved by modeling alone. For instance in this scene you see the raised panels on the walls and in some of the recessed electronics panels. I would simply run out of ram before I was able to achieve that level of detail so I rely on something called displacement to add 3d look and feel to what is essentially a flat surface.

I See The Light

I tend to do most of my rendering in something called Corona Render. They have a material that allows me to use geometry to cast light in a scene in a way that a regular light might not be able to. For instance, A point light would help to light a general area but would not allow for strip lighting above the monitors to help light the scene like they do in this shot. As a matter of fact all of the lights in this scene come from one of these materials there are no other dedicated lights in the scene. There are both strengths and weaknesses to this approach. It can take longer to render and there can be a greater amount of noise left in the scene as these materials are not optimized the way a standard light would be.

Perfectly Imperfect

Rarely when we see something in the real world is it without scratches or dirt. So to make an image look real we add these things in when creating our materials. They had a level of detail and realism that again would not be available without these added flaws.

These images are works in progress. There are still a lot of adjustments to be made in the materials to give them better clarity and reality. I uploaded them just to illustrate the concept behind this post. Simply to have great computer art you need to have an understanding of how different materials work in the real world. With that understanding we can make virtual reality much closer to that of actual reality.