The June PhotoWorks Contest Winner

The June PhotoWorks contest winner has been chosen. It was a close vote but
Jan Herud managed to take the lead late in the voting week. Jan is the
contests first repeat winner having won both the May and June contest. Will
Jan be able to make July a 3-peat?

If you'd like to enter the July contest visit www.robrodriguez.com to
download the model.

Thanks to all those who entered and voted.

 

Rob,

Thanks for posting this. I voted for 2nd place mainly because of the
defocused second speaker, but there were things about Jan's rendering
that I liked very much. The biggest thing was the use of the material
for the grill. A couple months back when you did the cell phone
rendering contest, I did a lampshade, and was wondering how to get a
partially transparent lampshade. The material Jan used here achieves
the effect I was looking for. I think I saw something like this from
something Mark Matthews did too, where the material is made up of tiny
alternating squares of transparent and opaque material. When these are
small enough they kind of look like a translucent woven material,
instead of translucent sheet plastic material.

Thanks for this, this is a key thing for me to learn. Next is a really
good illumination technique to make something like real fire.

 

I'll be doing a podcast for Ben Eadie's site very soon (hopefully this week)
which will cover some indirect illumination stuff. This may help you out
with some image based lighting.

Rob

 

The biggest thing was the use of the material for the grill.

I too would love to know how to achieve this effect, it looks stunning. I
often have to do these types of materials and have never found a
convincing/quick way to do it. Perhaps Jan is reading this and would care
to elaborate a little? I would appreciate it.

Rich

 

Matt,

I agree with you. (but I didn't get a chance to vote). Showing the item
in it's natural environment with the out of focus background was a nice
touch. The one thing the winner did that the others didn't was to get
the grill right on the face of the speaker. Several of the entries
look like they are floating off the floor. I don't know it the real
item does this, but # 2 did look like it was sitting on the floor.