The Artlantis Attitude:Getting the Attitude and Using It

The screen companion for Artlantis productivity and artistry

Dwight Atkinson, MAIBCCanada’s Funniest Architect

Beginner No More Publishing 2009

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• TECHNICAL .................................................................................................................... 2

Start - up Information … 4 Using This Screen Companion with Artlantis … 5 A List of Things In This Book … 7-9

• INTRODUCTION AND PONTIFICATION ............................................................... 10 Reminder of the Twelve Memorable Features … 10 Ideas About Design Communication … 13 Excellence … 15 Experiment … 16 Expedience … 17 Artlantis Workflow is Circulinear … 18 Bukimi No Tani: Crossing the Uncanny Valley … 19 Color Issues … 21 Composition … 24 Storytelling … 24

* The Quick Fix: Illustration Process Summary ............................ 27 The Quick Fix: Image Editing Summary … 37

• TOOLS AND NAVIGATION ......................................................................................... 38

Scene Navigation … 38 Inspector Panel … 38 Perspective Camera View … 39 3D Preview and 2D View Windows … 40 Clipping Box … 41 Depth of Field …42 Alignment Tool … 43 Seat-Of-the-Pants Perspective Alignment … 46 Updating the Artlantis File Using References and Mergings … 47 Parallel Views … 48 .aof Format … 49 Objects … 49 Make Objects …49 Make Light Fixtures … 49 Postcards … 50 Catalog Management … 50 Managing Image Sequences [Animation] … 51 Rant … 51 Sequence Inspector, Path Control Introduction … 56 TimeLine … 57 The FlyBy Animation … 58 The Descending Arc … 59 The Corkscrew Animation … 60 Animation Speed Notes … 61 Sequence Standards and Format … 62 Object Animation and Assembly Simulation … 63 VR Object … 66 VR Scene Panorama … 67

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• LIGHT: CELESTIAL AND OTHERWISE ................................................................... 68

Light Introduction … 68 Heliodon Dialog Panel Commentary … 71 Heliodon Interior Tinting … 72 Light, Lamp, Luminere … 73 Lighting a Simple Room … 75 Neon … 80 Neon Glass … 84 Neon Glass — An Entire Building … 85 Ambient Glow … 88 Glowing Signage … 89 Fire … 90 Backlit Signage … 91 Our Nocturnal Missions … 93 Pre-Dawn Quiet … 95 A Simple Entry Court … 97 Harvest Moon Smoke Break … 99

• SURFACES ....................................................................................................................101

Shaders, Surfaces, Materials, Texture Maps … 101 Complex Shader … 105 Custom Images … 109 Fabricating a Seamless Image … 110 Mapping Orientation Control … 111 Normals and Bumping … 112 Reflection Limit … 113 Smoothness Slider …114 Basic Shader Inspector Panel … 115 Expert Shader Panel Mirror Irridescence Other Fancy Stuff … 116 Fresnel Water … 118 Making A Good Water Surface … 121 Ripples … 123 Fresnel Glazing … 125 Options to Fresnel Glazing … 127 Useful Fresnel Glazing Shader Settings …128 Building A Good Glazing Surface … 129 Perforations … 130 Image Mapping or Detail Modeling? …132 Editing an Artlantis Object Map …133 Automobiles …134 Decalcomania: Racing Flames … 136 Candlelight Detail … 142 Buying the Lads a Round: Pilsner, Ale or Lager … 144

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• IMAGE EDITING AND POST-PROCESSING ........................................................148

Image Editing … 148 Image Editor “Actions” Achieve Distinctive Character … 150 Composition and Light Adjustments … 151 Artlantis Post Processing … 152

• COMPREHENSIVE INTERIOR TRICKS ............................................................... 154

Looking Down Into A Suite of Rooms … 154 Interior Lighting without Using the Heliodon … 155 An Art Gallery Experiment … 162 A Stage Set Experiment … 169 In the White Room … 175 Clean White Glow: A Simple Image Editing Method … 177

• COMPREHENSIVE EXTERIOR TRICKS .............................................................. 178

Producing and Beholding “The Whiteness” … 178 Racofsky House: Uncovering the Mystery … 182 American Indian Museum: Can Artlantis Match Reality? … 186 Matching a Rendering with Its Context Photography … 190 Background image preparation … 191 Foreground image preparation … 192 Matching Heliodon to context … 193 Prepare neighborhood context … 194 Merge glazing solutions … 196 Interior light emergency … 197 Image editing remediation … 198

Building a Busy Street Scene Using Context Photography … 200 Step-by-Step Evolution of a Sign Board in both Artlantis and an Image Editor … 201 Heliodon … 202 Entourage … 208 Floating Light Props … 210 Image Editing … 211 Post-Processing and Effects … 214

• CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................218

Thank You to My Contributors … 219

• GLOSSARY ..................................................................................................................220

• BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................225

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Buying the Lads a Round: Pilsner, Ale or Lager. It is all Golden.

Illustrating a cool glass of beer is a challenge because of condensa-tion and detail. The image relies on bump mapping for condensation and accurate lighting to photographically model the shape. Our expectation is also distorted by beer ads pho-tographed in studios where this precious nectar glows with luminous golden light, like a grail. The definitive image is elusive: the appearance of cold beer in the glass varies. As condensation forms, the clear glass surface clouds. Droplets accumulate and merge to refract light brightly. As the droplets begin to run down the surface, it clears to reveal the beauteous amber inside. By then you’ve touched it and ruined the effect. Order another beer and study how the glass changes while you fin-ish this one. Limitations: Artlantis lacks displacement mapping that would reveal actual droplet depth; we can only render reflections and droplet patterns. Photos of condensation are freely available for use in bump map-ping, but it is not clear how successful they are representing large droplets. The objective is to reach the limit of what lighting and pattern can do to emulate condensation. To study the challenge, the set-up is:

• The Model: The beer glass requires sensuous curves and plenty of irregu-larities for plausibility. We’ll want to see distortion and refraction in the glass. I modeled this glass revolving a complex profile in Archicad, but the trick in any application is to make a

Light direction and environment affect reflections. Varied size and graduated transparency of the condensation bump map, different refraction indexes of both glass and beer — back light, front light, top light; frost, fog, glisten. An illustrator needs to think like a photographer to be fair to beer.

A Favorite: How I remember a dry August day in a Saskatoon, Saskatchewan beer hall. The droplets do not get large before cascading down the glass, the tiniest rivulets. Too bad I will pick it up before it gets warm.

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small detailed thing very large, initially, say, ten times normal, scaling it down later. Some applications can’t increase their tolerance to create tight small curves like this beer glass demands, but will accurately represent a scaled-down version. The beer head foam has two layers — the outer layer will be transparent and the inner layer will not — This trick brings a diaphanous quality to foam.• The Set and Cyclorama: A tabletop and a cyclorama backdrop [more mysterious than a flat panel]. A 500x750 pixel image of a British pub was applied to the cycloramic background as a single material image. This simplifies composing the shot because the background can be easily pulled exactly into place once the beer glass is framed. In this case, I hid an unconvincing lamp in the photo behind the beer glass.• Lighting Approach: Each setup needs angle, intensity and height tweaking. Ar-ranging lights can be tedious because it is like a photo studio and there is no incidental light like in an architectural image. General light comments:– all are yellow tinted and added one-at-a-time to express specific glass features, espe-cially to reflect from condensation bumps.– limited shadow casting: fewer shadows cast mean an easier solution.– all lights minimal: from power 5–10.

Sequence: Lights were placed in this order:#2: Key Light: From above right. Casts a shadow. Principally defines the white foam head.#5: Modeling Light: Mid-height and to the left: this one creates the diffuse glare that models condensation effectively. Casts a shadow.#6: Beer Booster: Directly behind and firing upward into the golden liquid, it makes a golden flash at the base of the liquid and shines up to light the underside of the head.#1+4: Side Flasher: from the left rear firing to camera. A subtle effect that adds round-ness to the glass. #4 eliminates the shadow from #2 Key Light. #3: Rim Flasher: shines from high behind the glass, down and forward to delineate the glass rim and leading foam edge. See the image adjacent where the spotlight hits the front rim and spills to the floor under the viewpoint.

Model the Beer Glass Parts: Includes 3D inner elements. Separate elements for the beer, the glass, the outer foam and about 1 mm in from the outer foam, the inner foam ele-ment. Mom says use a coaster!

Lighting Solution: Lights added one at a time to model the glass, producing an inner golden glow and glistening foam,

An Artlantis plan.

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Top Right: The flaw of using a photo of condensation as a bump map. Because the rendering engine bumps edges and not faces, it can’t see the droplet – the highlight of the droplet has two edges. The droplets ‘deflate.’ Such an image needs to stay small in size to disguise this problem. • Various Elements to the Right: The glass material, fresnel glass, the texture overlay. • Texture Overlay: The condensation droplets are represented by the tall, strip mapped small to disguise flaws. It fades out to either end— see main illustration. Note that the overlay is very transparent yet bumping is still strong [on the examples].

Surfaces: Each material in the as-sembly modeled individually is more accurate than an image map on the surface, mainly through showing different refraction indexes for each material.

• Beer Glass: Slight gray transparency is more realistic than perfect clarity. Fresnel Transition is irrelevant as long as the glass stays clear from all directions. A standard glass refraction properly represents the heavy glass base-with-bubble.

• Condensation: As we use it for bumps only, the overlaid texture is almost invisible, but Artlantis still makes a strong bump map from the data. I manipulated the original dark image into a light colored, bubbly image, but Artlantis still reads the bump mapping information as if it was dark and contrasting. Note that I did not use maximum bump value [2.49] nor did I make the overlay completely transparent [249/255]. This degree of transparency induces a hazy milkiness that suggests fog or ice. The condensation image is critical to plausibility — better art means better droplets and rivulets. Since cold beer is so varied, I couldn’t decide on the best approach, so I studied several alterna-tives. With the tools available, the most convincing approaches were:- small droplets: Overall small droplets with the beginnings of rivulets.- touched: condensation on only part of the glass surface, as if it had already been touched.

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L: A View Inside: With the glass rendered invisible: This is what a too-high refraction index setting looks like: much denser than water. Light doesn’t bend like that in mere beer. Also notice the foam. Fluffy!!

R: The foam image, made seamless.

Down: The Opaque Inner Foam material.

R+ Down: The Translucent Outer Foam material

Right: A detail of the glass and foam layers, assembled: The outer layer is transparent and ephemeral while the underlayer is opaque. The two foamy layers interact, producing a fluffy goodness.

• Beer: A golden clarity. Perhaps next time, I’ll try to add bubbles. I attempted several high refraction settings, but a 1.45 refraction index works best.

• Beer Head Foam: This part started with a photo of foam cloned seamless in the image editor. When mapped to the foam block model, it lacked frothiness. I solved this by transferring the opaque foam to an underlying element, and re-mapped the outer surface with a mainly transparent foam image. -Outer foam: A Basic Shader, totally transparent, with an overlaid foam image, half transparent. Full strength bump. Half ambient glow.- Inner foam: A basic shader totally opaque with an opaque overlaid foam image. The overlaid image glows ambient to seem bright and reactive beneath the partly trans-parent outer layer. Full strength bump.

Conclusion: A work in progress requiring a specifically made con-densation mask to satisfy a close-up examination.