Colobot: Gold Edition Logo 3rd Revision

[RaptorParkowsky]

I've been workning on that for few days and now I guess I did this finally.

I'm going to update official Colobot: Gold Edition logo this time. I think it renders pretty well and this revision is a good step forward comparing to the previous one and were a good training of usage Blender on modern PC to me.

Changelist:

1. Finally fully ported to Cycles.
   This time there's no place for such compromises like Blender internal render engine rendered logo is for splashscreens etc, and Cycles engine rendering is used only in animations.
   
   
2. Changed camera perspective.
   Now it looks less flat and more great. Just like something what would fit to movie poster/intro etc.
   
   
3. Depth of field.
   Yeah, this 3-dimensional logo even in this static, simple and blank scene require some not so hard but still visible depth of field effect. Otherwise it would again look so sharp and "flat" like in the previous revision.
   
   
4. Completety refactored lightning.
   Well, this is basically why I worked on such a small update for so long. This logo have so specific shape that is really hard to light this right. And not only a shape, but also the gold material that lightening depends mostly on camera perspective instead of the light sources itself. It's not like "I wanna place this light in front of the logo and this will make it at least visible". This time it wasn't really hard to find good compromise between short rendertime and #CyclesNastyNoise (especially thanks to modern PC and CUDA solution). Now I had just to find the right balance between "artistic-light-placement" and my pedantic tendency to making everything as simple, mathematically correct and symmetric as it could be. I hope this is visible. And well, despite that there is 10 light sources with 3 different types, this scene is starting to look less noisy after only 14 samples (presentation render is done with 32 samples though for even cleaner effect than really needed). So it's very promising material for make intro/outro animation for future TerranovaTeam's promotional materials.
   
   
5. Bloom effect.
   I always wanted to add a lens flare effect to that render, but I was wrong. Everytime I was trying to do so, it doesn't really fit to the rest. So I decided to add here another "cheesy-yet-matching" effect called bloom. Now the gold look more mystic I think.
   

So what's your feedback about this? May I commit this update to our repo and succesively replace it on splashscreens, make new promo animation, etc.? Or should I try harder to make this render even better if it's still possible with my current knowledge and tools? Or maybe old render is somehow better?

[DavivaD]

Cool. I Like it

[krzys_h]

The new version does indeed look a lot better. I always thought that the logo is 'not shiny enough'. I think you have to work on lighting a bit more though - it's quite hard to explain, but look at how some letters appear like they have differently colored borders, especially E. Additionally the top letters have too much light in comparison to the Gold Edition subtitle. The bloom effect is cool, but I think you have to turn it down a bit, it obstructs the shape of the logo too much.

[radioactivity]

[Jumps in with fire extinguisher]
[Reads @krzys_h 's post]

Oh.

[Puts fire extinguisher away]

Well, anyway I too like new Logo, especially change in color and texture (From shining banana to matte amber) and new lightning effects. I do not like bloom, however. It draws attention to underscore below logo, which in new version is actually less interesting than in old. And I also like sharper shapes in general. Bloom could be toned down, but I don't think it's really necessary. That underscore though...

General conclusion: It's magnificent, except for underscore

[RaptorParkowsky]

Well, you're right about that. I guess this require to add few additional lights. I'll be working on that soon.

About bloom toned down - well, I already toned it down several times and current setting imho is the best possible to make it shine enough.

[Simbax]

Finally something positively productive and not breaking decisions from the past with no one caring about it!

I love this new logo. It now truly looks like pure gold worth thousands of dollars. Good job!

The shiny part of the underscore is quite nice, I don't see anything wrong about it, quite the opposite.

I like that bloom effect too, but it might be little too much since the image seems to be blurry like it was in motion. Try decreasing it or even disabling it and show us the result to compare with. It may look better or not, we need to see it to be sure.

[RaptorParkowsky]

Here's version without bloom postprocessing effect. IMHO looks worse on black background, but probably will be most commonly used on white or any other random background as it looks more flat, clean and almost mono coloristic.

Probably I'll be working on subtitle and underscore lightning tomorrow, so stay close guys .

[Simbax]

Now I can clearly say that I like the version with bloom far more.

3D models on white background don't go well together IMO. It looks weird, probably because of lack of proper shadows and the contrast.

[RaptorParkowsky]

Ok, I added 3 additional light sources. Time of the rendering rised up a bit, but now it's probably better than before.

Scene complexicity also is quite big...

[DavivaD]

No... Too much light sources...

[RaptorParkowsky]

So how I'm supposed to make it looking evenly? Shape of this logo is so hard for lightning that I can add here even 50 light sources ant there will be always some flaws. I checked if environment lightning would help a bit, but the effect was just disgusting. I guess now I could try lower a bit the brightness of some source lights and that would be possibly all I can do for this logo. Or maybe someone have any other idea?

[Simbax]

The first version is still the best IMHO, the latest one lost a little of its gold feeling. Maybe brightness is indeed too high here. I don't know, some more adjustments seems to be needed.

[radioactivity]

Nah, It doesn't need to look evenly

[DavivaD]

So how I'm supposed to make it looking evenly? Shape of this logo is so hard for lightning that I can add here even 50 light sources ant there will be always some flaws. I checked if environment lightning would help a bit, but the effect was just disgusting. I guess now I could try lower a bit the brightness of some source lights and that would be possibly all I can do for this logo. Or maybe someone have any other idea?

[RaptorParkowsky]

So I changed the brightness of the front lights a bit. Possibly looks a little better than the previous one. The change is almost unnoticeable though. I'm satisfied with the result, the underscore (underline?) and "Gold Edition" subtitle looks enough evenly. and fits to the rest.

Do you also like the result of my blendering? Or maybe this still require more attention? Let me know in the comments section below and click like for more content!

[krzys_h]

The border around E is not visible, it looks too much different from all the others. I think you could also try making the whole thing slightly darker, it feels a bit too bright to me.

[RaptorParkowsky]

Fixing border of the "B" will be possibly tricky but theoretically I know how to do that. Decreasing brightness or turning a bit more the middle front light source should help. I hope this doesn't going to destroy the lightning in other part of the logo though. I'll do this today at night so you guys just stay here, hit F5 every five minutes and make sure our server isn't overloading. Or just wait for update of this post if you wish...

[Simbax]

For a moment I thought that I missed an update. I guess we are going to wait a bit more, although I'm already happy with the current version.

[RaptorParkowsky]

This is really problematic part of the logo. Lightning of the "E" border is connected with ligtning of the other parts of the logo, so it's huge risk to move other light sources and don't broke anything. So I decided to workaround this by decreasing brightness of the light source in front of "E" and "d" letters to make their middle parts visible.

[Simbax]

Now 'E' and 'd' along with the underscore under them are too dark. Why don't we just accept the 25/05 version? It is going to take forever to make the logo perfect by trying to fix every minor flaw...