OSL: When is it too much?

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elouchard

Guest
I don\'t think the edges and other hotspot are actually brighter than the source. It\'s more a case of them being much brighter than the adjacent shadowed areas and looking relatively bright. An edge of a knife for example, would have two very reflective sides reflecting away from the viewer and one edge reflecting back at the viewer. The edge reflection would not really be very bright compared to the source (torch, sun etc) but compared to the other parts of the blade it would be practically glowing.
 
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EricJ

Active member
I think a big issue is also our eye does not always (or even very often) see how things actually are. And the best looking minis are not based on painting things as they actually are, but rather an exagerated form of what the eye sees. A light color in a high contrast area will appear far brighter than a light color in a low contrast area.

Therefor, while the brightness around the light source may actually BE brighter than a glint off metal far from the light source. Due to the difference of contrasts, you could very safely paint that glint as bright if not brighter and it would make perfect sense to our eyes, and actually look \"right\" so to speak.
 
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Ritual

New member
Originally posted by EricJ
Therefor, while the brightness around the light source may actually BE brighter than a glint off metal far from the light source. Due to the difference of contrasts, you could very safely paint that glint as bright if not brighter and it would make perfect sense to our eyes, and actually look \"right\" so to speak.
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I don\'t think we disagree that much here (other on the physics bit ;))... You should of course paint the brightest spots on a very reflective surface bright (preferably using pure white), but then I always use pure white for the centre of the light source (and most often more of it so that it appears brighter). But then you would also need contrasting, extremely dark patches on the reflective surface and the combined look of it would look decidedly less bright than the light source.
 
Einion

Einion

New member
Ritual, you\'re so overthinking this ;)

Originally posted by Ritual
If a material has polarizing qualities (and far from all materials has that) then it\'s just the light with a certain polarization angle that gets reflected. The other light will be absorbed. Thus, only a portion of the incoming light will be reflected.
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Nope, sorry *Arnie accent* it doesn\'t verk dat vay. Polarisation is an alteration of the incident light, not directly related to the degree of reflectivity (which is largely governed by colour as you might expect). And the inverse-square law doesn\'t really apply at the scales that concern us, so we can discount distance too.

Anyway, back to hotspot reflections - specular highlights - metals are the classic non-polarising reflectors, and some of them have reflective indices darned close to 100% in case anyone was wondering. This means those brilliant speculars on a chrome bumper or a silver statue are purely a function of the material\'s reflectivity and the shape of the object. Polished convex surfaces tend to make for point reflections, as they\'re focussing the light in a way, simple as that. Rougher (or matt, which is microscopic roughness) surfaces give off diffuse reflections as we know but even so with a convex shape you can get a bit of focussing.

Einion
 
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Ritual

New member
@Einion
Well, it wasn\'t me who brought up polarization in the first place, was it? ;)

In fact I don\'t think polarization has much to do with this, since even if the light was completely polarized we still wouldn\'t get additive effects due to the differing wavelengths that all natural light consists of. We\'re not dealing with lasers here! ;)

I will gladly leave out any further discussion about polarization since a) it\'s quite complex, b) it was quite a long time since I did my optics classes, and c) I don\'t think it\'s to any use for a mini painter! :)

All I was saying, to begin with, was that the light source should be the brightest object (unless of course you have other light sources as well) and I still stand by that. I think we could all agree that it would look strange if a knee pad that was only lit by a torch was brighter than the torch, right?

EDIT: Oh, and I do think that the distance is important since 30 mm (or 54 mm or whatever) in this scale is supposed to represent the size of an adult human.
 
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elouchard

Guest
The classic ray trace drawing makes it all pretty clear for convex and concave surfaces, and edges also. For miniatures or paintings that\'s pretty much all one needs to visualize, where the rays are going to reflect. That or hold a small light off to the side and see where the photons are going.

As for the main question here. It\'s not really how much is too much but how correctly you do it for the amount you want. Adding a few reflections done in the right position is much better than a lot done in the wrong place. Really bold hotspots and subtle tone changes from the light source look good from a distance and are usually the best choice. Nothing wrong with making it bolder though (plenty of examples on the site), as long as the light goes in the right place.
 
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Ritual

New member
@elouchard
Thank you for bringing this back on track again! I apologise again for going off on the physics bit. I can\'t help it! :innocent: I will refrain from talking further about polarization with Einion, even though I\'ve got plenty to say about it (PM me Einion if you have a wish to continue... lol).
 
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demonherald

New member
and the answer to the question at the beginning of the article is.......
OSL becomes too much whe we try to apply too much real life science to the painting of a Fantasy Miniature...:D

oh and what shawn said....
 
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