HPO model/Raj photos shadows study

[elevenaugust]

While waiting for HPO's model to be finished , I propose you to:

• 1- Read again what's have been said before on the possibly shadows inconsistencies on Raj's photos, and especially Spf33 great study here, and Torvald's works here, on OMF.
• 2- In order to try to recreate the exact conditions of Raj's shoots last year, we need to know, HPO, the place were you lives and use to try your model, in order to gives you the same sun elevation and appropriate hours.

The problem is how to test it with the same pole configuration?
Maybe you will need to create a pole model?
Any idea about his height?

The main problem, as we all know it, is this:

[Nemo492]

IF there is a wrong shadow, then IMO
one would have to explain how the rendering software
could have been wrong..

[BigFnTuna]

It seems to me that the angle Torvald has the drone at is wrong...  The work is great, but he has the drone tilting backwards instead of somewhat forward.  Or is he correct with that angle?

Tuna

[Nemo492]

It seems to me that the angle Torvald has the drone at is wrong...

Do you mean a biased perspective ?

[leviathan]

I find nothing wrong with the shadows.  Renderers are meant to simulate reality not the other way around.  The surface beneath the Drone can affect both the shadows and the lighting and that is staying clear of any strange effect the Drone itself may produce such as the cloaking and optical properties of any field generated.  this other forum sets up rules that reality is supposed to follow and do not realize that reality cares not two cents for their rules.  It is an arrogance for any to say that they set up rules that all must follow and then when nature and reality ignores them, to declare all a waste and all a fake.  It is only the expression of a bias and nothing else.  In the other forums analysis the shadows are chosen and others ignored the points made are edited to fit.  light can be reflected or blocked by many things that will alter the apparent sources over a short range.  In location filming this is done all the time and sometimes corrections have to be made to make the shadows appear to be coming from the same source.  The special properties that the Drone may have are always ignored as if it is against the rules to even mention them and yet one of their own has called for all special properties of the Drone to be listed and compared with ALL OTHER UFO CASES.  This is clearly not a proposal that comes from one who knows anything about the number of UFO cases there are.  Any one can go and cause lighting and shadows to change by placing common things in a scene to block or reflect light. It happens all the time in the REAL WORLD.
L E V I A T H A N

[Endzone]

I agree, the hood of a white car beside the photographer could reflect light back up under the drone at this height above the pole. We cannot know what was reflecting the light or not as we do not know what was around the photographer when the image was shot. I used to be a photographer back in my highschool days and we used portable reflectors all the time for fill and reflection. Why they can't take this into account is obvious though.

[leviathan]

Why they can't take this into account is obvious though

You are 100% correct Endzone, but you and I, by experience there with their "experts", know why.  This other group will never take any positive evidence into account and the evidence of this is their very forum and all 23,000 or so posts on this unimportant subject.  There is nothing wrong with the shadows and nothing wrong with the Drone size or any of the rest and I have said over and over that it could be CG, but if so it is a CG job that no one there could do or appreciate and then just maybe it is REAL.
L E V I A T H A N

[10538]

I find nothing wrong with the shadows.

Me neither.  This is the main reason why I can't put this down.  The shadows don't lie.  They are very hard for a hoaxer to get just right.  Usually they will diffuse the shadows or simply make the hoax photo of low resolution to avoid all the hard work like the ATS guy from ILM did.  I have always been big on the shadows, you all probably already noticed.

[Endzone]

Ya know I'm gonna send off a link to some of the pics to Uncle George over at Skywalker Ranch and see what kind of response I can get from him if any. We at the 501st are pretty tight with Lucasfilm so if this is possibly a fake he will be interested, as he is very inquisitive, from what I could tell when meeting him and the way he approved of and scrutinized our costumes and their quality compared to his from the films. Maybe he'll throw this at his CG guys at ILM and see what happens. I have trouble believing that guy at ATS is actually from ILM.

[majicbar]

By the EXIF darta we are given the Rajmann1977 photos as having been taken at 17:42 or so. However the shadows to me have always looked like they we taken later. Remember that "Raj" said that he and his grilfriend were meeting at the parents house for dinner. Is it possible that "Rajmann1977" actually lived in Hawaii where there is a two hour difference and had he set up his camera to Hawaiian time? If so,then the EXIF data would represent the wrong solar time for the photographs.

Also given the nature of the lighting, if the Sun were later in the day then the incident light coming off concrete roadway at a glacing angle would not provide direct lighting but a more global glare from both above and below. (Note also in the "Chad" photographs that there is a large water tank on a concrete pad very close to the area of photograph scan 2 I think, which probably contributed to the lighting on those photographs as well.)

The lighting in CGI does not always utilize these lighting phenomena. Is there an area of Capitola which has mainly concrete paving, this tends not to be the case where powerpoles and cable are above ground on poles, but sometimes it is?

[10538]

By the EXIF darta we are given the Rajmann1977 photos as having been taken at 17:42 or so. However the shadows to me have always looked like they we taken later. Remember that "Raj" said that he and his grilfriend were meeting at the parents house for dinner. Is it possible that "Rajmann1977" actually lived in Hawaii where there is a two hour difference and had he set up his camera to Hawaiian time? If so,then the EXIF data would represent the wrong solar time for the photographs.

Also given the nature of the lighting, if the Sun were later in the day then the incident light coming off concrete roadway at a glacing angle would not provide direct lighting but a more global glare from both above and below. (Note also in the "Chad" photographs that there is a large water tank on a concrete pad very close to the area of photograph scan 2 I think, which probably contributed to the lighting on those photographs as well.)

The lighting in CGI does not always utilize these lighting phenomena. Is there an area of Capitola which has mainly concrete paving, this tends not to be the case where powerpoles and cable are above ground on poles, but sometimes it is?

One thing to keep in mind is the time listed in the exif may not be correct.  Did Raj's inlaws remember to update the camera's time for daylight savings?  Is the pole perfectly upright or does it lean a little?  Also, bare in mind that Raj's brother inlaw most likely applied a color correction profile to the pictures that may help to compensate for lighting inadequacies.  The same may also be at play in the Chad pics.

[leviathan]

There is nothing wrong with the shadows and their is no missing shadow as is evidenced by a close look at the pole.  The "Simulation" is wrong in its sun angle.  This is easy to see, the sun is to the right (as looking at the photo) and somewhat low.  Parts of the pole have the same under-lighting as the Drone and on and on.  This is another Marvinesque tactic.
L E V I A T H A N

[majicbar]

Endzone, it would seem to be a good challenge for ILM to try and duplicate Rajmann1977's photo, this would provide us with all the relative lighting issues as they duplicate the photo, revealing what lighting fraction is direct and what is ambient reflection and the relative angles.

It would seem that using HPO's model could help pin down the sun angle-time also.

The camera time could simply be an issue of DST, but if an hour is not enough I still like the idea of the camera having come from Hawaii.

Does the camera auto update for DST, or is this a manual operation, anyone with a similar model?

[tomi]

Fence is the expert here for electromagnetic radiation.  He would know far more about any of this than I could make a guess at.  But I did take some time to study a bit of this and from the double slit experiment to the black box radiation theory, there is little we know about how light actually behaves when it "hits the ground", so to speak.  It is reflected, it scatters, it is photons going all over the place and as soon as it is measured or observed it behaves differently! 

One of the basis of quantum effects that gives scientists the idea of multiple dimensions is how light behaves as a wave pattern until it is observed, then it reverts from producing a wave pattern to just single photons.  Fascinating..

So.. my point, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that without any ability to truly predict how light is going to behave in outside full sun conditions in any environment or upon any object such as this one, elevated very high with a lot of reflected light catching its underside, is very hard if not impossible to put into calculations that would be 100% realistic in a CGI program. 

Indeed, if in real life, this is hard to define and predict, how can it possibly be anything but best guess estimate and a refinement of software effects in CGI?

[HPO]

When I made the render below, I mimicked the light reflection from below by adding a little glow to the ground material properties in Vue6.
I also think Torvald didn't use the correct angle, it's not from dead ahead of the drone, but also in my render the angle is not correct.
I think numbers made a correct assumption in another topic that the black part on the "item15" piece of the drone is the shadow of the tip of the long arm. In fact in al the photo's where that black piece is vissible this might be the shadow of the arm. And we can use that to recreate the right angle, I still haven't done that because of the work on the physical drone.

(Click picture)