Creek Settlement

Started by Dune, July 20, 2010, 02:42:47 AM

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MGebhart

Considered the world's best sheepherder, Border Collies originated on the Scottish/English border in Northumberland, derived from a mixture of Spaniel and early droving breeds. While no one knows for sure how long they've been around, some experts say English sheepdogs have been tending herds since the Romans landed in Britain. Their keen intelligence and adaptability has made them a top choice for narcotics and bomb detection, not to mention guiding the blind and assisting the handicapped. (DogSter)
Marc Gebhart

Andrew March

I've never seen a border collie working as either a drug/bomb sniffer or a guide dog. Having owned them and know several people who do own them they are far too prone to psychotic episodes brought about by inbreeding, as there is a relatively small gene pool.

Springer spaniels on the other hand make excellent drug/bomb sniffers and are slowly being phased into other working roles such as helper dogs for the disabled, unfortunately they tend to be too small for guide dogs.

I currently own a Springer and a Golden Retreiver who is not as thick as she likes you to believe.

Henry Blewer

" a Golden Retreiver who is not as thick as she likes you to believe" lol
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

MGebhart

#48
We should get back to the Settlement. I don't want to feel I hijacked the thread.  :P
Marc Gebhart

Dune

Yeah, this seems like the poodle club  ;) But anyway, I haven't got a dog (object) yet, and the people who wanted this didn't mention it, but you posed some interesting ideas.

RArcher

Amazing details as usual.  Just curious about one thing...  Have you tried rendering it (for yourself, not the commission) at smaller resolution (1600 or 1920) at a higher detail level - say around .9 or 1 with higher AA?  I am very curious whether it would look much different or not.

Tangled-Universe

Quote from: RArcher on August 16, 2010, 10:49:54 AM
Amazing details as usual.  Just curious about one thing...  Have you tried rendering it (for yourself, not the commission) at smaller resolution (1600 or 1920) at a higher detail level - say around .9 or 1 with higher AA?  I am very curious whether it would look much different or not.

I remember I asked you this some times before, so now Ryan mentions it again and therefore I'd like to try to encourage you again :)

Recently I use almost the same settings for every work, which is: detail 0.85 and AA6 non-adaptive. This AA setting gives nearly the exact same result as AA8 but is quite faster.
Detail >0.85 results often in subpixel details which are barely visible.
The only reason to use higher detail levels for me is often the GI settings which are, unfortunately, linked with the detail slider.
Of course you know this stuff, but thought I say it for everyone who cares :)

Dune

That's an interesting thought, Ryan. I might try that. The deal with the commission was to deliver appr. A3 at 300 dpi. Too large to do at such high detail.

I'm rendering a zoom-in detail of the creek end at this time, with an added hollow tree as Roman drainage pipe. Had to change some pops, but deleted everything out of sight, and now do the mud with RayTraced reflections on. It will be much nicer...

Dune

Hi Martin, yeah I know, I'm stubborn, aren't I? I always have to find a way to make the renders nice enough for the client, and not have to render for days. They are satisfied with this detail level, but I'm certainly aware that it might enhance the whole thing greatly if using higher settings. I'll try some more, perhaps crops to test.

otakar

Once again, a stunner. I really enjoy the variety - colors, textures, objects - across the scene, which is hard to achieve. Do you actually do this for a living? Otherwise, I cannot imagine where you get the time to keep outputting so many detailed scenes.

Tangled-Universe

Quote from: Dune on August 16, 2010, 12:23:04 PM
Hi Martin, yeah I know, I'm stubborn, aren't I? I always have to find a way to make the renders nice enough for the client, and not have to render for days. They are satisfied with this detail level, but I'm certainly aware that it might enhance the whole thing greatly if using higher settings. I'll try some more, perhaps crops to test.

Yes you're stubborn :P ghehe....but you have a good reason; I know your works are time-consuming to produce and therefore I understand that you have no reason/need to render things at higher detail other than required by your clients.

You'll see that an increase of detail 0.5 to 0.7 already makes quite a difference, mean-while not causing huge increases in rendertime (since you often do not use fancy displacements).
Especially increasing AA from 4 to 6 is making a big difference.

However, I must admit that you might run into other kind of detail problems: you design and optimize your scene for the final detail you're rendering with and upping settings might suddenly give rise to "artefacts" which would normally be covered/disclosed by the lower rendersettings.

Hetzen

You certainly have a 'look' about your work. But what really amazes me is the amount of detail and natural variation you get from your masks. Loving the mud.

Dune

Thanks for all your kind words. Indeed I do this for a living, although I spend 1000% more time in it than paid for. Just because it's addictive and so much fun. But I am able to work in TG2 most of the day, and indeed some works need all that time to put together (including making all the objects, which I only started to do a couple of months ago, so I'm not fast and efficient) and test until every bit is good enough. I know I can make the images more realistic, but there's a saying; put 50% of your time into a product that's 90% right, don't waste another 50% on only 10% better. Not always true, I know, but commercially it is.
Anyway, I will post a changed POV, rendering now at different settings. I already see that 0.85 and AA6 is quite a lot better...

The mud is a painted gray mask (1000x1000px) in PS, using textured brushes, with added (warped) fractals in TG2. The thing I mostly regret is that I cannot get rid of the white artifacts where reflective transparent water hits reflective mud. I can, but only if I make the water far less transparent, or use Ray traced reflections, and they are not perfect either. If time permits, I'll dive into that. Mud is great indeed.   

Tangled-Universe

Those reflections are a pain in...  with TG2 so far :)
Same goes for clouds and atmosphere.
Reflections/specularity/glow etc. are all way too much bound to the sun's angle and position.

I'm sorry to say, but in Vue you can easily get shiny water throughout a whole image. Or shiny mud.
Good luck with achieving that in TG2. The spread and intensity doesn't work because you need a huge spread and high intensity, but that will result in the look of wrinkled paper.

It would be better if this would be coupled entirely to GI and that the user has control on the intensity of that, so that he is ablo to exaggerate or under-estimate the effect. May not be physically correct, but it would offer more freedom of creativity.
Perhaps raytracing the reflections will work, but that's very slow.

Dune

We'll see what the developments in TG2 bring. Up till now, there's been a tremendous progress in the software.

Here are 3 versions of the creek end, so you can study the differences yourselves. No post, just saved as 85% quality jpg. The first at detail 0.85 and AA 6, the second at 0.7 and 6, the third at my default 0.5 and 4. Don't look at the vegetation, it's very low-poly distant stuff, not really suitable for so close-up.