Cliff Wall *Final Still Image*

[RArcher]

Another render.  This is a bit of a crop of the crack area with some Daz characters added in.  I'm not all that great at posing people etc. but it turned out OK I think.  Will look more natural when the people are smaller on the full image.  

*edit* some ugly jpeg compression in the shadows... will fix with a better saved file with the next one.

[Dune]

These last 2 are even greater (although I'm not keen on these people). The lighting is perfect, as is the rock!

[Henry Blewer]

The guy must be fantastically strong! The cliffs are great. The characters help with the scale, but they do not look like they are actually climbing. Perhaps characters wearing jetpacks?

[FrankB]

Ryan, I think the people are dwarfing the structure (besides that they don't look convincing in the overall image). In my mind, these rocks were much taller, without the people size reference. Push 'em back down again

Cheers,
Frank

[Seth]

agree with that, the cliff is really good but the characters are far too big to me... but... matter of taste maybe.
i thought the cliff was faaaaar bigger than that

[RArcher]

You are both correct.  The people are currently about 5 times larger than they technically should be.  I'm not particularly liking them in any case.  The next version they are left out but they might make a reappearance if I can get them to a point where they look at all realistic.  Perhaps with them backlit they may look less like plastic toys.

[RArcher]

Here is the next most likely final still version of this project.  Attached is the 1920 x 1080 crappy jpeg version.  You can find the really big version on my website here:  http://www.archer-designs.com/zp/index.php?album=digital-art/terragen-2&image=cliff-wall-v5-3840x2160-full-res.jpg

[Oshyan]

Final *still* version? Hmm...

I think the lighting could be a bit more contrasty here (not as much as the first image maybe), as it is it looks a bit like an HDRI that's been too balanced. Not that it looks bad, it's quite nice. Just being a bit picky.

There are some interesting patterns in some places that look like image maps. Am I seeing things?

- Oshyan

[RArcher]

No image maps were harmed in the making of... All the surfaces are procedural and the even lighting in the shadows comes from an extra ambient occlusion lighting node to show some of the extra details (This would likely be left out of an animation to save render time).  I would like to do an animation of the wall, but I am having a hell of a time creating a useable/interesting camera path.  I really have nearly zero knowledge of film-making and should be reading up on ideas for interesting camera movements before I do much more.  If you have any thoughts on camera movement or want to try making a camera path, let me know and I'll send you the files.

[AP]

You should throw some embedded stones with the strata layers but i bet that would farther kill render time.

[Seth]

very very nice !

[inkydigit]

very very very nice rocks!

[Mor]

Awesome looking cliffs. Great work!

[inkydigit]

just checked the full res version....awesome stuff Ryan!

[RArcher]

Thanks very much for the comments everyone.  Working on a camera path a little bit and trying to get the settings to a reasonable level for animation rendering.