SimonButtes Closeup

Started by Henry Blewer, October 24, 2011, 11:42:24 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Henry Blewer

I did this one to test render settings based on Martin's (Tangled-Universe) setting suggestion.

Detail 0.8   Anti-Aliasing 24    GI relative detail 2   GI sample quality 4    GI Blur radius 6
Supersample Prepass     Mitchell-Netravali

Edit Sampling settings     First sampling level 1/64      Pixel Noise threshold  0.05

Atmosphere 16 sample      Clouds 5 samples (they are up high above the ground level)   Optimal

Walli's Pines from Walli's Plant pack (I changed the specular value to 0.225)

1024 x 480 in 12 hrs 7 mins on a Pentium 4 HT 3.0 gHz
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

Tangled-Universe

Nice to see you tried these insane settings :)
I wouldn't recommend it out of the box to anyone, only if you don't mind rendering a bit longer and for a mostly subtle difference.
The rendertime for this one isn't that bad actually.

I'm a bit surprised to see it didn't work out very well, to be honest.
My experience with this technique is mostly with the cubic b-spline which IMO benefits from this alternative approach.

In this particular case I'd say that the populations would benefit from slightly brighter textures (increase the diffuse colour value) and some more translucency.
No matter what sun angle and elevation, with GI 2/4/6 you should have been able to see detail in the shadows.

It's interesting anyway. For instance you could render it again with 8 atmo samples and see how that goes. Just out of curiosity.
You'll quickly see that you develop a feeling for the settings and that tweaking adaptive sampling can be a valuable option for optimizing objects/atmosphere rendering.
If used inappropriately it could also skyrocket rendertimes :)

Cheers,
Martin

choronr

I like the shape and coloring of the terrain and the great distribution of vegetation ...great job Henry.

Henry Blewer

The translucency was maxed out. I added some specular to the needles to brighten them up; maybe more is needed. I'm thinking of making a close up render with more plant types.

I thought about lowering the atmosphere sample quality. The cloud sampling was already quite low, so I did not think it would be good.

One thing I should have done is increase the spacing of the pines. They are quite dense here. That would allow more lighting in and brighten them up.
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

Walli

if I am not wrong, you can manually add higher values for those parameters, probably worth a try.

Henry Blewer

I replaced these pines with your SN___ pines from Silva 3D. I should have just deleted the populations and then used the better pines. I was getting strange streaks... Probably the textures not mapping correctly. Will try again!
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

Tangled-Universe

Henry, I have all the XFrog plants as well as NWDA stuff, so if you'd like I could help you a bit to figure out what's going on.
You can find my e-mail in my profile or send me an IM.

Cheers,
Martin

Henry Blewer

Thanks Martin. I tried Walli's suggestion. That did the trick.
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

Jonathan

Lovely subject - looks very natural.
Every problem is an opportunity, but there are so many opportunities it is a problem!

Tangled-Universe

Quote from: njeneb on October 25, 2011, 05:52:27 PM
Thanks Martin. I tried Walli's suggestion. That did the trick.

Good to hear it helped. Looking forward to the new render ;)

One remark though. Values for translucency >1 are possible, but logically give unnatural results as it indicates more than 100% of the incoming light will pass through the object's surface.
You may notice this could become problematic in shadow areas of your render where things tend to look very plastic and fake.

Henry Blewer

New render. I used Walli's pines and dry grasses. Also his Wood Anemone and Solidago.
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

choronr

Very nice Henry. I would be tempted to place the sun in the center and up at about 70 to 75 degrees. Heavy up the haze a bit. Consider a second sun 180 degrees opposite the main one at very low strength (back-lighting). This would be trying to create an effect similar to Ryan Archer's 'Golden Forest'.

Henry Blewer

I did a very small test render set to try out lighting. 320 x 150 does not give much detail. I settled on this light since I had to go to work; rendered it overnight.

The rock faces need more detail also. I'll give your sun/lighting a try Bob. 8) It could be interesting.
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

Kadri

The rocks look very nice to me Henry :)
Not sure about the trees . I would try other trees or-and different distribution or scale  maybe.

Henry Blewer

I traded in the pines for Walli's SI3D Pine trees. These look much better.

The lighting is looking very washed out with the two suns. I am going to try ambient occlusion instead of a 2nd light.
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T