Oshyan made me do it!

[Tangled-Universe]

After browsing through Oshyan's pictures on facebook I couldn't help rendering this out...

This image uses Frank's terrific clouds from his Crater Lake project. I hope you don't mind I took liberty to use them Frank, cheers!

[TheBadger]

Wow TU! That shore in the foreground including the view of the rocks through the water is perfect. The only thing that I see as a problem is the shadows to the Right side and background. They are so dark that the rocks faces/cliffs almost separate from the rest of the image and form their own shapes. Perhaps a carefully processed .exr would solve it?
Nonetheless, the image looks like a photo.




* I changed left to right side

[choronr]

Yell out your name in this canyon; and, you hear it back several times ...the fun in being in a narrow canyon.

Martin, this is excellent. especially the light and the feeling of closeness. Great job on this one.

[mhaze]

Great piece of work, very good rocks and a sense of hot stillness.

[Tangled-Universe]

Wow TU! That shore in the foreground including the view of the rocks through the water is perfect. The only thing that I see as a problem is the shadows to the Right side and background. They are so dark that the rocks faces/cliffs almost separate from the rest of the image and form their own shapes. Perhaps a carefully processed .exr would solve it?
Nonetheless, the image looks like a photo.




* I changed left to right side

Thanks man

I'm not really sure which shadows you mean? The shadows of the big cliffs on the right are perhaps a bit darkish which I could solve with more GI on surface, since that's 0.6. However, the hue of the shadows and parts of the image would shift to something extremely orange. Just to point out the technical difficulty when rendering these surfaces.
On my monitor at home and work though, the shadows don't look to hard and don't really separate the shapes?
I do agree though that they could be brighter (and soft shadows too of course).

It could also be you mean the midground rockface on the left just above the water which also has a strange darkness which I totally would not expect.

Balancing GI/lighting obviously is not a straight-forward easy thing with these kind of images unfortunately.
I'll see what I can do.

Cheers,
Martin

[Walli]

great one, now we need some lizards running around ;-)

[Kadri]

Very nice image! I love the layered look

[RArcher]

Nice one.  Frank's clouds are very impressive and the canyon is excellent.  To my taste the canyon walls are maybe a fair bit too rough and thus appear a bit noisy.

[inkydigit]

very nice indeed Martin, I kind of agree with Ryan about the sharpness(?) of the walls, the foreground and the sky are perfect...

[TheBadger]

Wow TU! That shore in the foreground including the view of the rocks through the water is perfect. The only thing that I see as a problem is the shadows to the Right side and background. They are so dark that the rocks faces/cliffs almost separate from the rest of the image and form their own shapes. Perhaps a carefully processed .exr would solve it?
Nonetheless, the image looks like a photo.




* I changed left to right side

Thanks man

I'm not really sure which shadows you mean? The shadows of the big cliffs on the right are perhaps a bit darkish which I could solve with more GI on surface, since that's 0.6. However, the hue of the shadows and parts of the image would shift to something extremely orange. Just to point out the technical difficulty when rendering these surfaces.
On my monitor at home and work though, the shadows don't look to hard and don't really separate the shapes?
I do agree though that they could be brighter (and soft shadows too of course).

It could also be you mean the midground rockface on the left just above the water which also has a strange darkness which I totally would not expect.

Balancing GI/lighting obviously is not a straight-forward easy thing with these kind of images unfortunately.
I'll see what I can do.

Cheers,
Martin

Perhaps "so dark" is an overstatement on my part. Really my main point is the shadows (look at the center cliff in the back slightly to the right side) the shadow has the form of a "U" or maybe of a cup. This is what I was trying to describe when I said the rocks faces/cliffs almost separate from the rest of the image and form their own shapes.
The thing about it is its not "wrong", I think this is how a photo would look. My observation is more of an aesthetic nature.
Anyway, you described solutions, so I am not worried. I guess its more that the image is sooooo close to perfect, I just want to see it finalized.
And It really is photo real. If this was used as part of a composite video with people/actors almost no one would know its not real.

[Oshyan]

Very glad I could provide inspiration! And the result is excellent. The water in the foreground that someone else mentioned is indeed superb and my favorite part. I agree with some others that the shadows in some areas do seem a bit odd, though I think it's mostly down to the shape and angle of the lighting that causes it. You mention soft shadows could help, does that mean they're not enabled here? If that's the case definitely turn them on, or if they're enabled already, maybe even increase the radius.

I think this is a great scene as-is, but with a little bit more tweaking could really be "perfect", at least for my taste.

- Oshyan

[Jonathan]

Love the render - great scene - my first thought was (probably an optical illusion) that the dark rock in the centre of the picture looks like it is floating Nice one!

[Matt]

I think the shadow issue would be helped by enabling soft shadows. I think what TheBadger and others are saying is that it's hard to see that the transition between sunlight and shadow as the edge of a shadow, and it almost looks like a silhouette of another layer of rocks. Just a touch of softness might break that illusion. Apart from that, the lighting looks OK to me, but I'd probably choose to increase GI a touch.

[Tangled-Universe]

Thanks guys, I'm rendering a new one now. GI increased from 0.6 to 0.8 and with soft shadows enabled @ default settings.
The scales of the scene are a bit fake though (much bigger in TG than it looks like when it's rendered) so perhaps I need a bigger radius. We'll see how it turns out...