Refraction of water on fake stones @ 720p

Started by Tangled-Universe, November 25, 2012, 10:27:04 AM

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Tangled-Universe

It seemed that for the other animations these settings worked pretty well too.
Only a LOT of flicker in the reflections of the water. So I cancelled them, also because they took way too long.

Quote from: TheBadger on November 27, 2012, 06:02:53 PM
Good info here.

I'll just comment on the imagery though. Firstly I think its rather nice. My bet is that from at least a few more feet away (camera wise) it would look completely perfect. Up close like this though there are a few things that I am curious about.
It looks to me like there are elements of the water that are not in agreement with one another. What I mean is that the waters movement looks good. And the caustics look good. but the two don't seem to be in visual unity.

Actually I imagine that there is a perfect situation where this set up would be used exactly as is and be visually perfect. But just as a study of water movement and lighting I wonder how you did this.

obviously the waters movement and the caustics movements are separate branches of your node tree. So how do you go about setting them up to move in relation to one another? Moreover, how do the two things work in nature? And how to the two versions compare? This is not simply rhetorical I would really like to know.


Thanks Michael, I really appreciate your enthusiasm :)

Unfortunately I have to pinch your arm about caustics.
TG2 can't do caustics.

Matt once said, long long time ago, that it theoretically *could* do it, given that you use insane GI settings to "catch" the focussed light.
Being a TG2-nerd ;) I tried that of course, but gave up at GI 16-20 or so. I used a dark sphere above water and had bright sun directly lighting the water near the sphere. No luck.

So perhaps it's some other aspect you mention, but I'm not sure?

Cheers,
Martin

TheBadger

Hi Marin.
I guess I knew that TG2 did not do caustics on its own because I remember seeing a caustics file by dandelO. I thought thats what you did here... Somehow create a similar effect with-in TG2's capabilities.
But I'll take your response to mean that you did not do that either. So I went back and tried to understand what it was I thought I was seeing.

perhaps what I said applies to the water surface clarity and the what lies beneath. That is, Is it possible to make the water at the surface, the waves (somehow) more transparent? So that the overall clarity is finer.
Because the water looks very clean, like a mountain lake. And the waves look right too. But at the speed the camera is moving, and the speed the water is moving, the waves should not obstruct the view into the water so much.

Or maybe it is motion blur, or just the position of the sun?

Like I said its a great animation. And the still was great too. Just some questions about the render as it compares to reality, and impressions of reality.
It has been eaten.

Bjur

Hey Martin

Was bored a bit and tested some things with sequences in AE (because your problem was wondering me).

I dont used AE since ages for final compressed renderings, just for rendering out lossless footage, most of the time for Premiere projects (where i did all my final renders in the end). My results were indeed sudden ones, H.264 codec wise:

- AE (5.5), pic-sequence, HDTV 720 25, optimal settings, compressed via H.264 with 5 MBit/s, VBR 1-Pass (max. possible value in my version) by AE exporter (via renderlist and settings) = Look was fuzzy and muddy, not good in all.
- AE, same sequence and settings, output as lossless/.avi by AE exporter = Good result, as expected.

- PR (5.5), same sequence and settings, H.264 compressed via up-popping Adobe Media Encoder, 5 MBit/s, VBR-2 Pass, high quality/render depth boxes cheched = Much better result than in AE, hmnn..

Even the uncompressed .avi file from AE, H.264 compressed in Premiere with the Adobe Media Encoder, was looking as expected for 5 MBit/s.
AE cant handle the codec not that good as Premiere does it seems and i dont know why. Thats strange and disturbing - but my personal results now.

And why can do AE handle .exr files natively and Premiere cant (in one Creative Suite!)? But thats another story of many little annoying Adobe CS storys.. -.-

Conclusion: Blame Adobe for their bad H.264 integration - in AE at least!  :)

Greetings, Alex
~ The annoying popularity of Vue brought me here.. ~