Ponte Salario

Started by Dune, October 09, 2012, 07:44:12 AM

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otakar

Beautiful model. The level of detail needed always depends on the final scene(s) and resolution.  Often times you won't be able to discern any weathering or dirt from further away. It may be wiser to spend the time to integrate the object better into the environment, which is also important :)

TheBadger

Hi Ulco.

Thought you may be able to use this. It is a construction materials supplier web site that has some very large and very good photos of roofing materials.  I know from experience the images make great textures.

Home: http://www.rooftile.com/tile.html click on an example image. Then click on "view product page" then click on the item again to see a large example.
Here is just on example: http://www.rooftile.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/F/-/F-TAUP-AA-TS.jpg

A little photoshop goes a very long way!

It has been eaten.

Dune

TY, Michael and Otakar. You can see in this iteration that integration is indeed important; it's nowhere near where I want it. And the level of detail is good enough now. The ivy is distracting a bit too much, I'm afraid, so I have to take care which to use (I made about 8).
I don't know about the total landscape either. Just flung it together, hitting road and river warp seeds a quadrillion times to get a good combination. Maybe a wooded soft perlin landscape without lake would be just as nice. With different (and more) trees, and grasses of course. Too many little roughies on ground anyway. Well, up to TG again.

By the way, I found another rooftile site some time ago, where they had complete roofs as texture. See if I can find that again.

j meyer

Something else that might be worth trying is to combine your textures
with an ambient occlusion map generated outside TG,with Xnormal for
instance.

Dune

Could you please enhance on that, Jochem? Never heard of XNormal, and what might be the benefit?

Next iteration, where I combined two texture maps for the stone work (merged, with a pf as controller). The road needs work, there are too many trees, the shrub are way too big and uniform, I need rocks in the river, etc.

j meyer

Xnormal is a free program that allows you to bake many kinds of maps into
your texture,mostly used for games related stuff afaik.You can generate and
manipulate normal,cavity,ambient occlusion and other maps and it can help
to convert displacement maps done with ZBrushs proprietary mappings to
conventional UV mapping for instance.
Ambient Occlusion combined with a texture (baking) should give a model more
plasticity.Certain aspects of a structure,like corners and bottom roundings and
where a model touches the ground etc,get enhanced and thus help imitating
a natural lighting or better the perception thereof.Similar to some drawing or
painting techniques that emphasize the readability of shapes.
And since TGs AO solution has much room for improvement I suggested to use
an other app.
The above is,of course, just a personal opinion.
Keep it rolling,Jochen.



Dune

Thanks, Jochem. I had a look just now and downloaded the app, maybe install it later. I make my objects in Lightwave, not ZBrush, though, and I'm not sure if that makes any difference.

Here's another render, still with (lots of) things to change. Like exploding stones, and the lake is out of sight now. Next one will have narrower rows of wood/shrub. Has to be perfect for the final high quality render.

j meyer

Quote from: Dune on October 13, 2012, 12:38:05 PM
... I make my objects in Lightwave, not ZBrush, though, and I'm not sure if that makes any difference. ...

That should not make any difference,the ZB thing was just a generic example and
the reason I got aware of Xnormal. ;)

Oshyan

Latest one looks quite nice actually. A big improvement on the previous one.

- Oshyan

choronr

Very impressive Ulco. Those trees/or bushes in the foreground need a mix of colors - maybe some with the shade of those in the distance. The rock/stones mix is great.

Dune

Improvement is what it's all about, but it takes a while to take all the glitches out. Like the junipers translucency, the exploding stones (they were on 2 layers, now mixed 'highest raise' within one layer, and blended by a patch PF). But in the next one, I still want lesser loose rock, more into heaps. The road is mistakenly widened (wrong link, I know it).
I made a different seed for the tree lines, and added some more bushes, and rock in the river. Lifted the sun. Maybe I need more undergrowth around the trees (just using the same seed).  Any more suggestions before I'm gonna do this big?

masonspappy

Wow, that's a beauty! Quite impressive!

Dune

Thanks, Masonspappy.

I added a row of cypresses and a chapel + some cypresses on an island, and a wagon and sign (hard to find). Changed the sun angle slightly, reduced scattered rocks, and added rocks at water's edge around the lake. Reduced road width. Also reduced camera angle back to 60 (from 70). Maybe some more bushes on the grassland in front? Or a ruin?

This was done with detail 0.65, AA 6 (1/16) and GI 2/2, so a lot more refinement can be had, I think. No more suggestions?

Kadri

#28

Every new render is better then the one before Ulco.
Only 2 things comes to my mind to suggest .

*I made a search  with "old bridges" and nearly all of them are more or less perpendicular to the river.
Not sure about your setup if a little change of this would be too complicate.

*This is a little more subjective but you might use a little lighter and wider range of colors on the stones and bridge perhaps.
Like a little more orange color on the bridge?

Dune

TY, Kadri.  Seen from above the bridge is quite perpendicular to the river, they both make a slight curve, and I guess these guys planned their bridges where rock was solid, for instance, and not only looked at straight angles. But I like your observation. Maybe I can extend the rock colors to the bridge (which would be quite logical).