Frank's Free Edition Road WIP Thread

Started by FrankB, February 24, 2013, 12:34:44 PM

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Matt

Frank, it's hard to resist a challenge like that! It wouldn't be easy, but I don't think it's impossible.
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Oshyan


Oshyan

Hmm, well not to derail this, but here's my 10 min attempt (including render time). I know you're probably talking about the subtleties of shading, which indeed may be hard to get right. But I think the shapes are quite achievable actually. This is literally 5 mins of tinkering with just base fractal settings, no fancy final density modulator or anything, and then a couple of test renders. Of course one can get 90% of the way there and the last 10% that really matters can still be impossible, or really, really hard. ;)

I'll keep trying if I have some time, but several other projects are in progress at the moment too. :D

- Oshyan

FrankB

Hi guys, thanks for sidetracking my beautiful WIP thread.  >:( ;)

As you pointed out yourself, Oshyan, the secret sauce is in these last 10 percent.
I myself have come to a point where the sky looked "like it", but if I honestly had to ask myself if that looked like a real cloud, I always had to say no too quickly.
And the reason why I believe it cannot be achieved at the moment is in the light scattering, or simplification of it, with the current cloud layer node. Perhaps also a few other things, but that alone is a high enough barrier. And it is even harder if the cloud is up close.

Anyway.... has anyone seen my last road render yet?  ;)

cheers
Frank

Oshyan

Heh, your last road render is awesome, the amount of detail is really impressive. The only thing is I think it's too evenly/brightly lit. The road in the distance seems bright, there's little sense of receding with distance and whatnot. I suppose all that will come with the final sky and other atmospheric work though. Other than that, no noteworthy criticisms. It's great work.

- Oshyan

FrankB

Thank you!

Indeed the road in funny near the horizon... there are some perpendicular white stripes crossing the road. I just saw that in the large render, and still have to figure out what it is.

The overcast sky is giving me the shadowless lighting, it's not ideal. The overcast sky is a remnant from my previous sky experimentation and in itself, it looks rather believable. Problem is, it makes it takes away detail (shadows). I will probably replace it eventually.

I will definitely add a very slight DOF too, to help with a sense of depth.

Also, I will add something to look at farther back beside the road. Some rock formations maybe.

Thanks for the comment, Oshyan!

Frank

Oshyan

Sounds like you've got all the key points in mind to work on then. Final result should be superb, given the already impressive state of things. I do think it's interesting how people worry about the limits of the free version when, as you've demonstrated, it is actually extremely capable. It seems many people don't realize just *how* capable! Are you using just AA 3 here still?

I wonder if any free version users are actually participating in the contest...

- Oshyan

FrankB

Yes, I am using AA3, detail 0.6, but render 4k wide, then reduce the image size. That takes care of the otherwise low AA.

I imagine it might be a little hard to render it all in crops and then composite it together. What would be the best FOV settings to do this? I haven't started trying this yet. It possible somehow. Perhaps if someone who has experience with making a big image from multiple crop could post a little instructions here?

By the way, the 4k render was done in one hour!

Cheers,
Frank

Oshyan

Ahhh, of course, that's doing the AA for you. Well, it's not *quite* cheating (a little), but once you have to deal with the stitching I think you might rethink the practicality a bit. ;)

- Oshyan

FrankB

Quote from: Oshyan on March 07, 2013, 03:53:10 AM
Ahhh, of course, that's doing the AA for you. Well, it's not *quite* cheating (a little), but once you have to deal with the stitching I think you might rethink the practicality a bit. ;)

- Oshyan

Can you explain? I don't follow... why would that be a problem? I would stitch the full size (800 wide) AA3 rendered crops together. Once they are stitched together, I would reduce the resulting large image back to something smaller.

thanks
Frank

Oshyan

It's only a problem because it's a pain in the ass. ;) If you're aiming for 4k wide, that means 5x5 images, or 25 total images. So not only will it be a pain to change the perspective for 25 renders (especially given no animation features due to free version), but also the stitching could be problematic. Nonetheless I admire your commitment. ;)

- Oshyan

FrankB

I really have no idea, but I assume I can stitch seamless, if I render with overlapping GI.
My current thinking is, if I have a 60 degree horizontal FOV, and I need to create render tiles....

60 degrees horizontal / 5 = 12 degrees, so I would set the horizontal FOV to 12 degrees, then rotate in 12 degree increments left and right. That should allow me to stitch together one row of images seamlessly and look like the original 60 degree render?

Never tried it, but is it logical? I hope so.

But how much VERTICAL degrees do I get with a horizontal FOV of 12? I have no idea. Can anyone say?

Cheers,
Frank

PS: If this is impossible or too difficult, my virtual "Me" would spit out a curse and simply go buy the Deep Edition, just for being able to render large!!!

Kadri


I used 8-9 stitched images before i bought  TG2 .
Systematic thinking is good but i used only basic approximation and had no problems .
But 25 images...hmm!
The funny thing is i tried to render those images in one go after i bought TG2
but i did not liked the results as in the stitched ones because the perspectives were different :)

Tangled-Universe

I'd simply download Microsoft ICE (I once shot a crappy panorama consisting of 13 shots with my Canon and ICE corrected all the lens-distortion and overlap effortlessly) and render out frames with 'enough' overlap using 60deg FOV.

I'd cheat just a bit by using the deep+anim edition to animate the camera to turn and tilt for all your shots.
Make two versions, one for GI caches and one for rendering each shot using the GI blending similar to skyboxes.

This is all possible manually in the Free Edition, so from a technical perspective you're not cheating, but you'll save yourself a lot of time.
Unless the GI cache features aren't available in the free edition of course.

FrankB

So, if I principally know how to do this, then I won't go through the hardships of actually rendering in crops and stitching it together.

I just want to prove the point that it is possible, but I won't burn precious lifetime over it. Seriously, go buy the deep edition, everyone! ;-)