La primavera del Arroyo Rojo

Started by zaxxon, March 30, 2014, 12:25:37 PM

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zaxxon

A little Springtime fantasy with a Southwestern theme. Detail .8, AA 14. 25 populations, 12 tree types, 5 bush types, all foliage created in SpeedTree. Broomsnakeweed plant from ST store. Terrain created in World Machine. All comments and critiques are welcome, thanks for looking!

archonforest

Ohh...this is really nice :) Very nice atmo and colors! :D
I think all pretty good except dunno why I would do something with the clouds. Somehow they are seems to me flat? ???
Dell T5500 with Dual Hexa Xeon CPU 3Ghz, 32Gb ram, GTX 1080
Amiga 1200 8Mb ram, 8Gb ssd

Oshyan

Very nice scene! Speedtree really does put out nice vegetation, great to see that here, some variety. It all looks a bit too evenly lit to me though, like the shadows have been "lifted", or there's too much translucency in all the leaves (or maybe GISD is not being used). The bright exposure of the clouds may be a bit boring, but it's realistic for the limited dynamic range of a camera. :D

- Oshyan

zaxxon

Perhaps it was my post adjustments that are causing a bit of an issue; sometimes the tweaking just doesn't go anywhere right, like tuning an instrument when your ear goes 'deaf'   ::). The GI settings are GI-det 4/GI Samp 4/OC Wt 4/Bounce 6 (and no 2nd sun!). I've attached the untouched render (BMP to JPEG), perhaps that works better? Agree about the clouds, but given the light position and sun power at 5.43; that's what it is, as Oshayn kindly said, "realistic for the limited dynamic range of the camera". Shooting directly into the sun is always problematic.  I'll rethink the atmosphere a bit and try for a little less 'boring'  :). Thanks for the feedback.

Oshyan

Hmm, nope, I actually prefer it *with* the post processing. :D

- Oshyan

TheBadger

Yep I felt the same about the flatness right away too. Great set up anyway, but maybe just a little more playing will help you to get the light more where you want it.
It has been eaten.

Hannes

Occlusion weight 4 and bounce to the ounce 6? These are quite unusual settings. Sometimes I like to increase the occlusion weight to 2, which makes the image deeper sometimes.
What happens if you put the sun's strength and bounce value to default and set the occlusion weight to 2? I f the image gets too dark, you could play with the environment light settings. Just a thought...
Agree with the others about the clouds. Plus I think the cubic b-spline (soft) pixel filter would make the image look a bit smoother.

Hannes

I forgot to say that I like the image very much! ;D

bobbystahr

Great image...speedtree...hmmm...another one of the unaffordables but wow..great veg. Agree shooting into the sun is problematic...look forward to see what you do with this...a great image over all though
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

zaxxon

Here's a more 'classic' light angle, and a few inevitable composition tweaks. I may start saving out as EXR and finally put my dust covered copy of Nuke to use.

Hannes: Thanks! I started off with very low OC and Bounce values and these are the highest I've gone to date. I was using a 2nd sun as a very low value fill, but Oshayn recommended dropping that approach, so I'm still groping toward some reasonable understanding of the GI settings. I'll give the Cubic B-spline another try and post up the render;, my past experience with every other filter (other than catmul-rom) was that the images were 'smudged' to death by the anti-aliasing, maybe there are other tweaks to enhance the result?

Bobbystahr: Software prices from some of these guys assume all users are Studio types with purchase orders by the boatload, makes it tough on the individual artist. Thanks for the comments!

Well, here's another render:

zaxxon

Following Hannes suggestions I'e rendered the scene out using the Cubic B-Spline pixel filter: Det .8/ AA 8, reduced the Bounce and Sun levels to default (2/5), and set OC to 2. I think the sunlight level works better for the sky and clouds, but don't see a lot of differences for Bounce and OC between renders. The anti-aliasing in the Cubic B-spline is excessive to my eye, and begs the question of why not use the catmul-rom initially and a gausssian blur to soften as desired? Still learning and I appreciate all the feedback given. Attached is the B-Spline render.

Hannes

At least to me it looks better. The previous images were quite sharp, almost noisy. This one looks more natural to me.
Is there any additional lightsource in the image? You mentioned that you deleted the additional sun you had in your scene first. It still looks a bit flat. How are the environment light settings?

Anyway I think the image looks better now.

zaxxon

Hannes: the environmental light is set at 2.44, color on surface is 1.12, only the one sun at 5.0. The haze is set at 1.12.  As to the 'flatness', perhaps a shift in light position with a slight contrast adjust? I'm still not sold on the Cubic B-Spline, maybe a bit in-between? So many potential tweaks possible, a little crazy making. Here's the render with the catmul-rom filter with a bit of gaussian blur (.31), what do think? Thanks Hannes for your ongoing feedback, I'm open to more ideas.

Hannes

What do you mean by"...the environmental light is set at 2.44..."? Is it Strength on surfaces? This is quite high. I'm curious how the image would look like with the default environment light settings (all settings to 1) Just an idea.
The blurring with the cubic b-spline filter is of course a matter of taste. If you'd render this image in higher resolution with this filter it wouldn't look that blurred but still smooth.
Anyway I think the image is already quite good.
Maybe the clouds could use a bit more definition. They look a bit flat compared to the rest of the scene imho.

Oshyan

I've found that people's taste in sharpness in images seems to vary quite widely. Personally I like a moderate level of sharpness, and I find the base Cubic B-Spline output (exemplified above) to be very soft, too much for my taste. The catmul-rom with blur version you posted is actually a nice compromise in my opinion.

I agree with Hannes that the enviro light setting is quite high, and I continue to find the vegetation has an almost "glowy" quality about it that seems a bit unnatural. The shapes and distribution are great, but they don't have the sense of scale and anchoring in the environment that I think deeper shadows and more contrast would bring. Turning down the enviro light might help.

At this point we're kind of just tweaking the dials in potentially subtle ways to improve an already great image. If you're up for further experimentation for the sake of fine-tuning your technique, I'd love to see a couple more iterations testing some of these suggested settings, but I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to leave it as-is, it's quite nice already. :)

- Oshyan