The Darkness and the Light

[Stranded]

So it took me a while to figure out masks (I know... utter noob) but that's cool. I'm finally starting to get the hang of this although admittedly most of the scene at this point is from trial and error (happy accidents if you will) along with many hours of reading forums and reviewing tutorials.

This is by no means a finished scene...

Things I know I need to clean up:
1) Background mountain as it really doesn't play a role in this scene ( I guess I could just add more trees in that portion of the mask to block the land from view)
2) Too many small stones on the path
3) Need more texture on the path itself

My goal with this is to eventually put some  godrays crossing the path. I am also contemplating putting an old fence along the leftmost portion of the path but a lot of that depends on my modeling abilities.. 

I did a little bit of post render with GIMP to adjust contrast and brightness.

Comments and suggestions always welcome, that is how I learn.

[TheBadger]

This is rather good. You got the balance really natural. And the feel of it it reads as pretty much real in terms o what is here and how it it is arranged, thats 80% of it right there.

The back ground is fine, you just need to dress it through trial and error. Just make sure to not add too much, whatever too much is.
I agree there are too many stones,but anyway the size should also be varied and the color should be dirty like the ground, more scatter too.
More texture/detail never hurts as long as it is natural looking.

I would also add patchy-ness to the grasses, and variation to the underbrush. Maybe just a few very young trees mixed in. And depending on the season and location you are thinking of, perhaps a wild flower here and there?

[Stranded]

This is rather good. You got the balance really natural. And the feel of it it reads as pretty much real in terms o what is here and how it it is arranged, thats 80% of it right there.

The back ground is fine, you just need to dress it through trial and error. Just make sure to not add too much, whatever too much is.
I agree there are too many stones,but anyway the size should also be varied and the color should be dirty like the ground, more scatter too.
More texture/detail never hurts as long as it is natural looking.

I would also add patchy-ness to the grasses, and variation to the underbrush. Maybe just a few very young trees mixed in. And depending on the season and location you are thinking of, perhaps a wild flower here and there?

Thank you and you are right, there is a fine line between detail and clutter (too much stuff). I really didn't want the stones to appear like that, I just wanted them randomly throughout the path at varying sizes and colors (as you pointed out) but need to work on that. I thought I had sufficiently varied the grasses but clearly they are too similar in their variation.. hahahaha.

I hadn't really gone all the way through the scene in my head yet so I don't know what season it is yet. I will figure that out as the scene develops. Sometimes I like to let the scene be in charge.

[Dune]

Very nice already, indeed. I don't mind the hill in the back, just leave as is. You are right about the other points. Depending on how you made the path (Simple shape?), you can add some tracks, or just random holes and ridges with a power fractal. Then you could either use less stones, and more varied in size, but with a more pathlike texture on the path (greyish, sandy), or throw in a lot of stones and make it a complete gravel path. Perhaps with some larger stones near the edges. Add some power fractals (no displacement) across the stones for more diversity in color, but keep the colors subdued. If you add a power fractal after the stones with  a subtle displacement (but no color) you can vary stone size too, but play it carefully.
For real godrays you have to check shadows by surface in the cloud node, but it renders slower.

[DocCharly65]

At first sight, I thougt, the stones were down fallen leaves.

Very great mood.
Some random holes as Dune said could improve very much.

[Stranded]

Dune, the path was created by using a mask I generated in GIMP, see attached. This may not be the most efficient or effective way to use masks in TG but it works for my limited knowledge base. I will add some "texture" to the path. I could probably splatter some light gray onto the black parts of the trail mask to allow some patches of grass to show through as well. I will definitely work on changing the colors of the stones.

I am now seeing the problem with using masks as I am using them. I tried throwing a lot of stones and making it a gravel path but unfortunately the SW doesn't know that I am limiting the stones to just the black part of the mask (I inverted the mask for the small stones) so it puts them EVERYWHERE else on the scene that is not the white part of the mask, as well. Maybe I just need another image map that is larger than the current image map to tell the SW to NOT put them there.

As for the God rays, I will try that again. I "checked" that box during one iteration of this scene which took 3 hours to render. Yeah, I am using a dual core @2.16 Ghz machine to do this work ... sigh 

I am still learning about the effects of shader placement within the node list so I am sure I have things out of order or "connected" improperly.

DocCharly65,
Very interesting thought, leaves. Maybe I will do a fall variation of this scene and make those leaves. Thanks for the good words!

[Dune]

You can use color adjust shaders and merge shaders to construct all sorts of submaps from this map. Making whiter and subtracting from inverted, things like that. You can also start with a more blurred map, so only the center is really black and adjust the coverage of black and white in TG with a color adjust shader. I would invert the map to start with! White lines on black.

[Stranded]

You can use color adjust shaders and merge shaders to construct all sorts of submaps from this map. Making whiter and subtracting from inverted, things like that. You can also start with a more blurred map, so only the center is really black and adjust the coverage of black and white in TG with a color adjust shader. I would invert the map to start with! White lines on black.

Thanks, I will try the shaders and see what I come up with. It is very hard to see but there is a very, very light gray border around the black to blend the two together so it is not a stark contrast which allows the tapering along the edges of the path. I will certainly invert it as well as you suggested to see the results.

Edit: I inverted the mask and that is EXACTLY what I wanted to happen. Now the grass spans the extra terrain outside of the mask and the path is simply the dirt/stones. Thank you!!!!

[Stranded]

Been in somewhat of a holding pattern lately as I try different things that I absolutely hate and since it takes over an hour to render even simple scenes I am not making much progress. So I thought I would work on a fence to see if I would like it in my scene. I have not put it in the scene but here's my first cut...

The edges are too straight so I will have to fix them so they look a bit more worn with age. Other than that, the fence is NOT going to be that prominent in the scene so I could probably get away with using it as is.. we'll see.


Tweaking the textures as well..

[Stranded]

Still tinkering with some things. Due to long render times with atmospherics turned on, I am still messing with the terrain, vegetation, and path.. basically everything else..

The second image has atmospherics on. I am getting happier with it and am learning a lot. This second image was almost 11 hours to render on my machine :-(

[Hannes]

Looks great! Rendertimes are higher, but I think it's worth the waiting. Looks even better with a little bit of mist.

[DocCharly65]

The second image is lovely!

[Stranded]

Looks great! Rendertimes are higher, but I think it's worth the waiting. Looks even better with a little bit of mist.

Thanks Hannes, if nothing else this has taught me patience when it comes to rendering. Typically I will start a render before I go to work and then by the time I get home it's done... I don't like it and then make some changes and start another render the following morning. One heck of a workflow! hahaha.

[Stranded]

The second image is lovely!

Thank you!! It's only partially where I am looking for it to be and that's okay. I am in no rush.

[TheBadger]

last one has a great feel to it.