sunset attempt

Started by Seth, August 15, 2007, 07:09:56 PM

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Seth

my first render with water...
i wanted to do a dawn atmosphere but my lack of skills is a problem... how can i make this pic better ?
i think i must change the sky's color, and modify the terrain... but can you give me some advices ?  ???



Tangled-Universe

Well I like the atmo and lighting, it's very moody!
The first thing which came in my mind was the scaling of the scene. You'd probably best lower the scale of the waves so the rocks will look bigger.
Also important is composition. I think the image would greatly improve if you'd show a little bit more sky. Let's say about 1/3th of the image.
Further on you could go for a less spiky terrain and some more surfacework.

A dawn atmo can be created like this for example:

Change bluesky colour to some slightly pink/purple blue, but very slightly!
Lower haze density to 0.5 - 1 and increase haze exp height to about 4000
Increase red sky decay to about 4.5 and decrease blue sky additive a little.
Also decrease bluesky exp heigth to about 6000-7000.
Further on the gamma and contrast settings in the renderbox can greatly affect these settings.
I recommend a contrast of about 0.35 and a gamma of about 1.4-1.8. You might also slightly increase camera exposure when decreasing gamma.

These settings should point you in the right direction, they just need some tuning.
Hope it will help. Looking forward to see your next version!

Martin

bigben

Lighting the atmosphere can get very complex, especially when you add clouds to the mix. Personally, I don't like messing with the bluesky colour because I still like to have blue sky higher above the horizon. ;)

An alternative approach:
Set GI render settings detail: at least 2, quality at least 3 (I usually start at 3,4 respectively)
Go to the Envirolight node and set the atmosphere tint to a reddish colour and the surface tint to a bluish colour (I use the bluesky colour). Toy around with increasing the strengths separately
Give the sunlight a slight yellow or orange colour.

The sky for a sunset is usually relatively uninteresting in real life...  and TG does a relatively realistic job of that. Add some clouds. 
Change the colour of the clouds so that the higher clouds are lighter than the lower clouds. The combination of red decay, GI and your sunlight colour will then provide some interesting colour variation. There are many other tweaks you can do with clouds. I tend to try an approach that will work for all sun elevations, but many people change the colours as well for extra effect.

The other tweaks I use include the atmospheric glow power (increase amount, and reduce power using values such that amount x power is roughly equal to 1), but once again, it's up to you.

Seth

ok ! i'll try to change my point of view so i can show more sky, and i'll try what you two said for the atmo and scale :)
thank you guys !
as soon as i get something better, i'll post it ^^

Tangled-Universe

Quote from: bigben on August 15, 2007, 10:00:37 PM
Lighting the atmosphere can get very complex, especially when you add clouds to the mix. Personally, I don't like messing with the bluesky colour because I still like to have blue sky higher above the horizon. ;)

An alternative approach:
Set GI render settings detail: at least 2, quality at least 3 (I usually start at 3,4 respectively)
Go to the Envirolight node and set the atmosphere tint to a reddish colour and the surface tint to a bluish colour (I use the bluesky colour). Toy around with increasing the strengths separately
Give the sunlight a slight yellow or orange colour.

The sky for a sunset is usually relatively uninteresting in real life...  and TG does a relatively realistic job of that. Add some clouds. 
Change the colour of the clouds so that the higher clouds are lighter than the lower clouds. The combination of red decay, GI and your sunlight colour will then provide some interesting colour variation. There are many other tweaks you can do with clouds. I tend to try an approach that will work for all sun elevations, but many people change the colours as well for extra effect.

The other tweaks I use include the atmospheric glow power (increase amount, and reduce power using values such that amount x power is roughly equal to 1), but once again, it's up to you.

That's an interesting approach Ben. I'll try that myself.

@ Seth: Here's a quick image I made based upon the directions I gave you. I'll attach the .tgc for the atmo + lighting setup. (also my first encounter with the sun through terrain bug I guess)

Regards,
Martin

rcallicotte

Seth,

I like what you've done, since it looks very close to reality.
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

Seth

thank you. I'll try to get it better ! :D

Volker Harun

You might try BigBen's approach, but set the enviro strength for atmosphere to zero ... this speeds up the render and has the same redding effect.