realism

[Cocateho]

WIP, trying to tinker around and see how "real" I can get with terragen. Should be fun  A lot of work is actually in retexturing objects, which is where this all started from. C&C welcome.

[Kadri]

I like it.

[AP]

I like it a lot. As far as C&C go... The leafs could use some color variations, not to certain about your translucency. The tree trunks look a bit low poly (along the edges is visible). Everything else looks very nice. Keep at it for certain.

[Dune]

That's always a big challenge; to get photo realism into a close-up, harder than distant views. And it very much depends on the objects. Chris is right; some color variation may do a lot, also some blemishes on leaves by tiny world scale fractals perhaps. You can't do much to the tree edge, except doubling the polycount in Poseray, or perhaps using forced displacement. Or obscuring it by having something grow (populate) on the trunk, like moss. Or make an ivy (ivy generator).
But it's a good start, and I'm keen to see where you can take this!

[masonspappy]

it's a good start. Agree with what's been said, also might try to soften shadows on the tree trunk.  If this is not a maintained/manicured lawn then perhaps vary height of grass blade's a bit more.
Overall though this is looking really promising!

[Cocateho]

Hey everyone, thank you for the comments. I have another version rendering now in which I've added some "stuff" to make it feel less empty/boring.

Dune - I've never  tried populating on an object, is there any way to populate on just one part of the object, say the tree trunk, without getting the leaves as well?

[archonforest]

It is very nice. My only thing is that the trunk of the tree should be more in the focus. The background is nicely blurry but the trunk is not enough sharp imho. It might be the low polly what others mentioned...dunno.

[bobbystahr]

Hey everyone, thank you for the comments. I have another version rendering now in which I've added some "stuff" to make it feel less empty/boring.

Dune - I've never  tried populating on an object, is there any way to populate on just one part of the object, say the tree trunk, without getting the leaves as well?

You might try a Distribution shader with Height control...never thought of this before. Too bad you can't populate on populations but that is likely not doable ever.

[Dune]

Bobby nailed it, I'd try that first. I think you can also paint (painted shader) on an area that looks like the trunk (like sss, raised, at that location) and use 3D, but that needs some experimentation. Yeah, I forgot to mention soft shadows! Big difference then.

[DocCharly65]

In my Eyes soft shadows is the most important first, but anyway a very good start!

[fleetwood]

Agree with other suggestions on variation. Also some variation in leaf color saturation might be valuable.
I think the current very intense blue sky, while possible, could use a bit of cirrus or haze to represent more common conditions. But I guess what is common depends on where you live.

[Cocateho]

Here's the one I had rendering earlier while at work. A bit higher quality, a few extras. I'll have to try soft shadows, usually I hate to use that just because of render times, though I guess if I want detailed realism I should expect to have  to wait a bit ... Along with variation, I'll definitely see if I cant figure out some "moss" on the tree trunk and I may add some low ground fog. in which case I may opt not to do DoF, or reduce the effect.

[Dune]

Yes, I'd try without DOF first, as it may be a bit too much even. As for soft shadows; set the number of samples lower (5 instead of 9), it's much faster, and often not noticable, especially on rough textures. My olive tests used 6 samples for soft shadows.

[Tangled-Universe]

Yes, I'd try without DOF first, as it may be a bit too much even. As for soft shadows; set the number of samples lower (5 instead of 9), it's much faster, and often not noticable, especially on rough textures. My olive tests used 6 samples for soft shadows.

Yes lower samples usually works, but if you check the shadows of a tree on a flat white plane then you'll notice that the default 9 samples is VERY low. Even 25 samples or more doesn't give completely smooth results.

Considering the not so bumpy bark, I disagree a bit with Ulco here, I'd tend to say to reduce the image resolution a bit (to reduce render time) and bump up soft shadow samples, actually.

The best thing you can do anyway is to do a crop render of the trunk to see how many samples you need.
If realism is your goal then more samples will give you more realism, but the long rendertimes are an unwanted reality

For crop test rendering you may need to set "ray detail region padding" to "crop region" mode and give it a value of 3-5. This will extend area of the crop render region for shadows/reflections and such.
First try without, but you may need this setting to make sure that the cropped render "catches" the shadow from the tree outside of your camera and your cropped render region.

[Cocateho]

Here's with soft shadows, samples set to 14. Still pretty grainy.

rendered the tree using forced displacement, and while I like it on the trunk it seems to mess the leaves up and no matter how low I set displacement on the leaves, or even turn it off it still doesn't look right, so I probably won't use it in the final unless I change the POV a bit. While I do like the overall soft shadow effect I'm not sure if it will be practical if I have to ramp up the samples that far.

Any suggestions stylistically? Things to add?