Render Process: A Journey!

Started by BPauba, August 24, 2007, 08:58:53 PM

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BPauba

I have always wanted to document my progress on a render, but have never done so. I have recently started a project and I thought it would be a good project to document. So this thread will show my progress with the render. It will mostly deal with the post process aspects of the project. Feel free to post comments/questions :D.

Here is the stitching process. I started with three terrain renders and one sky render (all being TG0.9 renders). I then stitched them together and got the lower right image.

Here is a slightly larger image of the final stitch. There are some subtle differences in this image like the distant mountain in left corner, atmospheric color change, and foreground gradient. Much more work to be done :D.


Stay tuned for more...

rcallicotte

Thanks for showing your process.  This is interesting.
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

BPauba

#2
I have started on some foreground matte work. Here is the basic flora/grass/shrubbery addition :D. Lots more painting is needed to break up t he photograph and create some interest...


EDIT: What do you guys think about the shrub in the left corner? I think it is kind of distracting... I am thinking of taking it out.

moodflow

This is looking really nice!  Can't wait for the final. 

Is the foliage a render?  or a photo?
http://www.moodflow.com
mood-inspiring images and music

BPauba

#4
Quote from: moodflow on August 26, 2007, 12:34:49 AM
This is looking really nice!  Can't wait for the final. 

Is the foliage a render?  or a photo?

Photo and paint, I would say 90% photo 10% paint :)

Man, I almost lost the link to the stock image! Found it though. Who would have thought that image would come up when you type in "road"  ??? Oh well it worked :D

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/831867

bigben

Nice image.

I'm just a bit curious why you render the sky separately and include so much overlap between renders?

moodflow

BPauba:  Yea, I set you as a favorite a long while back, even before TGTP was out.  I love matte stuff, and you had some great pieces.  Keep it up!
http://www.moodflow.com
mood-inspiring images and music

BPauba

Quote from: bigben on August 26, 2007, 05:35:24 AM
Nice image.

I'm just a bit curious why you render the sky separately and include so much overlap between renders?

There are a couple reasons why I render the terrain and sky separately. The first and foremost reason is because I usually do alot of postwork in the sky, and it is much easier to separate the sky (for masking reasons) by cutting out the black area on the terrain render, and then inserting the sky layer under the terrain layer. This makes it easy to paint/manipulate clouds, planets, stars, and nebulae in. Furthermore it is easier to paint into the landscape when it isn't bound by the sky (erasing into mountains and adding to mountains). The second reason is I find it almost faster to render like this. In most cases I have a bare sky so I can render at 1/10 the size I need, then I just blur the sky by a couple pixels and call it a day! For example, this sky is a 1000x750 render whereas the final stitch plate is over 7000px wide. It took like 2 minutes to render the sky, but if I had the sky in all of the 5000px wide plates it would drastically increase the render times (and create a stitching nightmare)! Another reason is sometimes Terragen does not render the skies in a high-resolution situation. I think it is because of some of my default settings or possibly my computer settings, but I have not investigated...

The renders have a 10-degree difference between each render (as you noticed). I do this because my "zoom" variable is set to a very wide angle. This really distorts the terrain on the left and right side. So what happens is between each render I have drastic terrain feature changes created by these distortions on either side. By stitching together renders that only have a 10-degree difference it allows me to "control" these distortions a bit more while getting the panorama effect. It is much easier to stitch together as well, All I really have to do is a quick gradient mask and some fast brushwork and it comes out pretty good (well at least on my monitor! I hope it's the same for you).

Thanks for the comment :D.

moodflow

Wow, very nice work on getting the colors to match.  How did you do it?  Was it with the "match color" function in photoshop?  I think I remember one of your tutorials showing how you did it (I think it was you).

http://www.moodflow.com
mood-inspiring images and music

moodflow

I should be more observant.  I clicked on your signature, and it led straight to your deviantart work.  Definitely some great stuff!
http://www.moodflow.com
mood-inspiring images and music

mrwho

good idea, it's interesting to see how others work :) I liked you gallery, some pretty good stuff in there. I just started dabbling in matte painting/digital art myself (like 2 days ago lol) and I'm wondering how you would best blend multiple cloud pictures together to created a sky. I've done one or two on my own, and they look ok. Just wondering if you have a tutorial you used or where you learned how, it'd be really appreciated. I can drop clouds into pictures and stuff, but blending multiple pics/elements from pics is tricky. thanks!

BPauba

Quote from: moodflow on August 26, 2007, 06:39:14 PM
Wow, very nice work on getting the colors to match.  How did you do it?  Was it with the "match color" function in photoshop?  I think I remember one of your tutorials showing how you did it (I think it was you).



Unfortunetly Photoshop7 does not have that "match color" function that you are talking about, but man I love that filter/function! I believe Adobe introduced that in CS, so I am one version off! If I had Match Color I would have used that, but instead I did color changes via curves (very powerful, I read a tut once and it showed the true power of curves, I will try to find it for you).

BPauba

Quote from: mrwho on August 26, 2007, 08:47:23 PM
good idea, it's interesting to see how others work :) I liked you gallery, some pretty good stuff in there. I just started dabbling in matte painting/digital art myself (like 2 days ago lol) and I'm wondering how you would best blend multiple cloud pictures together to created a sky. I've done one or two on my own, and they look ok. Just wondering if you have a tutorial you used or where you learned how, it'd be really appreciated. I can drop clouds into pictures and stuff, but blending multiple pics/elements from pics is tricky. thanks!

Now that you have said that I cannot think of any tutorials that go over these sort of techniques! I have learned a bit through various tutorials and just fiddling around though. I would really start off with a cloud painting tutorial. Matte painting is all about mixing manipulation techniques with painting techniques. That's what really brings all the elements of a matte together, well at least that's what I have noticed! This is really true when dealing with clouds!

Here are a couple good cloud painting tutorials:
(Use paint to bring all the cloud stocks together)
http://blog.sammulqueen.com/archives/tutorials/61/
http://www.steeldolphin-forums.com/htmltuts/cloud_tut.html
http://www.androidblues.com/cloudtut.html


Also being able to color correct clouds is very nice as well (color correct each cloud stock to eachother) Here is a tutorial that goes through a lot of great information

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/photoshop-curves.htm#

And finally, if you could get your hands on Dylan Cole's DVD "Advanced digital matte painting" it is a very useful video walkthrough of a whole matte piece! It as about 20 minutes of information on clouds...

PS: The "extract filter" is very useful as well, I would mess around with that :D

Brent.

mrwho

thanks for the links, I'll be sure to go through those (yup, the extract filter is nice)

bigben

Quote from: BPauba on August 26, 2007, 02:23:10 PM

The renders have a 10-degree difference between each render (as you noticed). I do this because my "zoom" variable is set to a very wide angle. This really distorts the terrain on the left and right side. So what happens is between each render I have drastic terrain feature changes created by these distortions on either side. By stitching together renders that only have a 10-degree difference it allows me to "control" these distortions a bit more while getting the panorama effect. It is much easier to stitch together as well, All I really have to do is a quick gradient mask and some fast brushwork and it comes out pretty good (well at least on my monitor! I hope it's the same for you).

Thanks for the comment :D.


That makes sense for your stitching method, but you might consider using some proper stitching software to stitch them together.. posssibly remapping the images to a cylindrical projection. In practise you would then need 0 overlap (faster rendering) and there would be no distortion at the seams (no masking/ brushwork required).  I'd be happy to help if you want to try it.