Guardians below Old Man Pass

Started by zaxxon, July 22, 2017, 09:13:56 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

zaxxon

Aspen, Birch, Jeffrey Pines, two Coyotes and miscellaneous shrubbery. World Machine, Speedtree and Megascans.

mhaze

Beautiful rocks and textures - scanned? Great narrative & veg.

bobbystahr

Absolutely beautiful...Full Marks on this one for sure! *****
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

Dune

Very natural, Doug. Exquisite render, with a subtle cloud. I like it very much.

Lady of the Lake


masonspappy



zaxxon

Thanks for the kind comments!

Mick: the rocks are from Megascans, but there are some fake rocks in the midground. The fallen wood objects are also from Megascans, otherwise the trees and shrubs were made in Speedtree. And thanks for mentioning the "narrative", because there kinda/sorta is one, depending on what the viewer puts there.   ;)

Ulco: The cloud was a whole lot less "subtle" in prior versions. I think a lot of us have a love/hate fascination with the so-called "Easy Cloud". I truly am amazed at the rendered product, but constantly dismayed at the render times. For me it's the quality increase with large voxel amounts; to my eye the difference justifies the higher settings, but the time hit is painful. TG 4 with the RTP is a perfect companion to the V3 clouds and my favorite duo of added features. Still, improvements seem to be on the horizon!  :) I attached a prior test image showing a fuller cloud set. The time difference was almost two hours with my initial set up of 500 million voxels per cloud, the one posted below has a reduced voxel count of 350 million each (there are two separate clouds here) and the render time difference dropped to about an hour and a half. The final version contains just the single cloud and is set to 350 million voxels.


Oshyan

Foreground looks great, and I also love the subtle, minimalist clouds. Very realistic. The background texturing seems a bit simplistic and monochromatic though. Not unrealistic in nature, necessarily, but since you have total control of this "nature", it might be nice to see a bit more variation. ;) Still it has your signature understated realism, which I always enjoy.

- Oshyan

zaxxon

Oshyan, I had some earlier variations with more lighting and more color in the background, but it brought that area too 'close' to the foreground and sort of flattened the image while simultaneously creating a problem of too much color value and detail competing with the already pretty jammed detail level of the front. I also felt that the 'simpler' dark mass provided a better backdrop for the bright foliage of the aspens and birches. I didn't like the tests I made with higher haze settings, so any additional colors which might have worked in a 'heavier' atmosphere were tossed. I agree with your artistic sensibilities though, I always like to get that extra bit of punch out of the image. "understated realism", I like that.

Oshyan

Yeah, I can understand how that might be the case Doug. I wonder if in this situation it's a lighting issue. I think what I am seeing is that the lighter parts of the mountain that are in shadow seem a bit too light for what I'd expect. That could be due to either brighter-than-realistic surface colors, or additional light sources, or inaccurate GI (higher GI settings, or path tracing, could help). Or it could just be my expectations are unrealistic for the reality of the situation. ;) I'm curious which it is though...

- Oshyan

bobbystahr

I actually prefer the original, somewhere those cute coyotes got lost...Short attention span? he hee hee. Seems more focused.
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

zaxxon

Bobby, the second image is a crop of an earlier test to show the left hand cloud. Those pesky Coyotes just seem to be following me around these days, which is no easy thing as they are not rigged... ;)

Oshyan, I've attached an earlier image with different lighting. I went away from that set up as I thought that the background detail was 'imposing' itself too much in the composition. I liked the way the terrain was displayed, but thought that on balance it didn't work.  Also, the final image is adjusted for color and saturation so perhaps there may some issues there that would resolve your impression. I've attached an unadjusted final image. I really need to start using the render elements with exr and take these to Nuke to have exact control, but my brain cells are already at red-line  ;D

zaxxon

Here's a link to a video showing 6 lighting variations illustrating the conversation above. The sun angle is changed but the elevation is constant between the six examples. Number 3 (with clouds) is the final. The color values in the shader are fairly close as is appropriate to a granite bluff. Pumping those values would create the same issue as increased light in keeping the background set back from the foreground.

https://vimeo.com/226758625


bobbystahr

#14
Quote from: zaxxon on July 24, 2017, 12:12:56 PM
Here's a link to a video showing 6 lighting variations illustrating the conversation above. The sun angle is changed but the elevation is constant between the six examples. Number 3 (with clouds) is the final. The color values in the shader are fairly close as is appropriate to a granite bluff. Pumping those values would create the same issue as increased light in keeping the background set back from the foreground.

https://vimeo.com/226758625





That, as it stands, is one of the nicer videos I've seen this month...great choice of music that totally suits the scene seen.
It's so good I dl'd it for my archives btw.
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist