Beach Sunset WIP

Started by blattacker, February 26, 2018, 09:43:47 PM

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blattacker

Image in progress for a friend, open to suggestions on improvements!

Dune

2 suggestions; break up the repetition of the sinus by PF and insert another (slightly rotated) sinus inversyly masked (or a more complex combination of course). And smooth the sea quite a bit, either by the type of waves (size, roughness) or use a reflective shader with smooth (0.004) reflection. But the (too) rough sea may also be caused by too little quality of the clouds.

blattacker

I'm not sure what you're talking about with sines (well, I know what sines are, but I haven't used, like, a sine function or anything), the ripples were created with two power fractals layered on top of each other, feeding into a redirect shader on a heightfield made in world machine. It was made using a tip from you, I believe, on a forum post asking how to make sand dunes. Though if there is a sine function, I may have to try that out, it might get rid of some of the blockiness of the current method. I'll admit, I'm still pretty terrible at this program haha, but I'm learning.

luvsmuzik

I really like your white cirrus? clouds, did you warp them? Neat effect however done!

Dune

I made you a quick and dirty file. You can expand on this of course, but it shows the principle of the sinus.

blattacker

I haven't had a chance to look at your file yet, Dune, as I just got home from work, but here's where it was when I set it to render out a higher quality version this morning. I changed up the sand and tried changing up the water, but it looks like I've just made it worse on the water. I'm gonna take a look now at what you posted and see if it helps even more, thank you!

(Edited as I uploaded the wrong file)

Dune

Regarding the sea; you could try making your own softer/smoother waves by a perlin (and/or voronoi ridges), slightly stretched (2x) along the length of your coastline. If you take sizes like 10/30/0.1 and decrease the displacement roughness to 0.5 or so (with displacement amplitude of maybe 2-3m), you may get nice smooth waves, with just a bit of small wavelets. Instead of a water shader you can add some undisplaced color PF (green/blue, soft), and add a reflective shader after that, which you can even smooth (0.004). No need for transparency anyway.

blattacker

I tried out the water thing, and as far as the 3D preview goes, I'm really liking how it looks, thanks for that tip! I'm rendering out a high quality version right now, but I'm still working with older hardware, so I'm not sure how long it's gonna take. I decided to stick with the sand displacement I had in the previous render, though, cause I actually really like the effect it's giving, but I'll definitely take a look at implementing your method in a different project, the more ways I know how to do one thing, the happier I am, hahaha.

blattacker

#8
Quote from: luvsmuzik on February 27, 2018, 08:29:37 PM
I really like your white cirrus? clouds, did you warp them? Neat effect however done!
Just realized I never responded to this! Thank you! I actually didn't do anything special with the cirrus clouds, it's just the default high level 2D cirrus layer. I agree though, I really like how it turned out!

Here's the project so far, as I said before, I really like the effect on the water now, thanks Dune! Though I think I may have made the water a bit too blue and not quite reflective enough, let me know what you guys think! I'm having trouble getting rid of that weird grid-like texture you see in the sand towards the bottom right of the image, though. I'm wondering if it's from the clip file for sand dunes. My best guess is maybe the perturbations noise pattern scale might be too small or something? In any case, I think I'm getting towards the end of this project, just a couple more things to fix before I'm happy with it!

Also, if any one can give any opinions on the exposure/contrast/colors in general, the monitors I'm using while making this vary wildly in their color representation. I'll attach a photo from my phone showing the difference between the two in just a moment, if anyone wants to help, let me know which one more closely represents what you see on your monitor!

blattacker

After going back and forth with the person I was making this for on what they wanted, this was settled on the final version, it got kinda crazy at the end there, so I'm actually kinda happy that this one is being considered done haha.

luvsmuzik

I had the same problem when viewing this as you did. My work station monitor is new and possibly settings are not right for lighting. I see this very dark on that one, but tablet and phone, it is much better lighting.

I do not know why in most sunset renders, foreground is so dark, when IRL you can usually see your hand in front of your face. Did you use soft shadows? I usually have to up Global Illumination as well.
I like this final render though, nice ripples. :)

bobbystahr

a bit dark on my monitor as well and I'm bothered by the un natural straight lines that appear to go from the waterline all the way to the camera.
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

blattacker

Quote from: luvsmuzik on March 10, 2018, 09:48:14 AM
I had the same problem when viewing this as you did. My work station monitor is new and possibly settings are not right for lighting. I see this very dark on that one, but tablet and phone, it is much better lighting.

I do not know why in most sunset renders, foreground is so dark, when IRL you can usually see your hand in front of your face. Did you use soft shadows? I usually have to up Global Illumination as well.
I like this final render though, nice ripples. :)

Yeah, I tend to view things on my phone as the last one, as it has an IPS display so it should, theoretically, be more accurate color-wise than the two 5+ year old TN displays I have on my computer. I didn't use soft shadows, but I did up GI as far as I could without this turning into a multiple day render haha. I think the darkness in the foreground on renders, and in photos, is more an artifact of how we see light in reality versus images. I could probably up it with some more post work, but the person I was making it for wanted the focus to mostly be on the sky anyway, so she was happy with this. Thanks you!

Quote from: bobbystahr on March 10, 2018, 01:00:03 PM
a bit dark on my monitor as well and I'm bothered by the un natural straight lines that appear to go from the waterline all the way to the camera.

I think I might, someday, invest in a proper color grading display so that I don't run into problems with lighting and colors anymore haha. It's crazy just how differently different screens will display the same image! As far as the unnatural straight lines, if you're referring to the blue lines, that was just a quick cheap and dirty lens flare effect in photoshop, just the stock one, so it doesn't look so good, but it was asked for, so I had to put it in. If it's the ones in the sand, though, I'm bothered by those as well, but nothing I did seemed to get rid of them. I'm left wondering if it was an artifact of displacing the heightmap, or maybe an issue with the clip file I used for the sand ripples, as it was made more for full-sized dunes? In any case, if anyone has some suggestions on smoothing those out, or at least varying them more so they look more windswept, I'd love to hear, if nothing else but for future renders.

luvsmuzik

I would direct you hear for a look. Particular attention to Hetzen's  explanation of the sine and vector displace. You did not say which ripple clip you used, but I am sure you can get some variations. Mine was for clouds, but distortion is distortion... I think?

http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,23792.0.html