The Bright of our Absence

[Ariel DK]

Just missing out myself with Kitbash3d stuff. I initially assemble the scene in C4D, using only SpeedTree for trees and ivy.
this is obviously a WIP but i like me how began...

C&C welcome

[Ariel DK]

I added more things, played with the sun angle and tried to create a nice smooth atmosphere...
is not the wanted result but...

[Hannes]

That looks fantastic. I'd love to see this rendered with the path tracer.

[Dune]

Yeah, very mysterious.

[Ariel DK]

Thanks guys!

That looks fantastic. I'd love to see this rendered with the path tracer.

Conceded! I made two renders with a new lighting (the other one looks too dark for me), one with PT, and the other one without.

First thing: the render is to much low-res here, i made it for a general overview of how would look with PT enable, so many detail aren't noticeable
2nd thing: I have still many doubts about how the Path Tracer works (it depends on many things on our scene), so i barely used it...
3rd: the render time of the PT scene, is four times the render time of the standard scene so, i think this could be because "soft shadows" is enable (in the PT version there is very bright shadows and others very darkest), i should reduce the samples here?

[Dune]

Yes, samples can be reduce to 1 or 2 in PT or defer all (a bit depending on how obvious a little grain would be), which would reduce render time.

[Hannes]

Great! PT is definitely better I'd say.

[Oshyan]

Yes, samples can be reduce to 1 or 2 in PT or defer all (a bit depending on how obvious a little grain would be), which would reduce render time.

Although in the final Terragen 4.4 release, high soft shadow samples should have much less of an impact on performance than previously.

- Oshyan

[Ariel DK]

Thanks for the feedback! I runned some PT crop renders before update the scene, i gonna try to render it with different render nodes. for now, i only gonna use the standard renderer for previz. I also added some more stuff (i gonna credit all the freebies after the final image), but i still feel that this image is missing something, maybe can be the composition, i don't know...
I also made an HDR version that i think looks a bit better

[DocCharly65]

The HDR version looks in fact a better on my monitor.
Anyway very cool project. My respect!

[Ariel DK]

An 1080p version.
I'm fighting to eliminate the noise in the upper "Easy clouds", without success.
I tried whatever you can imagine except for crazy settings like "atmo sample" to 150, "cloud quality" to 5, or voxels number to 100M
When i can resolve this issue without crazy settings, i gonna render another PT version...

[Oshyan]

Voxel count doesn't affect cloud noise, and in most cases neither do atmo samples. I'd use atmo samples at 32 max, set cloud quality to 1, or 2 at most, then go into GI Settings -> GI in Clouds and set Voxel Scattering Quality to 400. If you're using Defer Atmo and antialiasing is at least at 4, it should turn out better than this. I'd recommend using the newer Robust Adaptive Sampler as well, with AA8 and 1/64 first samples, with the default noise threshold. See how that does.

- Oshyan

[Dune]

The clouds don't show much of the v3 quality in this render, so maybe you can even replace them by v2 clouds, which are faster. Changing some settings may give you nearly the same results with easier elimination of grain. Just an idea.

[Ariel DK]

Thanks to both for your useful advice!

Oshyan, i ran a test with your recommended setting, and it seems to work, but there is still some noise, btw i made the test with voxel Scattering Quality to 300, which it seemed to look good at 720p resolution, but not at 1080p

Indeed Ulco, both options seems to work but i would like to keep those orange shapes in the sky, at least for now.

I also forgot to mention that there is a tiny fog layer at ground level, and those Easy clouds are visible through this v2 fog, this could have ben a reason for the noise, but with your advice Ulco, i was able to discard that option. I also made a Low HDR test, where the bright areas get more light gain than the darkest ones.

[Ariel DK]

Just posting the final one, and assets used
-boat: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/old-rowboat-9922d5678af84adeb1c9b479856446ca
-cars: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/destroyed-car-07-raw-scan-916b51c7e5644eb2a6c9b3797ebb08cf
-robot: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/destructible-robot-highpoly-0f9c08f0d8d94f3a9938d4d8bf423f46
-Bushes from Xfrog
All trees made in ST by me

I have still planned run a PT version, but not for now...
Thx for watch!