Excavating the Deep Cut

[sboerner]

New Erie Canal scene. This one is set in 1824 during the excavation of the "Deep Cut," through three miles of solid rock.

The rock piles and cranes eventually will extend all the way to the horizon. The dude next to the crane is temporary, just to show scale. He'll be replaced by teams of workers around the cranes and in the bottom of the channel. Horses will power the cranes.

The rock walls need more detail and the boundary between the rock layer and topsoil needs some TLC. Lighting is tricky because of the need to illuminate the bottom of the channel, which is about 9 meters deep.

This is my first experience with extensive lateral displacements, and boy has it been an education. The floor of the channel is a second planet, which made it much easier to manage its displacements (Y and Z) and those of the vertical walls (X).

I've set up a new website to document progress on these projects: https://40x4x28.com. Visitors welcome! 

[Kadri]

Looks good.

[Oshyan]

Very cool, I think it looks quite good already!

- Oshyan

[DocCharly65]

Already impressive!

[Dune]

Very interesting new venue, and quite a task again (making all the workers especially). This is already looking great. Sky is really good too, I like it very much. Good luck, Steve.

[sboerner]

Thanks, everyone! It's a much different environment than the last scene. The heavy overcast was added to open up the deep shadows, but I like the look of the clouds here – they establish the right mood.

(making all the workers especially)

This will be the challenge, for sure. I'll be able to use populations in the distance, but not in the foreground.

[Hannes]

Wow, impressive already! Looking forward to the next steps.

[luvsmuzik]

Love the lithograph images you found. 1500 workers and 100 cranes in a 3 mile stretch? !! You are making great use of many resources, watching as history is explained. Great documentation and authentication for this build. Interested to see how many workers, horses, cranes and rock piles you will be able to fit in one scene, but love the attempt. 

[sboerner]

Thanks, Luvs. I am a bit apprehensive about all of the people that will be needed, but am hoping to build on the experience gained in the previous scene.

Started on the research for this one several months ago, with several visits to the site (about an hour's drive from here) and to local history archives. Fascinating story . . . they chipped through three miles of solid rock using hand drills, hammers, picks, and black powder. Difficult and dangerous work.

Time to start working on some navvies . . .

[sboerner]

Next iteration. Added more rock piles and a few more cranes. More cranes are needed, but these are placeholders and will be replaced with modified versions to eliminate repetition. Foliage on either side (the canal line ran straight through an old-growth forest). More detail and water on the floor of the cut. Smoke from blasting in the distance.

Adding the water surfaces more than tripled the rendering time, so I may experiment with reflective surface layers there instead.

I've found that I have to use a very high MPD to eliminate noise in the stacked voronoi diffs used for the rock walls. I would like the rock walls to be more blocky, square, and am open to suggestions here.

[j meyer]

I would like the rock walls to be more blocky, square, and am open to suggestions here.

There is an old thread called 'Rectangular Noise' , maybe you'll find some inspiration there.

Or another thread called 'Paved Road'.
Hetzen has  shared a pavement file also, but I can't remember the name of that thread.

Ambitious project again, good luck and keep it up.

[sboerner]

Found those, thanks. Looks like some good reading there and I'll be spending some time with them.

[Oshyan]

Oh wow, this is *really* coming to life already! The overcast sky is nice too. If it looks this good now, I can't wait to see where it ends up.

- Oshyan

[Dune]

Very nice update! That water on the bottom really does it, but indeed, that might as well be reflective (+ darkening) for faster rendering.
I would make a mix of voronoi and squarish rock, and that can be done several ways; by Jon's function stacks, or a simple repeted image map (something like René also posted) with some squarish rock mask, or even simple blocks in greys, divided by dark lines, then warped and masked by PF.
The problem with the overcast weather and the line of rock piles is that they flow into eachother like one long heap, but once you added workers that will be broken up I guess.

[sboerner]

Very nice update! That water on the bottom really does it, but indeed, that might as well be reflective (+ darkening) for faster rendering.

Thanks. I tried reflective shaders for the water but was not satisfied with the result. For one thing, the water surfaces need to be truly reflective (not just specular), and using a reflective shader with ray tracing enabled was just as slow. For another, the water needs to be transparent because the depths are so minimal – the underlying surfaces need to show. In the end I optimized the masks for the water shaders and adjusted the bias settings for the two water layers. (Inspired by some very helpful threads in this forum.) That seems to have helped the renderer sort things and has speeded everything up quite a bit.

I would make a mix of voronoi and squarish rock, and that can be done several ways; by Jon's function stacks, or a simple repeted image map (something like René also posted) with some squarish rock mask, or even simple blocks in greys, divided by dark lines, then warped and masked by PF.

Good suggestions. How would you apply an image map? With a camera? The two vertical walls complicate things a bit. I haven't tried to isolate and deal with them separately, as I imagine you would have to with projected masks. Redirects, for the same reason, don't work – a positive displacement on one side is a negative displacement on the other. (So far I've used lateral displacements with a compute normal.)

The problem with the overcast weather and the line of rock piles is that they flow into eachother like one long heap, but once you added workers that will be broken up I guess.

Agreed. I've been gradually moving the sun to the south (the canal line angle is SSW), hoping more backlighting will separate the edges of the rock piles. Mixed success so far.