Excavating the Deep Cut

Dune · January 26, 2020, 02:13:44 AM

Since your canal is a straight line (presumably straight off north?), it's easy to separate each side by an SSS, or get position (in texture) + X to scaler. Then you can assign a vector displacement map or redirect to each side separately, displacing X and -X. Same with an image map or mix. As you wrote, but didn't try yet.
Btw, positive on one side and negative on the other doesn't matter if you use perlin or an image map where you can't really tell what's negative or positive, but that would be difficult for cracks.
Alternatively, use a mix of fake stones. But it would take some experimentation to get the right rock on sides and botttom, so indeed you need some clever masking, and without needing more than 1 compute terrain preferably.

Agura Nata · January 26, 2020, 03:07:53 AM

Cool stuff!

sboerner · January 26, 2020, 11:13:04 AM

Quote from: undefinedSince your canal is a straight line (presumably straight off north?), it's easy to separate each side by an SSS, or get position (in texture) + X to scaler. Then you can assign a vector displacement map or redirect to each side separately, displacing X and -X. Same with an image map or mix. As you wrote, but didn't try yet.

Yes, I realized last night how to approach this, and your suggestions give me some good ideas to experiment with. Thanks, Ulco.

The Z axis runs right down the center of the channel. The actual canal line runs SSW, so the sun's heading is offset to correct the angle. This keeps things simple when placing objects, and will help with the displacements, too.

Quote from: undefinedCool stuff!

Thanks!

sboerner · January 27, 2020, 11:14:41 PM

Quote from: undefinedOh 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.

Thank you, Oshyan! In the future (if you're so inclined) please check in from time to time with some C&C on this. Your thoughts and suggestions are always spot on.

sboerner · February 20, 2020, 05:36:01 PM

Latest iteration. Many changes to the underlying structure of the image and other details since my last post. The primary concern here is accuracy. It now depicts the historical width and depth of the excavation and the walls more accurately show the rock structure.

Many technical issues here had to be ironed out. As I worked on it the scene became too unwieldy. There were several spheres for the rock and water layers, and multiple compute terrain nodes, and it took forever to render.

Then I decided to try Ulco's suggestion (in another thread) of building the scene with cubes to avoid lateral displacements. It now consists of three cubes, a plane, and a non-rendering planet to provide the atmosphere. All but one of the compute terrains were eliminated and I was able to reduce the MPD (which had been increased to fix artifacts in the lateral displacements). This solved nearly all of the problems I was having and now the scene renders in a reasonable time.

A displacement image is used for the rock walls but there are several layers of strata. The image is scaled differently for each, the layers are warped slightly, and more displacements are added to reduce repetitions. The texture needs a little more work but it is a pretty good representation of what the actual rock looks like.

The rock pile shapes are created with functions, covered with fake stones, then with a couple of layers of imported rock populations.

It's been an education. But I'm really ready to move on and start the modeling for this scene.

Dune · February 21, 2020, 01:57:58 AM

Glad that worked, and it looks fab!

Hannes · February 21, 2020, 02:02:36 AM

Amazing! Cool, that you found a way to make it render faster.

DocCharly65 · February 21, 2020, 03:17:05 AM

Very good progress! I like the side walls and their details very much!

Kadri · February 21, 2020, 06:31:56 AM

Looks good.

sboerner · February 21, 2020, 11:54:31 AM

Thanks, guys. I appreciate all the help I've received here to get through the tough spots. This one's been a challenge for sure.

The next scene is going to be a simple, pastoral landscape with some mountains and a river . . . looking forward to that one.

sboerner · February 26, 2020, 11:30:25 AM

First effort shading an object with Substance Painter. The application outputs PBR materials which were applied following Matt's instructions in this thread. Path traced rendering. This could really change the way I do shading.

Kadri · February 26, 2020, 12:54:18 PM

Looks good.

luvsmuzik · February 26, 2020, 01:03:41 PM

Excavation scene is awesome! Congrats on that.

Wheelbarrow shaded superb. That creased inner edge with the grime.....oh my!

WAS · February 26, 2020, 01:44:58 PM

That does look really nice. Lots of detail and roughing.of the textures. Though I wonder if the supports would span the whole bucket? What's supporting the pan? That's just my logic getting tripped. lol

sboerner · February 26, 2020, 03:36:40 PM

Thanks, everyone.

QuoteThough I wonder if the supports would span the whole bucket? What's supporting the pan? That's just my logic getting tripped.

The two long poles support the bucket. The model is based on a surviving example of the Brainard wheelbarrow, which was invented during canal construction and was revolutionary - it was the first one with a curved bucket that made it easier to empty by upending the handles.