Canyon Wall *FINAL* + Tutorial :)

[choronr]

Exquisite details here. This now will make a wonderful base for future scenes.

[Seth]

very very good job... really like this render T-U !

[Mr_Lamppost]

WOW Fantastic 


Did you not notice it is now 2008 (Where is the smiley for "Sarcastic Smirk"?)

[dhavalmistry]

I dont want to be an ass her TU, but dont you think that the stratas are a little too sharp at the bottom??.....everything else is a beauty!....

[Tangled-Universe]

I dont want to be an ass her TU, but dont you think that the stratas are a little too sharp at the bottom??.....everything else is a beauty!....

Well honestly, I don't think so, but I can imagine your thoughts. Reducing that effect would be a very tedious job by the way.
Thank you for the compliment and comment!

WOW Fantastic 


Did you not notice it is now 2008 (Where is the smiley for “Sarcastic Smirk”?)

Oh man...haha...I accidentially put in '2007' *lol* still need to get used to a new year I think

[Tangled-Universe]

Here's the final.
First I wanted to add some clouds in it as well, but I thought that would be a bit too busy then, it looks fine now I think/hope
I'll use those clouds in my next scene.

I've applied some extra exotic displacements and I think they turned out very well.
I've also added a fine sandlayer made of 4 fake stone layers. Unfortunately they had to be rendered at detail 1.5 to look like this, lower detail gave way too noizy look.
Rest is GI 2/2 and AA @ 16 for the plant.
Render times were insane

C&C always welcome, hope you'll enjoy this one as much as I do.

Martin

[rcallicotte]

Beautiful rocks.  Nice lighting.  How did you do the lighting?

[Tangled-Universe]

Beautiful rocks.  Nice lighting.  How did you do the lighting?

Thanks

I've been through quite a lot of testing to get the lighting as close to as I wanted it to be. Think it took me a at least a day or two, but the reward is also better understanding See screenshot for lighting settings

As you can see I've been using soft shadows with high sample settings, honestly I'm not really sure whether I really need those 20 samples or not. Since the displacements are quite extreme I think I had to. Very important is the Shadow Fill light which is 180 degrees opposite of the main light. Same elevation but no shadows or other features enabled, just plain light
For this scene I found out that GI strength @ 5.5 gave me the most "light" lighting and shadows. The problem was that the colors get really saturated, reducing the color on surface to 0.5 and reducing soft clip effect also to 0.5 gave the intended coloring.

I hope this helps...

Martin

[rcallicotte]

This is fantastic.  Thanks for sharing your experimentation.  I like the end results...so this is going in my notebook. 

How did you figure out even what soft clip effect does?  I haven't seen anything on this yet.

[Tangled-Universe]

This is fantastic.  Thanks for sharing your experimentation.  I like the end results...so this is going in my notebook. 

How did you figure out even what soft clip effect does?  I haven't seen anything on this yet.

You're welcome, it's my pleasure as well and I think it's also the reason why we're all here...to learn

About the soft clip effect; what I know about it is from the following link:

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2290.msg23827#msg23827

Decided to play with it but honestly I'm still a bit undecided whether this is of great importance to this image or not.

[choronr]

This image has evolved beautifully into an array of exquisite details. I do not detect anything here that says this was a digital creation; but, rather a photograph of superb geological details. This certainly was an excellent learning experience for you.

[Oshyan]

Very, very nice work. A nice "capper" to the whole experimental thread. My only comment for improvement is that it's a bit dark and an HDR tone mapped version of this might look even better. I don't suppose you would have saved it as an EXR though, so the chance may be lost. But I would suggest everyone save both the .BMP and EXR versions of any finished renders in the future (unless they're just test renders), because tone mapping offers tremendous possibilities.

See here for some ideas and examples:
http://www.ashundar.com/index.php?topic=4253
http://www.hdrsoft.com/

- Oshyan

[Tangled-Universe]

Very, very nice work. A nice "capper" to the whole experimental thread. My only comment for improvement is that it's a bit dark and an HDR tone mapped version of this might look even better. I don't suppose you would have saved it as an EXR though, so the chance may be lost. But I would suggest everyone save both the .BMP and EXR versions of any finished renders in the future (unless they're just test renders), because tone mapping offers tremendous possibilities.

See here for some ideas and examples:
http://www.ashundar.com/index.php?topic=4253
http://www.hdrsoft.com/

- Oshyan

Hi Oshyan,

Thanx for the compliments and the suggestion
Actually this was saved as .EXR and processed in photoshop...only thing I've adjusted was the exposure, gamma and a bit of contrast.

I always save in both EXR and BMP by the way...

Working with EXR is still a learning curve for me so I'll definitely look at your links as soon I'm back home from work.
If you're interested I can send you the EXR file (share it via the web) to show me what you had in mind?
Just let me know.

Martin

[Oshyan]

Sure, I'd love to play with the EXR and see what might come out. I don't know if the results would be significantly improved, but there's potential there. It's also very cool as it is.

Btw I'm sure it's different with an LCD monitor, so it might be brighter for most other people. I'm still hanging on to my CRT.

- Oshyan

[Tangled-Universe]

Brighter? Hmmm...that's good to know, because it's already quite bright on my LCD as well... (Samsung Sync 225BW)

I'll send you the EXR (or link to) tonight when I'm back from work.

Martin