Golden October revisited - the final Final!

[MacGyver]

State of the Art!

Nothing to criticize at all:

• excellent colours
• the isle really adds to the atmosphere
• the rock on the left is really fantastic!
• water is awesome...
• clouds are very moody

Will there be a render as big as your "alpha" preview? I would really like to "dive" into the details!

[FrankB]

thank you for the comments:

@calico: the white dots are actually small reflections
@MacGuyver: thank you, and yes, I'd like to have the image rendered bigger as well, however I've hit a memory limit on my machine, plus the render takes awfully long for my taste ;-)
However I shall try a bigger render, hoping it won't crash. I would also like to test if it makes a notable difference to render at quality 1. I have assumed that the AA filter would eat the detail away anyway.

Cheers,
Frank

[Mohawk20]

Though looking REALLY good, I do feel it's a bit too dark...

[MacGyver]

However I shall try a bigger render, hoping it won't crash. I would also like to test if it makes a notable difference to render at quality 1. I have assumed that the AA filter would eat the detail away anyway.

Just some background questions: did you use raytraced shadows, GI surface details? How were your GI settings? I found it more profound to raise the GI settings than the quality slider (at GI 2/2 everything above 0.5 looks good to me, whereas GI 2/6 for example produces different results imho as far as I've tested it).

[FrankB]

no raytraced shadows, and no GI surface details. GI was at 2/2, everything above that takes too long to compute for too little of a difference - for my taste.

The previous version was rendered with AA filter "tent" and AA 8.
I figured I can reduce the AA from 8 to 6, because the narrow cubis AA filter makes up for it, while being faster in total. I also haven't had soft shadows enabled in the previous version.

There are actually 2 elements I like best about this latest image: .the overall surface mapping and the sky/clouds, in combination with the lighting.

Regards,
Frank

[FrankB]

Though looking REALLY good, I do feel it's a bit too dark...

Thank you. What do you think: increase overall brightness or contrast or both?

Regards,
Frank

[buzzzzz1]

Looks pretty nice Frank. Only thing that bothers me is the lean of the trees caused by the wide field of view I presume? I usually try and set mine to 40 to prevent objects from distorting, especially near the camera.  Do you ever increase the enviro light on surfaces? I would try increasing to 1.5 or 2 to see the effect on the dark shadows. However it's your Baby and I'm just thinking out loud. 

[Mohawk20]

What do you think: increase overall brightness or contrast or both?

Regards,
Frank

Contrast is already very high (which is good in this case).
If you adjust the Levels, move the slider for the grays to the blacks, increase from 1,00 to around 1,28. That should be it.
Looks like this then:

[FrankB]

Looks pretty nice Frank. Only thing that bothers me is the lean of the trees caused by the wide field of view I presume? I usually try and set mine to 40 to prevent objects from distorting, especially near the camera.  Do you ever increase the enviro light on surfaces? I would try increasing to 1.5 or 2 to see the effect on the dark shadows. However it's your Baby and I'm just thinking out loud. 

thanks, Buzzz - yeah, the FOV disortion is obvious, however what else can I do to simulate or at least get closer to the human FOV? Probbaly render wider and/or stitch 2 renders together... I shall try that another time.
As for the brightness: first of all I have to say that I have three screens in my house: a dual screen setup with my computer (both LCD are different models),  and a LCD TV with my HTPC. The same image looks very different on those three, especially with regards to contract and brightness. I have optimized the render for my favourite monitor, but for the LCD TV, I really had to add gamma and exposure.
But neverheless, I believe that it's correct to say that the overall image is a tad dark. I could be worth trying different postwork strategies. Thanks to openexrr, everything is possible  

Frank

[FrankB]

Thanks Mohawk, the image adjustments you did are looking good.
I will try that based on the 32bit exr.

Cheers,
Frank

[Mohawk20]

You could also go over the top with post work and add "bloom 'n bright" (kind of effect I composed myself and try on every image I have, on some it works, on some it definitely doesn't  ). In this case it takes away all realism...

Duplicate image to 2nd layer, increase exposure, heavy blur, set as overlay, adjust levels of bottom layer (increase brightness), flatten layers, sharpen (unsharp mask), decrease saturation.

[FrankB]

interesting result, nevertheless!
I guess it would work better if the blurred overlay would be blurred less than you did.

(edit): also increase exposure a bit less.

[old_blaggard]

Very nice image!

[Mohawk20]

interesting result, nevertheless!
I guess it would work better if the blurred overlay would be blurred less than you did.

(edit): also increase exposure a bit less.

True... well, you know how I did it, so you can decide how you want to apply it (if at all).

[RArcher]

This is really fine work Frank, well done!  For me the dark areas work really well and are contrasted by some of the brights.  I do think there may be a bit of an issue with one of the models you used on the far banks.  It looks as though the reflectivity was turned up a little high and has given you a lot of white dots.  Fantastic work with the clouds, very detailed and realistic.