Balloon Ride

buzzzzz1 · January 27, 2009, 02:48:28 PM

Here's a new one I've been playing with for 4 days and I think I'm done. I posted a earlier and smaller version over at DA and then I thought it was missing something. So I popped in a Hot Air Balloon compliments of Greg Sandor. The credits for the Oak Trees and Grasses go to Klas, some of the best plants I've used thus far in TG. as far as realism goes. They don't have that flat Vue look if you know what I mean? Common Spruce from Lighting. Clouds are derived from lots of tweaks using frankb's cumulus which I purchased from Him. I learned very much from this, thanks for making them available frank. I can only hope the colors and contrast/brightness are correctly adjusted because I haven't gotten monitor calibration hardware that works with XP 64 bit yet. Anyway here it is.

Will · January 27, 2009, 03:03:27 PM

Very nice, I love those clouds. I like your trees too and the lighting it nice though my eye is drawn more to the clouds than the balloon. Great work.

Marcos Silveira · January 27, 2009, 03:05:15 PM

Beautiful, it has a sense of serenity and poetry. That cloud looks so gigantic!!! Love it!!!

FrankB · January 27, 2009, 03:05:53 PM

A very nice scene you have created here!

I have three suggestions, though:
1 - increase the population density, most importantly for the midground and farther away.
2 - A little more AA would suit the render well. I'd shoot for 8-10
3 - The cloud shapes are very nice, and also placed nicely in the scene. I however think they should be brighter on the shadow side. Buzzz, can you try setting light propagation to zero, fake scattering to 0.5-0.7. Your cloud color and fake scattering color should always sum up to 1. So if your cloud color is 0.35, the fake scattering color should be 0.65. Then, increase the enviro lighting effect IN the cloud shader to 1.5. , and then crop render the dark top part of the cumulus again. The suggestions are slighly based on guesswork, but I'm fairly confident this will look good. You may also want to up the camera exposure some.

Cheers,
Frank

rcallicotte · January 27, 2009, 03:10:04 PM

Nice suggestions, Frank. I'm listening, too.

Good job, Buzzzzz. I like the trees, lighting on the trees, the sky and the balloon is a nice touch.

buzzzzz1 · January 27, 2009, 04:09:37 PM

Thank you all for commenting and frank I will certainly take your suggestions into consideration in the future and I might even go back to this file and try applying them to see what the difference will be. Thanks again!

Saurav · January 27, 2009, 05:28:57 PM

Great render, the foreground looks very realistic. I agree with the suggestions from Frank about AA the density of the trees in the mid and background. I would also be tempted to increase samples on the clouds. None the less one of the most realistic foliage renders in TG2 to date.

buzzzzz1 · January 27, 2009, 06:43:00 PM

Thanks Saurav, OK you guys I upped the atmo quality fro 64 too 75........Increased the cumulus quality to 400 samples and made the changes to the cloud lighting frank suggested. Also added another pop of the klas oak to cover more of the distant mountain peaks. The first render was quality .85 with AA at 5 and GI at 1/2. This render will be done at quality 1, AA 6 and GI 7/8. If my machine doesn't blow up or I don't run out of patience I'll see you in a day or so. LOL

Seth · January 27, 2009, 06:49:17 PM

very impatient to see the update !

FrankB · January 28, 2009, 03:46:17 AM

Quote from: buzzzzz1 on January 27, 2009, 06:43:00 PM
Thanks Saurav, OK you guys I upped the atmo quality fro 64 too 75........Increased the cumulus quality to 400 samples and made the changes to the cloud lighting frank suggested. Also added another pop of the klas oak to cover more of the distant mountain peaks. The first render was quality .85 with AA at 5 and GI at 1/2. This render will be done at quality 1, AA 6 and GI 7/8. If my machine doesn't blow up or I don't run out of patience I'll see you in a day or so. LOL

Hey, I hope you took a crop render to see if the clouds turn out ok, because... I think I made a mistake suggesting these setting to you just from memory and not having looked up the real values. These have been from an earlier concept that I pursued for a while, but have moved away from eventually. Sorry!

Instead, I think you'll effectively get better lighting with increasing the influence and strenght of the fake scattering, but not through also dropping light propagation to zero. Leave light prop at 2.
1.5 for enviro lighting is then no longer necessary, but should stay around 1-1.2
In that older concept which I dropped, the cloud and scattering color always equaled 1 when summarized, but you shouldn't do that with your clouds. Instead I had great results with the scattering color be ~0.3 points more than the cloud color, which you can leave pretty much at default.

Please realize that a lot of fine-tunig may still be required, and that success will also depend on your lighting (sun), camera exposure, and colors and cloud and density fractal settings.

Cheers,
Frank

mr-miley · January 28, 2009, 07:13:06 AM

Outstanding render. Love everything about it

buzzzzz1 · January 28, 2009, 09:44:37 AM

Thanks mr-miley,

@frankb-- Yeah, I got up this morning to check the progress and was surprised by the result of the cloud lighting adjustments. He He just a bit too much light in the clouds now, I think I'll leave the setting as they were with the exception of the increase of internal scattering and enviro light. I'm going to let the render finish to see what the foreground looks like. Here's a screen shot of the clouds with your guesses.

FrankB · January 28, 2009, 10:53:12 AM

wow, that wasn't too bad, actually

. I'm impressed with myself

Still the other setting will probably help you more.

Cheers,
Frank

choronr · January 30, 2009, 01:30:24 AM

Quote from: buzzzzz1 on January 28, 2009, 09:44:37 AM
Thanks mr-miley,

@frankb-- Yeah, I got up this morning to check the progress and was surprised by the result of the cloud lighting adjustments. He He just a bit too much light in the clouds now, I think I'll leave the setting as they were with the exception of the increase of internal scattering and enviro light. I'm going to let the render finish to see what the foreground looks like. Here's a screen shot of the clouds with your guesses.

From what I see between the two crops, somewhere between the two might be 'right on'! Nice one Jay. Also working with Frank's files.

buzzzzz1 · January 30, 2009, 06:41:39 PM

Thanks for all your comments. Been thinking about the cloud suggestions and came to the conclusion that personal taste seemed to come into play more than anything. I have seen in nature many colors, contrasts, detailed and not so detailed clouds. There isn't in my opinion a right or wrong color/brightness or contrast combination and it's a just matter of personal taste. Suggestions on cloud quality can be justified as far as a technical suggestion if there's lots of graininess. Just sharing my thoughts.

I guess it's difficult for some to separate personal taste from good sound technical advice? Not trying to be a prick but I think this comes into play on many CG sites.