Parting the Sea

Started by Mohawk20, February 13, 2009, 11:38:28 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Mohawk20

Well, this is looking to be a never ending story.
The power was cut off in the whole street for a few hours..!!!

So I finally decided to re-do the surfaces and thus increase render efficiency.
So one of the reflective layers is gone, but the other covers the first, so it was overkill anyway. I also masked the reflective layer with the same painted shader I used on the water, so the reflectiveness is only applied to the 'dry' seabed.
That means there is no reflection of the sun from the seabed, so no fancy water colours.

Instead, I found out that in those days there were seals in the Red Sea. So I bought a sea lion model for poser (for only a few bucks), and exported a few poses. Those will increase depth perception and realism.

I have started rendering the new setup 45 hours ago, and the crop that covers the entire affected area (about a third of the image, in the middle) is already 50% finished. So finally things are looking up!
Howgh!

MacGyver

Phew! Seems good ol' Moses doesn't need to look for a new job ;)
What you wish to kindle in others must burn within yourself. - Augustine

DaveC

Wow that is a lot of rendering.  The water is looking great I can't wait to see the sea lions.

Marcos Silveira

Quote from: Mohawk20 on May 21, 2009, 06:24:25 AM
>:( >:( >:( Aaaaargh  >:( >:( >:(

The new crop was almost done, after 500 hours. But just before finishing, my brother plugs a buggy device into the wall socket and the fusebox shuts down.
That means: 500 hours GONE  :-[

I don't know if I'm going to render it again soon...

But I cán make that tutorial.
Where would you like to see it?

Can't you just shoot him in the forehead?!?!?


;D Just kidding...



Mohawk20

And here it is!!
After thousands of hours (hmmm, that sounds ridiculous), here is finally the next version. Featuring the sea lions, better surface layer edge smoothing, improved render efficiency, and less reflectiveness.

I think the scale of the sea lions could be smaller, and there could be more. Their shadows were a bit unexpected, but interesting...
Howgh!

Hetzen

Sealions?

You're a picnic short of a box of frogs!

Oshyan

Hmm, looks like you did lose something in the lighting without the reflective shader. This looks more "realistic" though. All in all a nice image, just a shame it took so long to render. ;D I think if you had known from the start how to go about it, and what elements might be problematic for render time, it might not have been so bad. Hopefully a good learning experience though!

- Oshyan

Mohawk20

Quote from: Oshyan on June 16, 2009, 10:08:56 PM
Hmm, looks like you did lose something in the lighting without the reflective shader. This looks more "realistic" though.

Hopefully a good learning experience though!

I agree on the lighting. I might still be able to fake some of it by using non ray-traced reflection, but as this is more realistic, I might leave it like this.


Definitely a good lesson!
A good thing to know is that this last image consists of 4 cropped renders. The very first final render for the sky, and two crop renders of the water area. Everything fitted together nicely without any GI edges, except for moses' back. Those shadows had 3 different shades along the crop edges. So I rendered Moses as a whole single crop, and that crop fitted without any edges as well. So a big "thank you" for the 'detail in camera' option!

Howgh!

maxrazor

#98
Sorry for drudging up an old post, I thought it would be better to add to this one rather than make a new thread.

I am also making a red sea parting for a client, but for some reason I cant get the displacement shader to do anything for me.

Attaching screenie of the nodes and such. Probably did it wrong, or I missed something in the tut.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT.:. Just saw that this was in image sharing. Guess it was in the wrong place after all... Sorry about that :P

Tangled-Universe

Maybe one of the moderators can move it to the discussion board, but your question isn't that unrelevant to this topic. I'd let them decide if necessary.

Anyway, you need to connect your painted shader to the input port on the right of the displacement shader.
The left input port is just meant to have the data pass along in the network (basically all nodes work like this).
The right input port is for input specific to the displacement shader. It accepts color and scalar data, in this case provided by the painted shader.

Cheers,
Martin

Mohawk20

Well, Martin just told you the solution. I was wondering, are you using a real heightfield of the region in Egypt?
Please keep us posted on your project!
Howgh!

maxrazor

Thank you so much! quick and simple mistake, thanks for helping!

Cheers

EDIT.:. Yes! I am indeed using the strip in egypt that the red sea crossing took place!

Andrew March

You mean supposedly took place ;)