Should we keep going?

[Zylot]

Image theme of a walk through the woods.  The question is, should we keep going?  The forest is getting thicker and the lighting darker.  Maybe we should just go back?

3 Populations make the forest
2 Populations of bushes, 1 Fern, fake stone shader for some rocks a ground Cover make the forest floor.
A low level cloud adds some mist in the distance.

I know the trees aren't holding up well in the foreground, look kinda cheesy, and of course, all C & C welcome.

http://ztcenter.net/forest.png for slower connections
http://ztcenter.net/renders/forest.bmp is the full scale.

[Alf15000]

Nice ! Maybe your mist is a little "noisy"...

[FrankB]

Hi,
This is a quite demanding scene for the renderer. You got noise in the shadows and need to increase atmosphere samples.
But the biggest issue you have is in dynamic lighting (or lack thereof) and sharpness of the vegetation.
We tend to want everything in a scene lighted decently, so that we can se details and color in the shdows. However, if you were to take a photograph of this scene, you would probably have much more contrast in the photo. Lit areas would be bright, shadow would be pretty dark. I think you need to sacrifice the details in the darker areas, especially in the background, to bring out the sunlit parts much more. Eventually, the render would look much more realistic.
If you saved your render as a .exr you can still manipulate the image levels and curves to get a more realistic lighting, without completely sacrificing the shadow details.
Lastly, the sharpness of the vegetation is still too high, so I recommend some level of blurring as well (or rendering again with increased AA)

Cheers,
Frank

[Zylot]

Thanks Frank for the advice, I'll try and revamp the lighting.  I did up the atmosphere samples, so I was a bit suprised the mist was still so noisey, obviously it needs more.  We'll see what I can do with the AA and such.

[rcallicotte]

I agree about the lighting.  The shadows need to be deep, but it would be cool to see a little in there.  The mist and thickness of the foliage is just about perfect.

[Zylot]

Going somewhere...

[FrankB]

going somewhere into the right direction :-)

the darkness now is at a good level, but the brightnes isn't yet. I figured that you have not used soft shadows, but I think you definitely should, despite that will require quite some extra render time.
You should also increase the exposure more, to a degree that the sunlit vegetation color becomes less saturated.

Cheers,
Frank

[Zylot]

Yes, i was working on a machine who's color is off, I posted this here so i can look at it from a proper monitor.  The shadows are as deep as I'd like, not to work on the other half

Good idea about soft shadows, I'll see what I can do about it.

[Hannes]

Another suggestion:
Don't make it too dark and use higher values for GI relative detail. Render time will be much longer but the areas that are only lit by indirect lighting will look less flat.
In my opinion the fern is too blueish. A little more desaturated yellowish green would be perfect (as I said - in my opinion!).

[Zylot]

Final version, I need to move on to something else.  It was fun though, and I like to think I got the lighting looking decent here.  Of course, comments welcome!  JPG below, PNG here:

http://www.terragen.org/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-5804

[Mohawk20]

Great lighting, I like the over bright tropical feel.

[Seth]

a bit too saturated for me but if it is what you wanted... ^^

[rcallicotte]

This last image reminds me of the CryEngine, when it was first revealed.

[MacGyver]

This last image reminds me of the CryEngine, when it was first revealed.

Me too!

[GioMez]

Agree with Seth about the saturation, but it is still a good image!