Grassy Hill (NWDA Submission) Final Render

[FrankB]

I think this contest is going to very difficult for the judges. There are so many creating really stunning work, it's wonderful!

I wouldn't want to be one of the judges... in this respekt, I'm a bit Monk-ish, so deciding what image is best would be pure horror

we thought we'd throw dice. No?

[MacGyver]

LMAO
Yeees! Do it!

[littlecannon]

Hi All.... After many days/weeks of tinkering, rendering and crying (Flatmate turned macbook off after 70 odd hours of rendering... what joy) I am pleased to present my final render for the NWDA competition. This render took 45.09 hours on Mac Pro, Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 2.26 GHz, Number Of Processors:   2, Total Number Of Cores:   8, L2 Cache (per core):   256 KB, L3 Cache (per processor):   8 MB, Memory:   6 GB with the following settings:

Pixel Filter = Catmull-Rom (Sharp)
image_width = "1680"
lock_aspect_ratio = "1"
image_height = "1050"
image_aspect_ratio = "1.6"
pixel_aspect_ratio = "1"
camera = "Render Camera"
surfaces_visible = "1"
atmosphere_visible = "1"
do_shadows = "1"
detail = "0.9375"
anti-aliasing = "8"
GI_relative_detail = "2"
GI_sample_quality = "4"
GI_blur_radius = "8"
supersample_prepass = "1"
GI_surface_details = "1"

I have had to resize this and jpeg it up just to make it small enough to post here, so excuse the bad quality. Frank will get the all singing, all dancing version mailed to NWDA.
Thanks to everyone for C+C and suggestions.
Cheers, Simon.

[Naoo]

Hi

very, very nice "Foto"!


ciao
naoo

[domdib]

Congratulations - very convincing.

[Tangled-Universe]

Very good work here Simon!
I checked our e-mail, but didn't see the "all singing, all dancing version"...can't wait to see it

There's something I'd like to point out about the rendersettings; you didn't had to render it with GI surface details enabled.
Chance is very little that it does contribute to the quality. Only thing I know is that it can contribute to small scale displacements and very fine detail. Although you have grasses there's no direct need for GI surface detail. The grasses are still relatively "big". The only contribution is rendertime Without it rendertime would be half, at most.
So for future projects you might disable that function and increase the AA for instance.
AA 8 is good, but AA 10-12 can look quite better.
For example check on of Seth's latest works here: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6864.msg73040#msg73040
Although the trees are in the distance they still look smooth and detailed. This was rendered with AA12 if I remember correctly.
So this is just a little remark/thoughts on it.

Congrats with this fine piece of work!

Cheers,
Martin

[littlecannon]

Hi Martin, Thanks for the comments... The bigger version is 2.7MB and 1680x1050. There is no way on earth I can get this down to 250kb without it looking like it's made out of Lego with a Ready Brek Glow around it. So as I asked in the NWDA thread... can I send you the Good version and then a smaller version for the site gallery?
Thanks, Simon.

[Tangled-Universe]

Yes, please send both for just now...I'll speak to Frank and the others about this.

Martin

[littlecannon]

Thanks Martin. I'll have to send it in the morning as i have left my USB key at work... 
cheers, Simon.

[buzzzzz1]

Yes, please send both for just now...I'll speak to Frank and the others about this.

Martin

So does this mean we All should send our large images in all their Glory?  LOL
Wasn't going to say anymore but couldn't help myself. 

[littlecannon]

hahahaha.....

[Seth]

lol Jay !

[Hetzen]

Brilliant image. Shame about the noise.

[Henry Blewer]

Corel Paint X2 has a filter which helps remove noise. GIMP has one that is similar. The only problem is, is smooths out the image. This causes a loss of definition.

[littlecannon]

There isn't that much noise on the original... it's mainly due to compression. The loss of detail is a problem and would be worse with noise reduction as njeneb suggests. It's mainly due to the complex detail, making the file quite big. To get the full size down to 250kb was impossible even at the lowest quality setting of 1 it was 340kb or so. This came down a bit if I exported for web through Photoshop, but looked terrible, so I had to resize the image down a bit for the competition.
Thanks for everyone's comments, it's in the NWDA comp gallery now, though sadly not in all it's glory.

Jay... your entry has some damn nice looking grass going on in there. Is that a common yarrow in there too? where is it from? It really sets the image off nicely.

Cheers, Simon.