Q: Realism

[Sp34k]

Hey guys

I have made a picture (WIP) - and I would like to have more realistic lightning, grass, atmosphere and so on.. I have tried alot of things to make it more realistic looking with this beautiful blurish effect that many of you experienced users make use of..
So far, I have found no sucess in my research.. Therefor I will now ask you guys if you may have some experience/suggestions you might wan't to share with with a gold fish like me..

I have uploaded my picture as it looks right now, I still need to change a few things on it but as you can see, it's very basic I guess.. There's no "WOAW!" About it..
I only know about the basic settings like position the sunlight etc. but it doesn't look any realistic to me..

I hope for the best:)
Cheers,
Mike

PS. the picture is too large to upload so you can look at it here: www.sp34k.com/ps

[PG]

If you want a real wow factor, personally I'd move the sun so it lights up that mountain to the right, and use some localised light sources around the cottage. A creamy yellow sun with a lighter blue (as opposed to the grey-blue default) atmosphere may give you the lighting you're looking for, it's really about experimentation though, trying different colours and strengths for light and the atmosphere. If you want it to look cold and wintery then I did a render ages ago that looked quite good, I used 2 suns. One was yellowish with the strength increased a bit and glow in atmosphere off, the other was blueish, can't remember if I decreased the strength or left it alone.

[Sp34k]

Hey PG

Fast reply! I wonder if you were waiting while thinking "I guess Sp34k will make a topic soon!" hehe..  Anyways...............

I'm actually look for the wintery atmosphere as you spoke of, I just haven't succed yet.. But thank you for explaining this to me, I will try and use 2 suns which I have never thought of using before.. I thought using 2 suns would be wrong? But I guess I was wrong again

I have tried to work with the Light Source but I can't seem to find any effect on it.. I'm not sure if I use it the right way but isn't it just about placing it where you wan't it and increase the diameter and strenght?
I sure have something to work on here while it's raining outside Wonderful!

Cheers buddy,
Mike

[FrankB]

I have just looked at this and here are the good news: this render has everything you need already in there. Your one and only problem is the lighting. It's the main issue for most users that struggle with perfecting their scenes. It's always the lighting (well almost always).

Yes, you could for example give the stones on the path a more reasonable size, and yes you may tweak this or that, but the overall impresson comes from the composition and the lighting. You image is too uniformly lit and, like you were trying to bring out detail in the sky and in the shadows on the ground at the same time.
Your "brain" will compare this with a photograph, and tell you that it looks wrong, because the dynamic is missing in the lighting of the scene.
One easy way for you to improve this is letting the sun hit some of that scene directly, so that your overall terrain has a broader range in lightness. Then optimize the contrast and balance colors for the render in post.

I'm not a big fan of the "2nd sun" recommendation. Global GI should be able to do the job for you, and bear a much more realistic result. You should be ok with 1/2, if you switch supersample pre-pass on. If you want more details in the shadows, go for 2/4, but be prepared for a longer wait.

In general: it's ok if your sky goes white with overexposure. It's also ok if parts of your terrain shadows go black. If you don't make any of these sacrifices, you won't get to the lighting dynamics you need.

Cheers,
Frank

[Sp34k]

I'm glad to hear the good news but your right, the lightning is always my biggest problem.. I'm not good at selecting sun/atmosphere colors to my scene, and im diffently not good at positioning my sun either, I just place a sun at any random place and then make a test render and if the colors are O.K, well then I stick to it:) I just wan't to take the next step and make it more realistic now..

I'll make the stones smaller, I thought they were too big aswell but it takes me 6 rendering's to make this picture, I crop the picture in 6 pieces and render each one of them..
But you spoke about letting the sun hit directly into my screne, would you do that by placing the sun in the middle of your scene and then increase the elevation so it lighten up the whole scene? (did that make any sense?)

I have now tried to place my sun at different positions with a bright blue color but without much sucess.. My "Dream" is to make a beautiful wintery picture but woaw, the lightning is a true pain in the butt
I have tried to change the GL relative/sample to 2/4 with supersample prepass to see if it looks better I'm waiting for the rendering to finish..

ps.
Like this picture: http://www.nwdanet.com/images/phocagallery/frank-gallery/thumbs/phoca_thumb_l_At%20the%20pond_web.jpg the lightning makes it look so realistic.. If I made a picture like that, well... It would look like plastic

[Tangled-Universe]

Frank hits pretty much all the nails regarding your final steps to realism.

I'd like to add another important aspect: scales.

Frank already mentioned how our brain compares images with what we know to be "normal".
In your image the scales are a bit off. The size of the mountains suggest great height and depth in the scene, but the size of the house and trees suggest a much less "deep/smaller" scene.
The scales do not work well together yet.
Together with some improvements on the lighting you should get very close to your goal because this is already a pleasant scene so far.

As you have noticed Frank has, like me, his personal preferences regarding lighting.
I like more softer ambient lighting while Frank loves bright contrasty lighting with darker shadows.
Therefore I like to add a second sun sometimes. Though use it carefully; if you have to use a great strength you probably have to choose another direction of lighting otherwise it will look unnatural anyway.
Frank is totally right about rendering with GI 2/4 gives "best" results, at least most bang for bucks for me.
Rendering with this "always" gives good detailed shadows, so a second sun is unnecessary.
However, it renders significantly slower. Rendering with GI 1/2 + second sun or GI 1/2 + increased GI strength on surfaces (enviro light node) can be an option.

Good luck with your "quest", looking forward to see your next iteration

Cheers,
Martin

[cyphyr]

just my 2 bits worth, loose the car, there's something wrong about the scale and context...
Richard

[PG]

Therefore I like to add a second sun sometimes. Though use it carefully; if you have to use a great strength you probably have to choose another direction of lighting otherwise it will look unnatural anyway.

As my suggestion was actually to give a second colour tone to the scene and not to do with shadows, is there a way you know of to restrict the area affected by a light?

[FrankB]

ps.
Like this picture: http://www.nwdanet.com/images/phocagallery/frank-gallery/thumbs/phoca_thumb_l_At%20the%20pond_web.jpg the lightning makes it look so realistic.. If I made a picture like that, well... It would look like plastic

Good that you remind me of this very old render, which I am not particularly proud of - I shall better do it again or remove it
By the way, this image had the saturation and contrast tweaked in the LAB color space. The lighting was not very dynamic in the raw render.

[FrankB]

oh, and one last suggestion to save you time: take the same scene, disbale all the vegetation, disable the water.
Then make a smaller render, like 600x300 or 800x400 for testing your lighting, as you play with the sun position, elevation, contrast, gamma, glow amount etc...
Render at detail 0.4, reduce AA to 2, don't use soft shadows or ray traced atmoshere, but keep the GI setting at least at 1/2 + SSP.

That's sufficient detail for testing the overall lighting, and should be very quick to render.
You can add all the disabled elements for the final render again.

Also, center the lake object to where you want your lake to be, and reduce its radius to that it covers only the visible lake area. That should give your final render a turbo boost, too.

Frank

[Sp34k]

You are right about the scales, I just noticed it as you mentioned it.... It's amazing how many mistakes I can overlook. I will work on the scales after I have learn how to work with more realistic lightning..

You have both giving nice examples of your personal experience with lightning.. But for me, it's hard to judge where the sun should be placed and what colors to use and... and ... and .... I can continue
I can imagine what you guys mean but as soon as I open TG2 its like "Alright...... First, position the sun..... Now what?.... Let's add a bright blue color..... Hm, now the whole picture is blue" hehe, as you can hear, my experience with lightning isn't something to be proud of..

I would like to ask about using colours to a specific scene, as I said ealier, a realistic, wintery atmosphere/lightning is my big wish but so far it seems impossible.. I have tried to place the sun at various positions but all I get is a very, blue picture which removes the green color on the trees and everything..
Would it help if I uploaded my tgd file?

Also, thanks for the advice on the test rendering FrankB!

Cheers,
Mike

ps. I used the Alphine Moutain Pack from www.nwdanet.com, I'm also thinking about buying some of the Atmosphere packs, they might be able to help me understand lightning more?

[PG]

Have you tried reducing the strength of the sun, or maybe using the enviro light. Never used it personally but I think RArcher used it in one of his renders that made it about 3 billion times more realistic by setting it to Ambient Occlusion rather than Global Illumination. I've never tried it in a situation where I've noticed the difference though.

[Sp34k]

PG, it's worth a try! I actually don't know what Enviro light does... I can figure out it stands for "enviroment light" but I haven't touched it before.. I'll do a test with Global and Ambient to see if it makes any changes, if not, then i'll try change the values (their all on 1)

[FrankB]

It would definitely help if you'd upload your tgd for us to see what you are doing. "adding a bright blue color" already sounds suspicious to me

[Seth]

my 2 cents advices : try to put your sun a little bit to the right (you need to have the right mountain shadowed and the left enlightened), and strength like 4.5... oh and soft shadows on can bring nice realism...
check your effects in render and try contrast 0.4
as for the "cold look", did you try an atmo haze density 1 and bluesky density 1 ?

I don't know what your values are right now, but that's what i will try personnally. and i won't try the second sun before being sure i correctly understand how the lighting and atmo work altogether... it's already complicated with one sun so 2 suns...


edit : as T-U said, if you post your tgd, i might be able to give it a try too, and "adding a bright blue color" sounds suspicious to me too ^^