Elven Village Inn

Mohawk20 · October 25, 2009, 03:49:27 AM

Quote from: njeneb on October 24, 2009, 10:24:36 PM
Render the sky effects/images separately. Then render the landscape and objects. An image can be made to use as a shadow mask (not sure how). Then use compositing software to combine the two.

No, I don't think that would work. I can always see when image are composited, and when you try to use it to buy some time it's even more obvious because of mismatchng light/effects.

Quote from: Oshyan on October 24, 2009, 09:27:51 PM
The reason this is so challenging - and mind you this is not a problem that other renderers have necessarily solved either - is the tremendous scales involved here. You're working with millions of miles of distance, most likely. Or at least 1000s. Numerically it's very large, in any case. And the renderer has to cast "rays" across that space and hopefully hit something relevant. The larger the distance, the smaller the chance of each ray hitting something and creating a correct pixel, but even if it doesn't "hit", it still takes time to calculate. So you get lots of noise due to few rays that are cast making contact and creating a pixel of the image. You need extremely high samples to saturate the image space and essentially guarantee through brute force that you get enough quality "hits".

Try working with a million mile across scene in 3DS Max or really any other app, you'll have probably even more problems. TG2 is one of the few programs that actually handles such scales well.

Mind you it's only the soft shadows that cause this problem. Granted you need the soft shadows for a certain effect in your render, but as you've seen others have had good eclipse images without this issue, and I believe that's because they don't use soft shadows. The results can still be good, and without the render time.

- Oshyan

Ofcourse I know that. And I know that I'm always on the edge of possible/doable in TG2, so there's nothing wrong with the software, there's something wrong with me (but you guys noticed that already

)

Quote from: Kadri on October 24, 2009, 05:32:47 PM
You are insane... LOL...

But I'm also fearless in the fact that I'm not scared of big figures

I don't think SoftShadow Samples really add so much render time, but we shall see.

R3igN · October 25, 2009, 04:06:51 AM

Hi

How do you create models?

3d MAX?

Mohawk20 · October 25, 2009, 08:12:45 AM

Quote from: R3igN on October 25, 2009, 04:06:51 AM
Hi

How do you create models?

3d MAX?

The statue is from Poser, and fountain was made in 3Ds Max.

( By the Way: I'm looking for a 2nd hand version of 3Ds Max, because I don't have the funds to buy a new license. And demo's tend to run out after a while. So if anyone can help me with that, that would be nice.)

But back to topic, I'm about to start rendering the complete scene. Let's see how long it takes...

Henry Blewer · October 25, 2009, 08:51:17 AM

There is a book I bought by Roger D. Wickes, "Foundation Blender Compositing". It's really quite good. I have started using Blender for image correction because of it. Believe it or not, using the node network in Blender seems somehow familiar.

Anyway, the image compositing part of Blender is actually quite good, after you get to know the different tools a bit.

Mohawk20 · October 31, 2009, 09:27:42 AM

Below pieces of two crop renders that I stopped because it took too long. Total render time was over 120 hours, and this is all that was rendered of a 800x600 scene. It's really dark, but upping the exposure of the exr shows a lot of terrain and grass that took way too long to render without even being visible!

So a lot of Soft Shadow samples really do affect the rendertime heavily...

So I'll have to try to make it look nice without soft shadows.

Oshyan · October 31, 2009, 11:09:26 PM

Honestly I don't think soft shadows (from the planet) are even adding much/anything here. You're probably better off without them.

- Oshyan

Mohawk20 · November 01, 2009, 07:45:59 AM

This was done in 20 hours, so great improvement there, but the shadows are a bit too sharp now of course.
I'm going to get the 2nd planet closer to the 1st, so it's show next to the sun. And tweak it so it's in the perfect spot for the atmo colours.

Henry Blewer · November 01, 2009, 09:04:38 AM

You can dull the shadows but using ambient occlusion.

Mohawk20 · November 01, 2009, 09:12:24 AM

Quote from: njeneb on November 01, 2009, 09:04:38 AM
You can dull the shadows but using ambient occlusion.

I didn't mean the shadow lightness but the shadow edges.
Shadow lightness is good, but if it wasn't I would have increased the Enviro Light.

Henry Blewer · November 01, 2009, 09:18:07 AM

It would be great to use separate render passes for spec, shadows, color, and alpha. Then you could blur the shadow render during compositing.

Mohawk20 · November 06, 2009, 04:30:19 AM

Latest render, took 'only' 58 hours...

I really like the lighting but it needs some more, like trees.

inkydigit · November 06, 2009, 05:26:46 AM

very nice....what about some drunken elves, falling about the place with tankards of orc ale?!

Mandrake · November 06, 2009, 05:45:48 AM

Your thinking of dwarfs, Inky

Henry Blewer · November 06, 2009, 09:32:13 AM

The last is a very good image.
I would like to see a bunch of Terragen 2 users, stumbling out drunk. Going to see if their latest renders were finished.

inkydigit · November 06, 2009, 09:40:12 AM

Quote from: njeneb on November 06, 2009, 09:32:13 AM
The last is a very good image.
I would like to see a bunch of Terragen 2 users, stumbling out drunk. Going to see if their latest renders were finished.

give me a cuppla hours lol!