At the Park

[Henry Blewer]

 I usually render with the default filter. I have also used 'box' on occasion. I wish my system was faster. It would be cool to render the same image over and over using the different AA filters.

[Oshyan]

I usually render with the default filter. I have also used 'box' on occasion. I wish my system was faster. It would be cool to render the same image over and over using the different AA filters.

I did a bit of that, determined that Mitchell-Netrevali is generally the best, or at least my favorite. The tests were on a pretty simple scene, I'd like to reproduce on something more complex.

- Oshyan

[Henry Blewer]

Mitchell-Netrevali is the filter I normally use. I am working out the details in my head for an image using Marc's Sugar Maples, and other plants he has made. I think I will use the soft filter ___. (The current render is using almost all my ram because I went overboard on the AA. Another thread of T2 will cause a crash.)

[MGebhart]

B E A uitiful.

Thank you Ryan.

Marc

[RArcher]

Thanks everyone, the trees turned out really nice.  Not really sure what sort of lighting tutorial I would be able to write up, I don't do much special really.  For this image I started with a partly cloudy sky with the sun shining in from the left.  It turned out rather dull, so I increased the exposure until I got what I wanted.  I lost my clouds in the brightness but the overall look was better.

[Henry Blewer]

That's what has been bothering me. When I turn up the exposure of the camera, the sky washes out into white. Gamma does the same thing. I'll keep experimenting, Blender's lights are not that great, but I can use them quite well now.

[RArcher]

It is exactly the same as what would happen with a real camera, so unless you are going for a perfectly even exposure HDR effect, having the trees properly exposed while the sky is blown out is the more realistic image.

[FrankB]

Henry, you have to keep in mind that TG2 works like a camera. You need to choose the exposure for the element that interests you most.
Let's say this were a real place and you'd be standing there with your camera, you would have to increase the exposure to catch the best possible light on the plants. Your sky would get brighter or white out. Instead, if you'd take a shot of the sky in this place, for example to show off some nice clouds, the rest of the scene would be dark.
That's the same thing here.
You can save in .exr so that you have a broader dynamic range to play with, but like with HDR photography, you can easily overdo the effect of exposing both the dark and the bright parts into the dynamic range of your monitor. To some extent this works ok.... in the end, our eyes have a broader dynamic range than your monitor, but the thing is we're used to photographs, and "find images more realistic" that have a smaller dynamic range than the eye.

Cheers,
Frank

[Matt]

You can save in .exr so that you have a broader dynamic range to play with, but like with HDR photography, you can easily overdo the effect of exposing both the dark and the bright parts into the dynamic range of your monitor. To some extent this works ok.... in the end, our eyes have a broader dynamic range than your monitor, but the thing is we're used to photographs, and "find images more realistic" that have a smaller dynamic range than the eye.

It's the display that's the problem (TV, computer screen or paper). The usual way to deal with these low dynamic range displays is to expose for a particular part of the scene, and accept that other parts will be under- or over-exposed. That is what tradional photographers had to deal with, but with HDR techniques that are now available there is a trend to try to fight this phenomenon by reducing the dynamic range. What I think it often overlooked is that images that are partially under- or over-exposed do convey information about how much brighter the sky is compared with the parts that are well exposed. HDR photography which has been manipulated to show detail in every part of the scene usually looks wrong to me. Not because I am used to seeing low dynamic range images, but because I am used to seeing low frequency contrast in the world around me. Most HDR processing which aims to bring everything into the optimal exposure range is actually removing low frequency information, and that makes scenes look flat to me. So many beautiful photographs are ruined this way.

Most of the photos here have been run through what is basically a high-frequency band pass filter:

http://community.livejournal.com/ruguru/830724.html

While it may not actually be a high-frequency band pass filter, even if you manually adjust certain parts to reduce their relative contrast you are basically being a human high-freqency band pass filter

So much contrast has disappeared in some of these photos that they look more like paintings than reality (at least to my eyes).

Ryan, I hope you don't mind me hijacking your thread!

( EDIT: It's art, not reality, I need to remind myself )

[Henry Blewer]

Here's a link to my experiment with lighting WIP. We can use this thread to discuss lighting...

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8596.msg91865#msg91865

[FrankB]

Matt, the photos from the link you posted indeed look very flat. Like bad renders

[Henry Blewer]

I think the HDR in the photos Matt linked to was not done well. They opted to enhance everything, but HDR works better to enhance a single piece of an image. Oh well. Hopefully the HDR images will get better as people realize how to use it. (I don't get it myself)

[Kadri]

I think the HDR in the photos Matt linked to was not done well. They opted to enhance everything, but HDR works better to enhance a single piece of an image. Oh well. Hopefully the HDR images will get better as people realize how to use it. (I don't get it myself)

Indeed in time it will be at a reasonable level . Do you remember the Morph era ?  

Kadri.

[Henry Blewer]

It was cool using 3D software but the images...