Alpine Lake WIP

[Kadri]

Shadows?

[MGebhart]

Hi Kadri,

I'm using standard shadows however, I will do a test with soft shadows enabled.

Thanks for asking.

[MGebhart]

This is a 800 x 500 render using the posted settings. I'm not happy with the results.

[Henry Blewer]

I think the exposure of the camera is too high. Reducing the gamma may help also.

[MGebhart]

I agree Henry.

Thank you .

[dandelO]

Are you using photo reference for this, Marc? I ask because this is almost too close for comfort not to be based on an image in inkydigit's Jasper National Park thread, check it out from the second image on this page... http://www.naic.edu/~pfreire/canadian_rockies/Jasper_3.html

[MGebhart]

dandelO,

Yes, I did a simple Google search for nature photographs and found the 4th photo in the Google Images. I clicked on the "see full size image" Fantastic photographs. I figured it would make good sense to look at photos for reference than try to pull a scene out of my can.

I never read inkydigit's Jasper National Park thread however, I'll take a look at it now that you brought it to my attention.

It would take a ton of time to try and make the Terragen image match the photo but, it would be a blast if I wanted to spend that kind of time on it. Perhaps I'll work on-and-off  to get it close. Right now I just want to get the lighting correct and add some more ground clutter.  

I bet you thought it was a freaky coincidence.   

[dandelO]

Ha ha, I knew it! It kind of is still a freaky coincidence, if you didn't read the Jasper National Park post!

[MGebhart]

I'm not sure what happened here. Everything looks blown out.

Also, in the water in the foreground you can see a line from putting the 2 crop renders together.

Any suggestions?

[Henry Blewer]

Try resetting the lighting, GI, sun, exposure, and gamma to defaults. Then try some 320 x 200 renders adjusting each until it looks good. This may be a result from too much gamma in the render tab settings. Sorry, but I am really guessing. Hopefully FrankB or Tangled Universe will have a better idea. They seem to know the lighting settings to use the best of all of us.

[MGebhart]

Thank you, Henry.

[domdib]

The sky is definitely blown. I'd suggest lowering the exposure of your camera by a stop or two, because if the highlights go, even reducing the exposure afterwards in the EXR file can't rescue them
EDIT - my mistake, it CAN  - I was misled by the way PS6 handles OpenEXR (see http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=9769.0)

- whereas underexposing the file and then making a couple of different exposures afterwards through the EXR file and combining them will mean you'll get a better range of tonal values and the sky won't be blown (although you might want *a little* overexposure in the sky).

On the cropping issue, have you seen this thread http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=9665.0 ?

[JimB]

Very nice scene.

You could try tone mapping the image to bring back the detail in the sky.

http://photoshoptutorials.ws/photoshop-tutorials/photo-manipulation/layered-hdr-tone-mapping.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_mapping

[rcallicotte]

Very nice.  At first, it looks a little noisy.