Still WIP...I think...
Rendered with my new i7-2600K in little over 3 hours with 0.9 detail, GI 2/6/4 + SS-prepass and AA12 (because I just could, lol) ;D
I like it a lot! Only the greens don´t fit for me, but I know that you sometimes have that kind of mixture. But at the moment they almost look like they are put in afterwards.
Thanks JW,
Yes I can imagine the greens don't fit for you...however, in rocky areas in west US for instance there's still a lot of grasses and bushes.
I think you mean they don't blend in too well and I tend to agree with that.
What do you think, would reducing saturation of the leafs improve it?
Cheers,
Martin
Yes, I think a bit less saturation on the leaves. Otherwise looking quite nice. Maybe just a bit too much specular on some stones though.
- Oshyan
The layering and displacements of the rock faces look great.
Gorgeous!!
maybe some drier colours for the bushes, but the rock face and boulders look spectacular!
perhaps - but that would increase the rendertime - it would help to replace the specular with real blurry reflection. Then especially at glancing angles the red of the surrounding would appear on leaves too. But I don´t live in that area and so my feelings about the greens might be totally wrong.
It seems a bit contradictory to me, to be honest. The rocky walls suggest a very dry, desert-like environment, like a Jordan valley, and they wouldn't be as shiny (or maybe some small areas, where mica stone glitters). Or if they were as wet as they now look, vegetative life would be thriving. Mosses and such.
I would reduce the specularity significantly, at least away from the little stream. Or add a lot of grass and mosses. That's what I think, but it does not have to do with the quality of the setup, which is awesome!
I'm drooling over this one Martin. Absolutely 99.5% to a tee. Now just add some variance to the bush colors; i.e., just spot is a few of the same bushes using a different color/texture (dry look). Also, some short grasses with the dry look. Man, I love this image. The rock formations and stone are right on. I know you're going to do some more tweaking on this and I'm anxiously waiting to see the results.
Great looking rocks! And congratulations for your new i7-2600k it really makes rendering enjoyable 8)
Quote from: Dune on June 30, 2011, 01:39:16 AM
It seems a bit contradictory to me, to be honest. The rocky walls suggest a very dry, desert-like environment, like a Jordan valley, and they wouldn't be as shiny (or maybe some small areas, where mica stone glitters). Or if they were as wet as they now look, vegetative life would be thriving. Mosses and such.
I would reduce the specularity significantly, at least away from the little stream. Or add a lot of grass and mosses. That's what I think, but it does not have to do with the quality of the setup, which is awesome!
Thanks Ulco,
Oshyan mentioned the specularity too, but these are the settings for specularity for the rocks and stones:
Reflectivity = 0.2
Specular intensity = 0.1
Specular roughness = 0.1
For the water it is default it is brightness/intensity 0.6 and spread 0.125.
The water sparkles don't look overly bright IMO.
So what you're actually seeing is not specularity but just bright surfaces.
If I'd photograph a place like this and would like to have clear shadows then the surface (and sky too maybe) will become brighter.
I can easily get it all within the LDR of everyone's monitor, but it's not going to look any better :)
However, I will have a thought about this and see what I can do about this.
The way I did it is mostly (physically) correct, but it's not working apparently looking at the crits.
Thanks so far :)
Quote from: choronr on June 30, 2011, 02:18:31 AM
I'm drooling over this one Martin. Absolutely 99.5% to a tee. Now just add some variance to the bush colors; i.e., just spot is a few of the same bushes using a different color/texture (dry look). Also, some short grasses with the dry look. Man, I love this image. The rock formations and stone are right on. I know you're going to do some more tweaking on this and I'm anxiously waiting to see the results.
Thanks Bob!
The bushes are definitely on my to do list and the grasses are a nice suggestion.
There's a new feature in the latest alpha which may be suitable for some nice effects.
Quote from: Mor on June 30, 2011, 02:26:04 AM
Great looking rocks! And congratulations for your new i7-2600k it really makes rendering enjoyable 8)
Cheers dude, working/rendering with such a system is a real charm. I can recommend it everyone.
Took me over a year of saving, but it's worth every penny so far!
Cheers to all,
Martin
QuoteThere's a new feature in the latest alpha which may be suitable for some nice effects.
I've just been playing as well, and it's VERY interesting! You can even make furry animals, kind of.
I later realized the specularity may indeed have been what you say, Martin, harsh light. As you know, I'm more of the soft light landscapes ;) The water trickle is just great, I wanted to add.
Hi Martin,
first of all congrats, this is a very good picture! Most of all I like the POV and the water puddle / river. Rock shape detail is your usual high quality. I must say Dune nailed it for me with his analysis, though. I guess the following small tweaks would bring this render from solid to awesome:
1 - much desaturated bush leaves and maybe a recoloring to grey-blueish. Also maybe making them a tad smaller?
2 - totally get rid of reflections except very near the water. These rocks look like desert rocks to me and as such, all that dust should be absolutely killing the reflections I reckon.
3 - I think it would be great if those small scale displacements on the rock facade would be more rare. Meaning, i.e. the more vertical parts could be smoother.
All this of course only IF you meant to display a dry place. If you meant to show a more humid place, then Dune's other advice sounds right to me, too. More vegetation, like in that jungle render with the ivy you once made.
Cheers,
Frank
Very nice start Martin. I agree with Dune and Frank with one addition, I would think there would be fallen sand, rocks and debris on the top of ledges of the outcrops all the way up. Could you adjust the distribution for the gorge floor stones to do this? That to me would complete the scene. Hey, is that a terragen rendered blue sky or a photo? He! He! ;)
cheers
Splendid work! Agree with the comments and thats most impressive render time too! :P
Agreed, I do see the specular settings are low, but what ultimately matters is what is perceived in the final image, and there seems to be broad consensus that it's "too shiny" for what is expected in this kind of scene. I agree in particular with Frank, *any* specularity doesn't really make sense to my mind in this environment. But as he and Dune said, if you do want a more wet impression, perhaps after a fresh rain, then maybe more vegetation, or go even further toward the shiny (really wet look). Something like Luc Bianco's shiny canyon (which I probably couldn't find now since he took down all his stuff).
- Oshyan
I didn't disagree with what they saw, only with what they think causes it...it's just bright surfaces.
Nonetheless I will disable it entirely as I do agree it might fit the scene better without.
Bob (choronr) was pretty sure the bushes are in place (maybe except for the saturated colours) so I definitely won't change it into a completely arid scene ;)
I hope to find time today to work on it!
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on July 01, 2011, 02:48:13 AM
I didn't disagree with what they saw, only with what they think causes it...it's just bright surfaces.
Nonetheless I will disable it entirely as I do agree it might fit the scene better without.
Bob (choronr) was pretty sure the bushes are in place (maybe except for the saturated colours) so I definitely won't change it into a completely arid scene ;)
I hope to find time today to work on it!
Regarding the bushes as they relate to the terrain and it's color, I would bet that if they were an olive green - like the ones we see around the canyons and gorges around Sedona, Arizona. I like Frank's idea of the bluish/gray/green such as we see with the Sage brush common most everywhere in the southwest. A few of these mixed in with your current population would look good (but smaller). Also, those short dried grasses clumped sparsely in and around the area would look great.
As I look at your terrain, I'm wondering if you used the same canyon setup you made some time ago?
that is a very good render again Martin.
I do like the vegetation, because it adds some life into the shot and put some nice green part in this brown orange overall look.
I would go for a less saturated colour though.
I guess it is still a wip and i am waiting for the next iteration ^^
Next iteration...
Excellent. The vegetation really blends in much better now. Some very bright rocks, even in bright light I would be surprised to see them get that white, but they do look less shiny. Is this now with all specular removed?
The rock shapes and texturing are overall quite good. I especially like the buildup of smaller rocks on the canyon floor.
- Oshyan
Nice image , Martin!
The lighting looks a little too harsh too me. I like the cracks :)
As for the bright rocks: have you ever tried to use a colored fill-light?
Quote from: Oshyan on July 02, 2011, 04:25:01 AM
Excellent. The vegetation really blends in much better now. Some very bright rocks, even in bright light I would be surprised to see them get that white, but they do look less shiny. Is this now with all specular removed?
The rock shapes and texturing are overall quite good. I especially like the buildup of smaller rocks on the canyon floor.
- Oshyan
Thanks Oshyan.
I'm not very happy with the vegetation yet. I think it looks dropped in, rather than part of the scene. Already made some improvements on that.
I found out what caused the bright rocks. It wasn't specularity as that was removed entirely.
I think it's a "bug" in the fake stone shader. Some stones weren't "formed" and remained as flat patches on the surfaces. The ones which are formed incorporate the displacements and shading as they are supposed to do via the shader input port.
Those flat patches will have the same colour defined in your fake stone shader itself, despite you have exchanged it for displacement/texturing via the shader port.
Within those patches fake stones were created from other fake stones shaders and they in turn incorporated the white flat patch created by the other fake stone shader.
The merge shader which blends the fake stone layers together needs to work in "highest" mode to avoid stones on stones, but since the patches are flat it can't discern between this anymore.
I "fixed" this by choosing a fake stone colour as close as possible to the main canyon surface.
I'm not sure to call it a bug, because the consequences are logical, but I'm not sure why the flat patches will get the colour from the fake stone shader itself instead of the shader input. Also, on what conditions decides TG2 to really create/form a stone and when not to?
Difficult stuff, anyway, I've kind of fixed it.
Quote from: Kadri on July 02, 2011, 08:20:37 AM
Nice image , Martin!
The lighting looks a little too harsh too me. I like the cracks :)
Thanks Kadri. The harsh lighting is improved. It's actually a bit of a consequence of the cracks which I reduced over distance and also made slightly less strong.
Generally I've noticed that the more cracks and other fancy stuff you do in TG2 the harder it is for the renderer to create balanced lighting. It seems.
For instance, the unnatural fast dropoff of shadow lightness and surface brightness is the first thing one notices.
I think the rocks look great Martin. The white can be blamed on salt leeching out, or quartz deposits.
Martin ,it is interesting what you say about the lighting with more complicated settings.
Would love to hear something about this from Planetside.
Fake stones are sometimes tricky and behave as if the are broken (!). But i like them so much :D
Martin, if you can reproduce the issue with the fake stones, let's talk about it in the alpha forum. Maybe Matt can explain, or maybe it's a bug, in which case file it in the tracker.
- Oshyan
Update on it's way @ 2400x1800 :)
Quote from: Oshyan on July 02, 2011, 01:56:30 PM
Martin, if you can reproduce the issue with the fake stones, let's talk about it in the alpha forum. Maybe Matt can explain, or maybe it's a bug, in which case file it in the tracker.
- Oshyan
Yes I will post a .tgd and additional information on the alpha forum tonight. I'm not sure yet if this issue is scene-specific or not. Nonetheless I find it strange and especially unwanted behaviour.
Ok, version 2 in full resolution here:
http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/186/b/8/gorge_v2_by_tangled_universe-d3l2nk6.jpg (http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/186/b/8/gorge_v2_by_tangled_universe-d3l2nk6.jpg)
Rendersettings were:
Detail 0.85 AA8 (MN filter), GI 2/6/2 with SS-prepass and 8 atmosphere samples with RTA enabled.
Tons of grasses as well and it made the renderer use 15GB of RAM during rendering :)
Still took 17 hours on my new machine...oops!
Cheers,
Martin
Oh my, this is a reach out and touch scene. Super work by you here Martin!
It really is quite wonderful.
I don't understand why it would take so much ram. Was this from the number of threads used by the CPU? If so, it's something I will need to consider for my machine.
Quote from: njeneb on July 05, 2011, 02:56:40 PM
It really is quite wonderful.
I don't understand why it would take so much ram. Was this from the number of threads used by the CPU? If so, it's something I will need to consider for my machine.
It's a combination of things like renderdetail, AA, GI and resolution. All are pretty high. Also I used 8 populations, though that's not that much actually, but it are quite some instances.
I rendered it with 8 threads, believe cache was set to 3200, but not pre-allocated for sure. It adds to the RAM-usage of course and I think I could have used 1600 or 800 even.
That could potentially shave off a GB or 2 - 2.5.
I have 16GB RAM now.
Maybe it is the same old symptom: New very fast machine but more and better things crammed that wasn't used before :)
My render times are mostly not much better then 15 years ago. But the scenes are much more realistic now of course .
I like the last render , Martin !
Quote from: Kadri on July 05, 2011, 03:32:09 PM
Maybe it is the same old symptom: New very fast machine but more and better things crammed that wasn't used before :)
My render times are mostly not much better then 15 years ago. But the scenes are much more realistic now of course .
I like the last render , Martin !
Ghehe, so true, I have it now for well over a week and still end up with long rendertimes :) But I render during night and if it isn't finished in the morning then it will be finished when I come back from work. I don't mind :)
Especially during design process it's fantastic to have a faster machine. It's less of a drag and much more fun because you can make progress a lot quicker!
I'm glad you like it, thanks!
this one is the business!
awesome to the max!
Hmm, the grasses on the higher cliffs look a bit odd. Otherwise it's generally an improvement over previous versions.
- Oshyan
Thanks guys?
Oshyan, what's odd about it?
Er, they look more like hair than grass I guess? Too... "fuzzy". Hard to describe properly. Maybe also too long and/or dark/saturated coloring? Again, hard to put my finger on it. Just doesn't look quite right to my eye. But it may just be me. ;)
- Oshyan
Lighting is everything. if you notice the bush at lower right, it is perfect. The shaded ones don't share the same quality, most likely due to the lighting on them.
Quote from: Oshyan on July 06, 2011, 02:21:36 AM
Er, they look more like hair than grass I guess? Too... "fuzzy". Hard to describe properly. Maybe also too long and/or dark/saturated coloring? Again, hard to put my finger on it. Just doesn't look quite right to my eye. But it may just be me. ;)
- Oshyan
Well, I think Bob is a bit more accurate about the issue and it is indeed a bit of you ;)
The shading is anything but dark and saturated, nor did I add any of those in post.
I can see what you mean with hairy, but this is just what you see when you see a lot of grasses on mid-range to far away if you'd ask me.
Quote from: choronr on July 06, 2011, 02:26:06 AM
Lighting is everything. if you notice the bush at lower right, it is perfect. The shaded ones don't share the same quality, most likely due to the lighting on them.
I agree.
In my opinion it is too hard in TG2 to get the balancing act right between directly lit parts of terrain objects and indirect lighted or shaded parts.
The buildup in shadow darkness over distance is too strong for instance.
Like you mentioned you can have a nicely lit bush/tree in direct lighting but it is very likely, even with GI=2 or >2, that it won't look the same, or better said as expected, in the shade.
You
can get it right, but the error-tolerance in settings is very very tight.
Maybe with 1 or 2 extra recursions in the renderer the lighting could be more easily balanced as shadows will be defined/filled better which would perhaps save countless hours of fine-tuning for texture diffuse colour, transparency and reflectivity.
Consider for a moment we had the ability to make those distant bushes of the same quality as the one on the lower right - in my opinion, those distant bushes still wouldn't look right. When objects are in shadow, they just won't display detail. Those things in full light draw our first attention.
Quote from: choronr on July 06, 2011, 02:59:40 AM
Consider for a moment we had the ability to make those distant bushes of the same quality as the one on the lower right - in my opinion, those distant bushes still wouldn't look right. When objects are in shadow, they just won't display detail. Those things in full light draw our first attention.
Yes that's correct. I realize/know there's less detail in the shadow, but still I find it very difficult to get the shading right. It always has a strange hue in the shadows. I see that in everyone's images here.