Well since I seem to be stumped on my city idea I'm going to go for the other idea of attempting to reproduce the classic English master piece, Constable's Haywain. I'll be posting in this thread in the hope of picking up hints and tips as I progress from the start rather than get everyones all the advice at the end, and have to do everything again. Firstly I will attempt to map out the painting so I have an idea where everything goes and then I'll make the models, the cart (Harvey, may I borrow the cart you kindly offered as a reference model :) ), the horse (is there one or two?), the farmer, the house and the dog. I'm not going to try to reproduce the image exactly but rather try to get something that has the same elements and conveys the same feeling.
Wish me luck.
Richard
oh I wish you good luck (x1000000000)...cuz u are gonna need it....:D
Quote from: cyphyr on October 08, 2007, 03:35:54 PM
(Harvey, may I borrow the cart you kindly offered as a reference model :) )
Check your email.
;D
Looking forward to this cyphyr ;)
Well I've started on the cottage, nothing great as yet and a lot of detailing work to go. I'll use this as a base mesh and build up a more interesting version on top of this. I know some of the roof tiles are the wrong scale as are some of the bricks but , hey early days :)
Richard
Looks nice. I'll keep an eye on this thread.
What modeling software do you use?
My apologies if this is painfully obvious, but just in case...
The wagon and carts have just a little too shiny and newly varnished look to them, know what I mean? This is what I did to muss them up a bit:
Right click on the object in the node view and select 'Internal Network'. Rigth-click and create a new Surface Layer in the internal network. Disconnect the main cart shader from the 'Surface Shader' connection and connect it to the 'Input' connection of the new surface layer. Connect the output of the new surface layer to the 'Surface Shader' input. Now set a low coverage value in the new layer and give it a dust color (or whatever). It'll blend the dust with all the cart components, giving it a nice dirty look.
(I experimented with 'Interset Underlying Layer' settings with the new surface layer, thinking I might be able to have the 'dust' collect in crannies, but no luck. At least I couldn't get it to work. I suspect the same trouble as with BigBen's grass shader network - the internal network doesn't have access to terrain/surface information.)
I could paint it a texture in ZBrush if you need it.
Will, how easy is this to learn?
Quote from: Will on October 09, 2007, 05:50:22 AM
I could paint it a texture in ZBrush if you need it.
Ok I got up this morning, made the coffee and looked at last nights work and thought I just cant let that stand, yuck ! After a little research I found that the cottage is still standing and theres a few photo's of it making modeling it much easier. Here's a higher resolution version, still a bit squared off but I think it will do for the time being. I use Lightwave for modeling, have done since version 5, but I'm hopeless at organic modeling so I'll be off to Poser for the farmers, horses and other farmyard fauna. Distant trees will be from the usual suspects, xfrog freebies, turbosquid and our own ever expanding resources. In the original painting theres only 3 "hero" trees and these will be modeled directly in Lightwave.
Thanks for the offer Will but I'll decline, I really want to push myself on this one, do as much as possible my self. Harvy I will be using your model but you may not recognise it by the time I'm finished with it lol :D
Richard
ps. Ivy from the wonderful Ivy Generator, google it, its great! :)
Looking really nice so far. Yes it's a "perfect" house at this point but there's plenty of time to rough it up a bit. ;)
- Oshyan
Looking good so far. I'll be keeping an eye on this one
this is looking nice...what program are you using to model these???....
Looking good this could be a fun or frustrating project for you (I hope its fun)
Just thought I would give you my count of horses, there appears to be three, two side by side and one in the lead. Keep up the great work. :)
I think that cottage looks pretty good! It has a nice little wiggle to the roofline and everything.
;D
just remembered something.....if I dig up...I might have some dirt maps and bump maps and textures for aged walls....
This will be an interesting experiment. At least the terrain should be relatively simple. I must admit, I'm not a big fan of Constable. I much prefer Turner.
Well I only went for Constable by accident but actually I was thinking it would be interesting to try to tackle some of the other great landscape painters, Turner, Monet et al. Anybody up for "The Water Lilies", some of the London paintings or Turners "The Fighting Temerarie"? :)
Richard
Constable is probably a better choice. It's a bit more solid. I think Turner might be quite hard because of the subtle atmosphere and colour variations. One thing is certain, TG2 can create quite painterly looking images so this will definitely be interesting.
Well moving on from the cottage I've started work on the cart. Constables painting has very little detail visible (at lease in my reference photo http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/loadApplet?workNumber=NG1207&collectionPublisherSection=work (http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/loadApplet?workNumber=NG1207&collectionPublisherSection=work)) so after a little more research and some supposition I figured that since the location of Flatford Mill is in Suffolk the cart may have been a Suffolk Cart. This will do to be going on with. Texturing still needs to be done, as dose figuring out how the horse tak (any horsey types here?) works and the wheel axel mechanism.
In the course of this research I also discovered that the water in the Hay Wain is not a river but rather a Mill Pond, still there today. The aerial photograph will give me all I need to sculpt the landscape.
Richard
nice cart....the horses look kinda fat....:D
Maybe they're American :P:D.
Quote from: dhavalmistry on October 11, 2007, 10:42:15 AM
nice cart....the horses look kinda fat....:D
They are Draft Horses (you know like Budwieser) :)
They're actually supposed to be shire horses, we used to have them locally where I grew up in London to pull the Youngs Brewery wagons to the local pubs. There was a useful side line in that some enterprising guys used to follow them about and collect their manure to sell on to gardeners for their roses. I remember lugging bags of the stuff through the house, Ahh the good ol' days :)
Richard
Sounds like a scene from Dickens.
:D
Hey, the cart and horses look terrific! I'll let you send me a copy, if you like.
;) ;D
Heres the updated cart texture, still some work to do, but that involves figuring out the mechanics of the front end and tac. I'll work on the Horses next and sort out the harnesses at the same time.
I'll upload the models and textures when its finished so you can play too. ;)
Richard
That's looking great! Sounds as if your work is going to be much more realistic and detailed than the ones I did. I didn't bother with the tac.
If everything else is up to the standard that the cart is obviously going to be then it should be a reallly good end result.
QuoteThey're actually supposed to be shire horses, we used to have them locally where I grew up in London to pull the Youngs Brewery wagons to the local pubs.
Small world. :)
I am also from Wandsworth. I lived close to the common at the top of East Hill where were you?
As far as I know (I am not local any more), they kept the shore horses to the end, There was some kind of merger or buy out last year and the Ram Brewery is no more, well most of it. I was in the area about a month ago and the tall stainless steel vats or whatever they were have gone although most of the buildings appeared to still be there. Youngs are now brewing somewhere in Bedfordshire I think, I have been told that they are going to be keeping some kind of presence on the brewery site which will be developed as surprise, surprise shops and flats that no normal people can afford.
QuoteSounds like a scene from Dickens.
Not sure about Dickens but The Veritas gas mantle factory was up until the conversion the natural gas in the early 70s just along the road from the brewery, I think Sainsbury's is on that site now. :-\
Enough of the local history. ;D
This Haywain project looks interesting, I look forward to seeing the end result; even if I'm not a real Constable fan, a bit too twee with a tendency towards the bucolic for my liking :-\ a bit like Vaughn Williams; Although they both have there moments. It is while since I visited the Tate (The original one not the converted power station), but some of Constable's later, lesser known works were more or less cloud studies so eminently suited to TG. ;)
Quote from: Mr_Lamppost on October 14, 2007, 05:43:47 PM
Small world. :)
Ah well, I was from the other side of the tracks, West Hill, Lebanon Gardens to be exact, left at the first opportunity and now live in the West country, much nicer. Do you remember a Music instrument shop in the High Street called "Jail House Rock", had my first job there running the studios up stairs, ahh good times ::)
Thought I'd post a WIP to show how things are going. I'm nearly finished on the cart, cottage and textures for both. I think I'll work on the landscape and sky for a while now, all this modeling is starting to do my head in. Still its good to know that TG can still handle everything I've thrown at this time round.
Richard
looking good man.....
dont you think that the horses are a little shiny???
Very good work :P
Quote from: dhavalmistry on October 15, 2007, 11:00:31 AM
looking good man.....
dont you think that the horses are a little shiny???
I don't think the horses are too shiny. Remember it's fur. Not skin.
http://www.hedweb.com/animimag/horse-beach.jpg (http://www.hedweb.com/animimag/horse-beach.jpg)
even though its fur, it is giving an impression of plastic due to that highlight
I do actually agree, I think I forgot to add the bump map in that render. It dose soften the highlights, just the defuse channel plugged into the displacement. Now if only I could model a horse as beautiful as the one in that photograph. That is a stunning image. Part of the issue is I now have so many files in different places its getting hard to keep track of them all. Initially I was keeping every thing "horsey" in one place, all the tree info in another etc. just to make finding stuff easer but no that elements are strating to be combined I keep loosing references. Time to consolidate I think and put everything in one working directory.
Richard
Heres a High res shot of the landscape sans the horses, cart, and cottage. The reeds and grass populations and track were placed using image blend layers derived from an orthographic render of the area near to the camera. The camera's position was then used as a guide to position the images. This is also a higher resolution render as I wanted to start exploring how much detail I need to include for the final image and little I can get away with given the memory restrictions that are starting to show up. Theres many more tree and grasses/shrub/hedges to go in yet so another solution is to just use image maps like here (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2537.0). Looks like I'll end up using the rendering in vertical bands trick and comping together later in post. Have to read up on that.
Richard
nice work so far.....this is gonna come out really strong....
Wow, the landscape is beautiful. Can't wait to see it all come together.
Heres the latest update. Scale is starting to do my head in, objects seem to be importing at different sizes but other than being annoying its just a matter of resizing by eye. The distant hedges are billboards and I'll probably be adding some more on the far hills. This has solved some memory overlaod issues I was having with using models in the distance, silly really as you can see sod all detail at that distance even at high res. Next to do is the characters, three poser blokes and a washer woman. I've found than even though the poser models come in with twenty plus textures a great many of them are junk as far as TG is concerned. One of the main issues I keep coming up against is colours being over saturated, again not a big issue but I'm not used to colours having to be almost 80% - 90% gray.
Enjoy and please, C & C as always. :)
Richard
This is very very good. I really appreciate you showing each step of your process as you work through the project. Lets me know just how much I need to change my workflow.
This is a fantastic piece of work! The elements of the scene are fitting together in a way I rarely see in TG scenes with objects. If you want, I could let you know of a way I have come up with to make little ripples coming out of the wheels - send me a PM if you want to discuss it. I'll post it here when I'm done ironing out the kinks.
this is beautiful work!
I was planning on using a very small displacement map about the wheels and hooves, placing it would be tricky but I have a cunning plan :)
Pm'd you.Richard
a very interesting project...looking excellent so far!!!
I like to watch how this work is coming together. A good WIP thread with excellent result. Keep it up ;)
That's looking good alright. I especially like your clouds. They look good and work well with the scene.
This is definitely coming together, I am not sure I would have the staying power to stick with something this long. ;)
Does your Cunning plan involve turnips by any chance?
QuoteDo you remember a Music instrument shop in the High Street called "Jail House Rock", had my first job there running the studios up stairs, ahh good times
I don't remember Jail House Rock, I guess that it was before my time. When I started getting interested in records and music I was going to Readings at The Junction
Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been very distracted over the last week. House full of druids, don't ask lol.
I've pretty much finished all the models and optimise's them as much as possible, really makes a difference. With the high resolution models and textures in the scene I couldn't get it to finish rendering but once they're optimized and the textures have been reduced in size its rendering a lot faster. Going to take a break from the modeling side for a while and have a go at the sky next. I'm thinking of doing two versions, one a bit like Constables and an evening sunset shot but all this will take a while as I still have to get rid of my druid infestation!
Richard
I´d really like to ask, but you told us not to.
So I´m not asking.
BTW, that project is really fascinating!
I wish I knew how to make 3d-objects.
Next thing to learn.
Best regards,
Jan
Heres a little update on the sunset theme. The resolution is low only 0.3 detail and 3 AA but I just cant get the time to do long renders at the moment. Should settle down next week.
Richard
this couldnt get any better....very nicely done!
That is magnificent :o
Hello Richard:
Enjoyed watching your progress on this splendid project, and your latest pic has a beautiful backlite atmosphere. I am also doing a scene that requires using the poser horse object imported into a TG2 water surface. Could you perhaps briefly explain what you used software wise and export/import procedures to create your horse tgo. I am using LightWave and am having extreme difficulty with the millineum/Poser horse figure not importing at all well to that application.
Arisdemos-
This looks fantastic! Nice job :).
Thanks for the comments guys.
I don't really know why the horse would not export properly for you but I'll describe my process to you. Theres nothing particularly esoteric with it so if your still having problems you might have a corrupted source in some way.
The Poser horse Imported fine into LW for me as an OBJ (un-checked "ground" on export). Since Terragen doesn't support transparency yet I don't need the trans mapped polygons Poser uses for Main and Tail and Feathers so I deleted them. I also got rid of all the textures that were not going to be rendered, inner mouth, teeth etc. This only left a few textures which all UV mapped properly. I made sure I had all the textures from the Poser Textures folder copied over in to my project folder and also made sure they were all set up properly in LW's texture editor (F5). Then the object was saved out as a LW object and opened up in Poserray. Then the object was saved out from Poserray as an OBJ and imported into Terragen. Job done.
One thing to note is to avoid spaces in your texture file names, seems to cure some ills.
Look forward to seeing your image.
Richard
Fascinating thread and amazing results so far. One of the hardest things is coming back to a scene over and over again. After a few high quality renders I usually move on because I lack the patience...
Objects make your scene come alive, so glad TG2 is out :)
Your right it has been a slog coming back to this day in day out but I think I have gone as far as I can for now, I'm sorry to say I'll have to stop till TG's memory management has improved. I can render the whole scene at 800x600 .3 detail, 3AA but no higher, I can render small tiled sections at a decent resolutions (whole image 1200x800 .8 detail 8AA, tile at about 400x240) but when stitched together there are major colour intensity matching issues across the tiles. I'll come back to this later, all I got to do is hit the render button. ;)
Shame as I was realy looking forward to exploring some other old masters work.
Richard :(
Thanks for the information Richard. I noticed you used what seems to be the charger horse model, and so I will do an experimental run at exporting/importing that paricular model per your description. I will post my image as soon as I can insert the subject livestock. Good luck on your memory/render issues.
Arisdemos-
I am curious, why would color intensity vary when rendering cropped portions of a scene? Isn't that determined globally?
Quote from: cyphyr on October 24, 2007, 06:55:32 PM
Heres a little update on the sunset theme. The resolution is low only 0.3 detail and 3 AA but I just cant get the time to do long renders at the moment. Should settle down next week.
Richard
Richard, How's this project going? Not heard anything for a while now.
I love this and it reminds me of Vue...but, I'm going to stand out from the crowd (watch those tomatoes) and say that I think the foreground shouldn't have so much contrast and it seems empty to me.