I am working since more then 2 months on a 2-3 minute animation.
This is one frame from an old test.
The scene doesn't look any more like this (still working on it), but i still wanted to show it here.
Looks interesting!
Good to see some new stuff being developed by you. Curious what it'll be. Looks intriguing as a start.
I like clear atmosphere and haze. I could dig it. :)
Thanks all :)
This is hopefully the last version. I changed this part of the animation at least 4 times. Time to move on.
There are some aspects of the above scene i like but in general this last one feels more realistic and more ...big to me (but it is not our planet).
What is your thoughts ?
Beautiful! Looking forward to the final animation.
Looks good. The sky is very deep blue, but I guess that's intentional. Ideas might be some stars, or subtle (animated) northern lights to give the sky some more....
Thanks Hannes and Ulco.
Quote from: Dune on January 03, 2019, 09:39:52 AM
...The sky is very deep blue, but I guess that's intentional...
Blue is actually from the above older image (the last was just a crop render).
Quote from: Dune on January 03, 2019, 09:39:52 AM
...Ideas might be some stars, or subtle (animated) northern lights to give the sky some more....
There will be...that is the reason of the composition :)
Beautiful - lovely and otherworldly
Looks really promising, love a good canyon animation!
Thanks all.
The animation will be around 4500 frames.
Can't say for sure, because render times varies for every section, but it will take 2-3 months probably.
By the way this canyon section takes only 13 seconds in the animation. But takes the most to render per frame.
It is the only part were i used a compute node i think...
Take it out and see if it's still kind of the same. Looking at the terrain, it could well work.
Yes it could work Ulco.
But i designed the scene after a while around the look that the compute node gave so much,
that i would need to make the scene nearly from scratch to get the similar look now.
Great landscape and mood.
I prefer the first myself but both are lovely
Thanks all.
Great so far! :) I'm looking forward to the version with stars... or better - the final animation ;)
Thanks.
Wish i had a new computer then it could be finished in 2-3 weeks :)
A quick question -- maybe a bit off topic, but fits here I think. I've been using Topaz Labs AI Gigapixel to resize my HD renders to 4K and I really like the time savings (1 hour HD instead of 4 - 5 4K renders.) Can you render your animation images at a lower size and use AI Gigapixel to up-size to your original target size? If so, it would be interesting to see how well that works -- time savings/quality.
I used that kind of approach to a certain extend in the past. If i wanted to render to 4k i would use it in this project maybe.
But from half HD to HD i don't want to do it. There is that certain warp-sharpening feel i don't want (this time at least).
I am rendering direct in HD (maybe only the clouds in half HD) but unfortunately not with high detail (0.5) and AA (3).
But there is a nature of this project that can get away with this i think.
I don't want to say it for now but it isn't so hard to guess probably.
Another way might be to try Project Dogwaffle Howler's motion prediction morphing.
I know that it can work on clouds mostly. Here i am not sure. I will try it in 1-2 days.
Just a short hijack; is Topaz Labs AI Gigapixel worth its money? The websites slider gives an example, that looks very good, but is it real, or faked just to sell? Can anyone share any samples?
Quote from: Dune on January 05, 2019, 02:32:35 AM
Just a short hijack; is Topaz Labs AI Gigapixel worth its money? The websites slider gives an example, that looks very good, but is it real, or faked just to sell? Can anyone share any samples?
I always used to go to a pal's house and use a PS plugin called BlowUp by Alien Skin and it did a great job. I blew up a snap shot size good image to a life size banner for a pal who needed it for a music exposition in Toronto and it was stunningly good. He said it was inexpensive.
Thanks Bobby. It's also $99. Might do one of these for the huge renders... if it really works this good, it'll save half rendertime.
Quote from: Dune on January 05, 2019, 11:57:55 AM
Thanks Bobby. It's also $99. Might do one of these for the huge renders... if it really works this good, it'll save half rendertime.
My thinking eggs ackley with the huge stuff you sometimes get contracted to do.
Quote from: Dune on January 05, 2019, 02:32:35 AM
Just a short hijack; is Topaz Labs AI Gigapixel worth its money? The websites slider gives an example, that looks very good, but is it real, or faked just to sell? Can anyone share any samples?
I'll do up a test -- it will take some time since I have to render a tgd straight to 4K then to HD and then use Gigpixel to upsize the HD one. Then crop the same area of each for a visual compare.
Also, I think they do have a 30 day trial.
Thanks Jaf, cool of you.
Here's the two images -- the first is the 4K render saved as a 16 bit tif no compression and the second a HD render also saved as 16 bit tif no compress and then re-sized to 4K. A.I Gigapixel has two filters -- noise & blur moderate or strong, but these were not used. The re-size file hase the "topax" tag in the file name. Finally, I cropped both in the latest Affinity Photo and exported to jpg highest quality (to save space on the website.)
My old eyes don't see much difference -- I see the biggest difference in the yellow flowers. Keep in mind that scenes with up close or hard surfaces may show more differences (it's something I need to test.) I have a strong GPU and it does the re-size pretty fast -- about 5 seconds. You can use your CPU if you want.
The TG render of the HD scene (the one that got re-sized to 4K) took 45m 37s. The 4K TG render used for comparison to 3h 31m 51s to that's a savings of 2h 46m 14s. If I did the math right, you could render that HD scene 32 times in 24 hours, but only 6.9 times at 4K.
Thanks a lot for taking the trouble, jaf! I'm going to compare your tests in PS. It's a huge render difference, so very interesting indeed. I'll download the trial also.
Hmm...Jaf you made me really to consider this option. There is actually quite a difference in the crops.
But it looks more like a little sharpened or an image that was rendered with a little less AA.
It doesn't look like bad resizing to my eyes at least.
I will try the demo of Topaz and see how half HD to HD works. Thanks for the example :)
I made some tests with Topaz.
In small details it looks a little better. When i tried to make images a little sharper and closer like Topaz they looked more eh...sharpened.
In that aspect Topaz looks a little better. At least to my eye and with these 5-6 tests.
If you like you can make tests (with other photo editors too for example) with these files (the resized ones are there too) and see it for yourself.
Curious what your opinion will be.
Just a side note. When i tried it with the small render that had low AA and detail, the result was more different then the original render.
That makes sense of course. So close the look of the original small image is to the original, so better and closer is the resized one.
So i tried with a small AA 6 rendered image instead of an AA 3 rendered small image too here.
Render time got higher of course but it was still nearly half the original size render time.
But i might have to use higher AA in the original size images too anyway after i did some tests with the animation.
So still very good if resizing works.
There is a small detail difference in Topaz. If the difference in quality is high enough to buy Topaz i am not sure.
But for that price maybe...
All are in this 44 Mb Onedrive zip file link if you want to see it for yourself.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ao9EyFWihNgcilDOZRCJuXHXzx-w
Great work, Kadri. Love the look of the canyons with the haze.
Interesting results on the resizer. The classic issue with upscaling is that things get softer/blurrier (because there is no "real" detail to introduce). The Topaz system seems to introduce semi-realistic/context-appropriate but still semi-random "detail", which in many cases can look like noise or a lack of antialiasing. This counteracts the traditional blurriness problem of upscaling, but since the detail is not (and actually cannot be) "real", it often fails on specific features such as grasses. It does surprisingly well though! If it were me and you can't adjust the relative sharpness of the end result Topaz image, I might suggest/test actually *over*sizing, i.e. increasing size in Topaz to something larger than you actually want, then *downsample* the end result to your intended target resolution with something like a bilinear filter (e.g. in Photoshop), which will add back in a bit of smoothness. It still won't have the same *real* detail as a properly high resolution TG image, but it could look visually pretty comparable.
The other thing, though, is that this upscaling may not be temporally stable (i.e. it may not work in animation). That's definitely something to test.
- Oshyan
*Thanks Jordan.
*That sounds logical Oshyan. I might try that later.
Quote from: Oshyan on January 06, 2019, 05:12:19 PM
...
The other thing, though, is that this upscaling may not be temporally stable (i.e. it may not work in animation). That's definitely something to test.
- Oshyan
Now my main concern was this too. I think in an animation that could be the real problem here. Another thing to test.
In animation you actually need some blurriness I would say, so maybe it's more something for large stills.
I'll check out your files, Kadri. Thanks for sharing.
Yes for stills it could be useful.
I made some more tests.
From very small images to higher ones (from 240 to 1920) Topaz is much better.
The image is bad relative to the original of course. But Topaz is better relative to resizing of Affinity photo is what i mean.
I tried one resizing from half HD to 5760x3240 (x600% looks like the maximum?).
It looked better too.
But i won't post these (if anyone still wants i will of course). I think the image itself is important too.
In my tests there are only noisy and blurry rocks and clouds.
The best is to try it on your own images most probably.
Topaz wants an account and is internet connected i think (i hate this always). That throw me off the first time i wanted to try it actually.
Now another test. I rendered 50 frames high AA half HD images of my animation. Curious about this one.
Internet connected? That wouldn't work for me.
Not sure about that but it asked for name-email and password after the install phase.
Might be maybe only a one time thing i don't know.
In the past i used Comodo firewall and was always aware about such things.
But after having many problems with it i only use the internal Windows firewall since Windows 8 :( .
I just disconnected from the Internet and didn't have any problems using the program. Maybe there's some "fine print" about having to connect every x days or something -- have to see what the website says.
I need to install on an offline machine, so I'll send them a query.
I put some of your testfiles together for direct comparison, Kadri. Actually it's quite stunning, the resized small render looks even better than the big 4K original! After this I won't hijack your thread any longer. Thanks!
Render time is important for me. There is no hijacking and thanks for the direct comparison images Ulco :)
The small detail is surprising, isn't it. Even if it is fake, it looks better then sharpened images here.
I tried the animation resizing. It could work too.
Jaf thank you too. I would probably not considered this method before.
By the way. This was around some days ago i think.
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/max-payne-gets-an-amazing-hd-texture-pack-using-esrgan-and-is-available-for-download/
https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/46221
Not sure but from what i read here and there a little, it looks like Topaz is based on SRGAN.
With ESRGAN it might look maybe even better.
Maybe Matt will incorporate such things 5 years later direct at the rendering stage :D
There's a site here https://github.com/xinntao/ESRGAN (https://github.com/xinntao/ESRGAN) about ESRGAN, but there's not a regular installer or something. I'm always a bit reluctant to get these things working on my computer.
Btw. The AI gigapixel software probably needs to be online at least once in a few months, as I read in their forum. So off-limits for me, I'm afraid. But I asked them.....
Quote from: Dune on January 09, 2019, 03:39:46 AM
There's a site here https://github.com/xinntao/ESRGAN (https://github.com/xinntao/ESRGAN) about ESRGAN, but there's not a regular installer or something. I'm always a bit reluctant to get these things working on my computer...
I looked too and gave up until an easy Windows version-build.
Quote from: Dune on January 09, 2019, 03:39:46 AM
...
Btw. The AI gigapixel software probably needs to be online at least once in a few months, as I read in their forum. So off-limits for me, I'm afraid. But I asked them.....
Once in a few months is not so bad. But i would prefer without it too.
Not so bad maybe, but my machine is off, period.
:)
It is grandiose and very mysterious at the same time!
Thanks Jo.
I rendered a test for a scene with full water as a second planet.
I made a render with "Displacement tolerance" of the water planet with "1" that took 51 minutes.
The render with "Displacement tolerance" at "0.1" took 39 minutes and there was no visible difference (in this scene at least).
A different test about the "Pixel reconscruction filter" differences (not related to the above) gave not much different looks.
Just the "Cubic B-Spline sharp" looked a little sharper but not much.
Not sure why there are not much difference (i expected more) but probably of the 2D motion blur i used ?
I tested with the smooth filter shader to get noise free animation instead of high AA.
Render times jumped from 1 hour or so to 2 hours.
Didn't wait for the AA 10 to render test (without smooth filter node) to finish but both are taking too long.
I think working a little more and not using small displacement (without much changing the look) might be better.
A first test was under 40 minutes with this approach for this section. Most sections render relatively faster like 10-15 minutes per frame.
Just have to test render much more sections to see if this does break some parts or looks worse or not.
Some renderers in other software does use denoising. Curious if some kind of similar option would be helpful in Terragen.