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General => Contests => NWDA 2013 Theme Challenge - Roadside => Topic started by: otakar on February 26, 2013, 01:49:57 AM

Title: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on February 26, 2013, 01:49:57 AM
Here's a start. Quite boring maybe... Still very much experimenting. No blacktop for me though  ;D
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: FrankB on February 26, 2013, 12:11:49 PM
that's too is an interesting start! This type of road texture and geometry is intriguing. Looking forward to the next steps!

Frank
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on February 26, 2013, 06:02:42 PM
And now for something entirely different, here's Take 2.
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on February 27, 2013, 12:37:51 AM
Back to the original setup. Mountains in the distance. That might work.
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on March 04, 2013, 01:38:45 AM
Bouncing back. Just a grass/veggie foray. Not happy with this, it's way too raw, but it's a WIP thread after all ;). Network's already a giant mess. Changed the width of the road by adjusting the main color adjust shader and everything got out of alignment. Will have to label things more clearly and give some thought into the dependencies. Once you add more than a few populations it gets messy really fast.
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: FrankB on March 04, 2013, 02:02:29 PM
the line of water next to the street is a nice touch!

You may want to hide some of the network inside the internal network of a group, to keep things more clear.

Frank
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: TheBadger on March 06, 2013, 02:22:38 AM
^^Agreed.

Good thinking on a detail like that.
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on March 07, 2013, 03:05:23 AM
Take 3. Was playing with displacements (broken road) and could not resist adding plant life. Probably enough experimentation. Time to make up my mind what I want to model.
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: Hannes on March 07, 2013, 08:43:17 AM
These are great variations! Lokking forward to your progress!
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on March 07, 2013, 07:21:32 PM
Looky here, I have a plan! That's a first for me.  Let's see how much of that I can turn into reality :)

Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: cyphyr on March 07, 2013, 07:25:00 PM
Glad you've dropped the tarmac  :)
I like this new direction, yellow brick road?
Richard :)
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on March 07, 2013, 07:46:30 PM
Going back to the original road, which needs to be credited to Ogre who supplied the maps for it. I thought that's a good decision since most everyone does the boring blacktop roads and mine will therefore stand out. Just kidding. ;) But it's good to be different.
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on March 14, 2013, 02:39:14 AM
Since everyone's so generous sharing their WIPs and despite the fact that I am not at the level of most posters here - some astounding renders so far - here goes the next iteration - just a crop - after much exhaustive masking, population placement and object scaling. It really is a challenge to create close-up scenes that look realistic as has been noted elsewhere.

I may return to the details here (so please feel free to make suggestions), but I am on to the more distant parts now, otherwise I will never get it done.

The hardest thing seems to be that you have to render it out in high quality to have a good look. What may come out ok with .65 detail setting and AA of 3 looks totally off (especially color mix-wise) with .85 detail and AA6 (makes sense of course). So quick low quality crop renders only go so far. Already takes about 70 minutes for a decent resolution and quality render, this will only go up now....
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: Dune on March 14, 2013, 03:48:49 AM
This is great! Nice 'flagstone' pavement. Keep it up!
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: FrankB on March 14, 2013, 04:19:39 AM
indeed, this is a great foundation. Lighting and colors are very nice already! That can be the hardest part. I too like the pavement, looks great.
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: masonspappy on March 14, 2013, 06:10:27 AM
Great detail in the flagstone pavement. !
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: Jo Kariboo on March 14, 2013, 10:22:16 AM
I like pavement and your choice of colors !  :)
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: inkydigit on March 27, 2013, 04:07:23 PM
really great path...where's the pub??!
:)
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on March 28, 2013, 02:22:38 PM
No pub planned. Here is the full scene. Still to do:

- background (this is going to come out in higher res, so I do need to work on that)
- foreground details (possibly add a plant or 2 and add details as time permits)
- eliminate/replace the human stand-in
- cloud layers

On the right track here you think?
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: FrankB on March 28, 2013, 03:12:16 PM
absolutely on the right track!
Whatever is in the top right corner, I would remove it form the foreground.
Then lastly, there is only one other thing I'd like to point out: the blades of one of the grass models that you use seem too thick and big to be real. They look wrong. Color is ok, though.


Cheers
Frank

Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on March 28, 2013, 04:08:09 PM
Thanks!

Quote from: FrankB on March 28, 2013, 03:12:16 PM
... the blades of one of the grass models that you use seem too thick and big to be real. They look wrong. Color is ok, though.

Frank, that's the otherwise very versatile and easy to work with Klas grass. I can't really resize it as I like/need the length as is, but I get what you mean. Maybe I can address it via functions...
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: FrankB on March 28, 2013, 07:40:40 PM
yeah, but you better take Walli's grasses. I think they are modelled more accurately in their dimensions.


Cheers
Frank
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: Dune on March 29, 2013, 02:38:28 AM
Agreed with Frank about the chunk of needles and the fat grass. Love it otherwise. I would be tempted to remove the large tree quite centrally, so you'd have a more open vista into the distance. And maybe keep the distant snowy mountains a bit obscure, you might even replace them with (green)-gray rocky hills or a hint of a village or castle (hence the cobbled path).
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: Tangled-Universe on March 29, 2013, 12:46:59 PM
Great suggestions already.


The pavement texturing is really nice, like it!


For the moment I don't have much else to add to the suggestion except for a couple of things, but I'll wait for your next iteration to see if they still apply.
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on March 29, 2013, 01:27:28 PM
Appreciate the comments. The 'chunk of needles' is a tree (branch). I chose the placement carefully. Is it not appropriate? If I show more of the tree it obscures too much of the view. I will see if I can do something about the grass, unfortunately I don't have Walli's dry grass set yet...
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: FrankB on March 29, 2013, 04:36:21 PM
No, show as little as possible vegetation up close. It contributes to ruining the photo realism. Especially the needles, which are just flat images, and not real geometry, will give it away.  ;)
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on March 30, 2013, 09:57:22 PM
Just the offending grass is new - better now?
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: choronr on March 31, 2013, 01:54:19 AM
This is very impressive. This work with the addition of this latest grass is super.
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: Dune on March 31, 2013, 02:28:21 AM
I think for real realism you need more variation still; it's quite 'clean'. But these grasses are great.
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on April 04, 2013, 10:27:40 AM
Thank you. Yes, I know it looks clean, that's always a challenge when you have both bare ground and vegetation showing. I have not found any good 'undergrowth and debris' models yet. So I may not be able to solve that for this project, but I started adding some details as planned. The village gets lost in the trees, but may be a bit more visible in higher res. Getting close to having to wrap this up, which is a bit of a pity.
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: TheBadger on April 04, 2013, 12:26:01 PM
looks really good. If you just throw some dust over the top of the path that might just finish it up?
Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on April 13, 2013, 12:48:36 AM
I just hit the submit button. This project is done. 16 hour render to complete it. I'd like to thank everyone for their feedback and for the inspiration. Some superb renders I have been admiring here. It has been fun [but I have not done anything else since the start of the competition]. I hope the gallery comes online soon. Cheers!

Title: Re: otakar's WIP (old road)
Post by: otakar on May 01, 2013, 01:59:54 AM
This is the final in full resolution.

Credits:
dandelO - robin, maple tree, 3 tree cluster
Walli - Medium Hazel, grasses, DNW flower, Blackberry, Plantago
Klas - Pine
Mandrake - dead branch
Ogre - Road texture
TerrAde - Summer Birch, Twisted tree, autumn aspen, leaves
Marc Gebhart - Chinapkin Oak
bigben - pine needles
JCinBAMA - Filler tree
helentr - Lombardy poplar
mr-miley - European Walnut

Thanks to everyone who put this competition together and all who took part in it!