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General => Contests => NWDA 2018 Theme Challenge - Cliffs => Topic started by: bobbystahr on February 25, 2018, 11:32:28 AM

Title: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bobbystahr on February 25, 2018, 11:32:28 AM
Well as Danny's urging I kept at it and in this I started with a nicely smoothed PF as a base and the a couple or Erosion hits and I start to see something I like. Tibet house at the top is in scale to the grass so it's as far up as one would guess.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: Hannes on February 25, 2018, 12:23:45 PM
Quite nice already and bizarre. Curious where this is leading to...
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: Dune on February 25, 2018, 12:29:34 PM
This is pretty good already. Looks like a sinkhole a bit. If you can get rid of the spikes.....
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bobbystahr on February 25, 2018, 12:31:48 PM
Quote from: Dune on February 25, 2018, 12:29:34 PM
This is pretty good already. Looks like a sinkhole a bit. If you can get rid of the spikes.....

Getting fond of the spikes but not terribly realistic are they. Been reading fantasy comix lately, I guess it shows. First i gotta find out what causes em without killing the basic scene..

UPDATE Dune
Fractal warp roughness in the terrain was at fault...working on replacement of lost wall texture with the spikes going.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: mhaze on February 26, 2018, 05:03:57 AM
Great start.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bobbystahr on February 26, 2018, 08:27:18 AM
Well this went south in a hurry, Think I have to start again with a fresh PF.....sigh. Well at least there's time this took 10 hours overnight...waste of cpu cycles IMHO
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: Dune on February 26, 2018, 09:06:59 AM
Pretty cool, now add a fractal warp with small scales.... that would break the smooth sides into something nice, perhaps also a slope restricted and PF masked strata shader... etc.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bobbystahr on February 26, 2018, 09:11:48 AM
Quote from: Dune on February 26, 2018, 09:06:59 AM
Pretty cool, now add a fractal warp with small scales.... that would break the smooth sides into something nice, perhaps also a slope restricted and PF masked strata shader... etc.

I suspect the stuff I added boosted the render time from 3 hrs to 10 hrs so I think I'm best off to start again actually...don't like where this is at at all myself and to me it shows no promise, just frustration and even longer render times with more displacements. Fresh start and it is a Monday so apropopos. Of course my computer may just be off it's feed as well....
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: Dune on February 26, 2018, 09:13:39 AM
Try to use as little compute terrains as possible and as early as possible.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bobbystahr on February 26, 2018, 11:11:07 AM
Quote from: Dune on February 26, 2018, 09:13:39 AM
Try to use as little compute terrains as possible and as early as possible.

I only had the one in the terrain tab and a dangler for pops
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: Dune on February 26, 2018, 12:20:34 PM
So why such long render times?
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: Jo Kariboo on February 26, 2018, 07:17:26 PM
A landslide... very original Bobby and rarely approached in my opinion with terragen.
The project I imagine will have a lot of difficulty to solve.
It's a good start and good luck!  :)
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: agent unawares on February 27, 2018, 12:11:30 PM
I really like this one, it's like nothing else here so far.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bobbystahr on February 27, 2018, 12:39:20 PM
Quote from: Dune on February 26, 2018, 12:20:34 PM
So why such long render times?

Y got me, maybe a sick computer. Rendering a much better version and am at hour 10 and it's just below the skyline. Seems to speed up a bit on the terrain/veg area. Glad I didn't use water hee hee hee.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: Hetzen on February 27, 2018, 03:34:00 PM
Quote from: agent unawares on February 27, 2018, 12:11:30 PM
I really like this one, it's like nothing else here so far.

Agree. Its Dali'esque. Almost a cross section of you playing the guitar Bobby. Keep playing fella.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bobbystahr on February 27, 2018, 04:18:04 PM
Quote from: Hetzen on February 27, 2018, 03:34:00 PM
Quote from: agent unawares on February 27, 2018, 12:11:30 PM
I really like this one, it's like nothing else here so far.

Agree. Its Dali'esque. Almost a cross section of you playing the guitar Bobby. Keep playing fella.

Thanks for noticing it's Dali-esque nature, I've tried to keep much of that while eliminating the 'spikes' Dune disliked and I felt were a bit inappropriate where they were. scale in the FracWarp shader controlled them nicely.. At hour 13 and looks like at least 2 more before it's done.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt_Final
Post by: bobbystahr on February 28, 2018, 01:55:44 AM
Well 22 37 09 later here it is...
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: Dune on February 28, 2018, 02:21:44 AM
Despite the enormous render time, it's pretty cool! I think you can set this or similar up to render quicker though.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: ajcgi on February 28, 2018, 06:35:00 AM
This is really great! I opened an old scene here to work up for a new pitch and it was dog slow. 2 things at fault were displacements on many PFs being used for colour and the alpine fractal shader. I regularly kill displacement on new colour shaders as they can trip you up speed-wise especially if they're still at default scales and so on. The alpine fractal I will shortly kill by converting it to a heightfield only. ;)
If you work back through your scene switching node after node off you'll figure out the bottleneck eventually.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: mhaze on February 28, 2018, 07:17:01 AM
I really like this.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: luvsmuzik on February 28, 2018, 07:27:07 AM
AMAZING! Inside out and back again! Really really good.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bobbystahr on February 28, 2018, 09:52:39 AM
Quote from: Dune on February 28, 2018, 02:21:44 AM
Despite the enormous render time, it's pretty cool! I think you can set this or similar up to render quicker though.

Thanks Dune and heh heh, you could but me, as I concocted that for the most part by "happy accident", and me sayin' "Would y look at that, think I'll keep this" mainly because I had no idea how the heck I did it.  I checked and only the 2 compute terrains and one , a dangler on the end of the stack, doesn't figure into the calculations does it? If anyone is interested I could gather this and post it. there's only the Tibet House and one Dune grass that I could strip out.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bobbystahr on February 28, 2018, 10:07:35 AM
Quote from: ajcgi on February 28, 2018, 06:35:00 AM
This is really great! I opened an old scene here to work up for a new pitch and it was dog slow. 2 things at fault were displacements on many PFs being used for colour and the alpine fractal shader. I regularly kill displacement on new colour shaders as they can trip you up speed-wise especially if they're still at default scales and so on. The alpine fractal I will shortly kill by converting it to a heightfield only. ;)
If you work back through your scene switching node after node off you'll figure out the bottleneck eventually.

First thing I checked was excess displacement on a few clip files and did prune some that weren't affecting the image, ie: added consciously by me.
I do use 2 iterations of the Classic Erosion plug in but don't really think its that. Any how this is finished and It will go over to the Comp now. It made it to my desktop image folder so that tells you I'm pleased with it...and I have had longer renders, one 42 hours for an interior scene with tooo many glass objects, and I did one for Andy that took 50 hrs. near nuff.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bobbystahr on February 28, 2018, 10:07:56 AM
Quote from: mhaze on February 28, 2018, 07:17:01 AM
I really like this.

Thanks Mick
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bobbystahr on February 28, 2018, 10:08:41 AM
Quote from: luvsmuzik on February 28, 2018, 07:27:07 AM
AMAZING! Inside out and back again! Really really good.

thanks muchly...it was as much fun as frustration.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: ajcgi on March 01, 2018, 10:46:22 AM
Quote from: bobbystahr on February 28, 2018, 10:07:35 AM
...and I have had longer renders, one 42 hours for an interior scene with tooo many glass objects, and I did one for Andy that took 50 hrs. near nuff.

There was a scene where I'm working now that I once left rendering while I went on holiday. The camera was scooting backwards down a valley in China, passing near trees and so on. At one point, it skims close to a hillside with lots of details, motion blur, tree etc. The frame approaching the hill and leaving shot up to 8 hours a frame on the fastest machines (24 threads at the time if memory serves) but one frame was super close. It was decided to let the machine rendering it keep ticking over as the log was showing it was still rendering. 10 days after it began, I got back from holiday to see it just about finish.  ;D

[edit]
Incidentally, that scene had something in I avoid now - lots of painted shaders overlapping. Some were raising terrain, some lowering, some flattening. I avoid all that now when I can.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bobbystahr on March 01, 2018, 10:51:24 AM
Quote from: ajcgi on March 01, 2018, 10:46:22 AM
Quote from: bobbystahr on February 28, 2018, 10:07:35 AM
..

[edit]
Incidentally, that scene had something in I avoid now - lots of painted shaders overlapping. Some were raising terrain, some lowering, some flattening. I avoid all that now when I can.


I avoid them as much as possible and there were none in my last scene as I discovered the penalty for their use. Ever look at a Painted shader in NotePad?   HUUUUUUGE.......as big as the rest of the file line wise.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: cyphyr on March 07, 2018, 09:01:42 AM
Good cliff texture on the left abd the holes are weirdly interesting. Are they from the smoothing function on your imported terrain?
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bobbystahr on March 07, 2018, 12:14:23 PM
Quote from: cyphyr on March 07, 2018, 09:01:42 AM
Good cliff texture on the left abd the holes are weirdly interesting. Are they from the smoothing function on your imported terrain?


Honestly I've no idea how they happened or they might well have been more controlled, but as always I'm from the Andy school of TG-ing and I throw stuff at it and see what happens. Guess I should take a more methodical approach but I found doing that in music it all comes out very pedestrian and uninteresting....hence my confused images.
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: bla bla 2 on March 07, 2018, 02:38:57 PM
Is pretty the picture, bob. ;)
Title: Re: BobbyStahr's 123rd attempt
Post by: WAS on March 26, 2018, 05:55:27 AM
just to interject here, I've found that using computer normals to do lateral displacement works as well, and has a muuuch smaller impact. I try to use just one computer terrain.