An overcast lighting study I wanted to try out.
Also tried to simulate a rainy day with rain which just felt freshly from the sky :)
Rendered at detail 0.8 and AA6. This scene contains 19 populations to create variation.
6 grasses, 5 "dirt" models, 4 bushes, Walli's mouse-ears and trees.
Original resolution was 1920x2520px and took 9h to render.
With lighting like this and no visible clouds there's no need for crazy GI settings :)
I heavily recommend to view the original size render here:
Thanks a lot Ryan for putting this up on your webpage for me ;D
http://www.archer-designs.com/tangled-universe/130810_final_1920x2520.jpg (http://www.archer-designs.com/tangled-universe/130810_final_1920x2520.jpg)
Cheers,
Martin
This is an exceptionally fine image Martin. The only things I can see that would push it closer to perfection - a tiny bit of cloud definition in the sky (or are there any clouds?); and a more diffuse reflection from some of the leaves; and perhaps bring the brightness of the whole image down just a little. And I guess that, in the real world, one would expect a bit more variability in the leaf coloration, but that's down to the models. But otherwise, brilliant!
Quote from: domdib on August 13, 2010, 10:11:09 AM
This is an exceptionally fine image Martin. The only things I can see that would push it closer to perfection - a tiny bit of cloud definition in the sky (or are there any clouds?); and a more diffuse reflection from some of the leaves; and perhaps bring the brightness of the whole image down just a little. But otherwise, brilliant!
Thanks Dom. The brightish speculars are intentional, as I'd like to simulate a rainy day.
I think the overall brightness is just fine. It shows good definition in the shadows and there's hardly over-exposure.
Here's an example: http://ledgeandgardens.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c991c53ef0133f25bf50b970b-popup (http://ledgeandgardens.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c991c53ef0133f25bf50b970b-popup)
The clouds is a good idea and I was thinking of making another iteration of this scene with exactly the clouds you're talking about.
For this scene I thought it would be better to keep the composition clean and not too "busy".
After all we're Terragen-artists, not Vue ;)
Comparing it with the photo, yes, you've done a great job. I guess I was just revealing my own image preferences.
Quote from: domdib on August 13, 2010, 10:21:38 AM
Comparing it with the photo, yes, you've done a great job. I guess I was just revealing my own image preferences.
Yes that's true of course, in the end a lot comes to taste of course :)
Did you take a look at the higher resolution file?
Unfortunately I can't post the original resolution anywhere, without messing it up due to compression, because it shows better that the speculars are indeed brightish but quite diffuse as well.
Oh well, you can't have everything :)
Very nice. Great use of DOF.
I did look at the bigger one. Unfortunate that compression affects even that. Maybe you should post it as two crops? Then anyone interested could splice it together themselves :)
Very nice Martin! Were you to render it again I would say to adjust the camera just slightly to remove a bit of the sky. If you want to send me the full version you are happy with I have no problem hosting it for you.
Quote from: RArcher on August 13, 2010, 10:40:51 AM
Very nice Martin! Were you to render it again I would say to adjust the camera just slightly to remove a bit of the sky. If you want to send me the full version you are happy with I have no problem hosting it for you.
Thanks Ryan :)
I just sent you an e-mail with the file.
Thanks a lot Ryan for putting this up on your webpage for me ;D
Full res now here:
http://www.archer-designs.com/tangled-universe/130810_final_1920x2520.jpg (http://www.archer-designs.com/tangled-universe/130810_final_1920x2520.jpg)
I see what you mean about the speculars. Much better!
However, I now have one more cavil (sorry!). It seems to me that the DOF effect is slightly overpowering the definition in the grasses, making them look more painted than photographed. I'd be interested to see a version without the DOF (and a new iteration with changed clouds.)
Excelsior!
Very nice image , Martin :)
For me the only problem is that the leaves are too repeated; especially on the big tree . A 3d object problem we can see in most 3d images.
But maybe people who are in 3D are naturally more prone to see this! I doubt that others would immediately notice this.
Quote from: domdib on August 13, 2010, 11:45:34 AM
I see what you mean about the speculars. Much better!
However, I now have one more cavil (sorry!). It seems to me that the DOF effect is slightly overpowering the definition in the grasses, making them look more painted than photographed. I'd be interested to see a version without the DOF (and a new iteration with changed clouds.)
Excelsior!
Ghehe :)
Well, the DOF is 100% accurate, so I'm not going to change it. It adds depth and realism.
Also I'm not going to add clouds, I'm not going to change this into a Vue render ;)
I'll do it in a separate work perhaps ;) Already have some ideas.
Quote from: Kadri on August 13, 2010, 12:01:32 PM
Very nice image , Martin :)
For me the only problem is that the leaves are too repeated; especially on the big tree . A 3d object problem we can see in most 3d images.
But maybe people who are in 3D are naturally more prone to see this! I doubt that others would immediately notice this.
If I was able to change this then I'd try. What can I do about this myself? :(
I'm happy to hear about things which I can really change myself :)
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on August 13, 2010, 12:27:21 PM
...
If I was able to change this then I'd try. What can I do about this myself? :(
I'm happy to hear about things which I can really change myself :)
Of course it is not you fault :)
I wish Xfrog , Planetside or some other company would bring new ways to bring foliage , trees etc. in to 3d programs.
Kind of fractal and not repetitive ones. I think in the end we will see some things in that way. But when , i am curious too :)
It's not fun to say Kadri, but Vue does this.
Import a .vob Vue model and populate your scene with it and you will end up with every model slightly different from the other in terms of branches, twigs and leafs etc.
Fractal-based, indeed.
Great image Martin, very good!
Realy? Hmm...interesting . I obviously didn't know this ;)
I will look further in what way and quality they do this.
I didn't looked at the vue renders from this perspective until now .
Thanks for the tip, Martin :)
The sky being white distracts me. I think I would have made it a little more gray. It's my only complaint. Everything else is brilliant!
Hmmm.. Interesting, I think it is far more realistic that with this type of lighting the sky would be a completely blown out white unless there were some very dark storm clouds. This is looking at it from a non-hdr photographic perspective anyway.
well, but many Vue trees are ugly ;-).
There are great ones and indeed it helps if you get some automatic variations - but for examples the leaves all look the same too. Usually they don´t have single leaves, only the really highres Vue trees have those. The others have complete clusters which look exactly the same from tree to tree. And some of the automatic variations look really bad. Still I like that idea and I would love to see something like that in TG.
But one thing is indeed much easier in Vue - if I have a set of lets say 5 or six oak trees, in TG i have to setup 6 populations - In Vue it an be done with one. I would love to have such a feature in TG.
In Vista Pro 3 and 4 they had L-system based trees. They looked okay from a distance. If image maps and textures could be added to them they would have looked much better.
The version of World Construction Set I had also had L-system based trees. These were better than Vista Pro's, but had the same problem.
Anyway, I am still curious what the new release of T2 will have. Btween that and the new Civilization 5, I am quite possibly very excited. :o I do appreciate that Planetside works so hard to iron out the bugs before releasing software. It shows craftmanship in programing (not to mention class).
If the XFrog artists would use 5 or so different leaves instead of 1, and spread them unevenly, it would benefit a tree greatly. It wouldn't cost much more memory I guess. I have to keep this in mind myself. Perhaps, and I'm thinking aloud, by using an image map projection onto the pop (in the way of color varying a pop), attached to the opacity there is a way to 'partly delete' certain leaves.....
By the way, Martin, great image, but especially so close to the foliage it is hard to conceal the repetitititiveness.
Some Xfrog artists do this ;-)
What is much more important: it would be great if you could procedurally alter a bitmap. In Cinema I can use all kind of procedural noises or other effects to change for example the color of a bitmap.
Getting fractals into object textures would be pretty bloody awesome.
Martin, I love the flat lighting. Overcast diffuse lighting is a very hard thing to get right. Well done.
Thanks Jon :)
Here's a slightly different version, say V2:
And the link to a higher-res version:
http://tangled-universe.deviantart.com/#/d2wk4ml (http://tangled-universe.deviantart.com/#/d2wk4ml) (click on the image to see it full-size)
The light is dancing! :o
A stunner, Martin!
Another great image, Martin. But I still think the leaves of the big oak are too identical. And that's a pity of an otherwise very fine image. I especially love the grass. Another thing I just noticed and came to think about is the specularity of the leaves. If a leaf has a certain specularity, the whole leaf reflects the same (if it's on the same angle), and adds to the repetitiveness. It would be good (and probably possible) to break up the specularity of those leaves into fractalized parts, by adding some small scale (+larger scale) PF into the object. In the specularity function perhaps, I have to see what can be done.
Quote from: Dune on August 17, 2010, 03:14:48 AM
Another great image, Martin. But I still think the leaves of the big oak are too identical. And that's a pity of an otherwise very fine image. I especially love the grass. Another thing I just noticed and came to think about is the specularity of the leaves. If a leaf has a certain specularity, the whole leaf reflects the same (if it's on the same angle), and adds to the repetitiveness. It would be good (and probably possible) to break up the specularity of those leaves into fractalized parts, by adding some small scale (+larger scale) PF into the object. In the specularity function perhaps, I have to see what can be done.
*sigh* ;) I know about those leafs and their identical-ness ;) Again, I'm not a modeller so I can't help this.
This version only has improved render-settings in regard to AA. I decreased the populations' size to reduce memory and most important, I changed the composition a bit like Ryan suggested. It looks better now. I also like the fact that there's more transition of light throughout the tree.
I'm very confused by the fact that TG2 still isn't able to read opacity maps with greyscales and as far as I know also no greyscale maps for the reflectivity/specular function. So I wonder why a greyscale fractal would work.
It must work of course, otherwise it would be extremely stupid to implement without fixing the greyscale mapping issue.
Anyhow, I think you have a good point there and will investigate what I can do about it.
If you're already on to it and progressing with this then please let me know. Perhaps we can figure this both out in the best way :)
Martin
I've done a little testing and will post now in another thread (specular stuff) , not wanting to hijack your thread.
Looks great Martin! The tiny adjustments really gave the scene better framing and focus on the big tree.
looks like a vray render:0 nice clean render
Thanks guys :D I'm glad you like it!
Unfortunately they don't @ CGSociety:
My last two gallery-submissions were declined for no clear reason.
They gave a set of reasons like too many submissions (something like that), does not fit in this section, does not meet quality-standard etc.
I may pick one of those reasons myself apparently, because they don't seem to respond to questions regarding this.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on August 19, 2010, 02:12:55 AM
Thanks guys :D I'm glad you like it!
Unfortunately they don't @ CGSociety:
My last two gallery-submissions were declined for no clear reason.
They gave a set of reasons like too many submissions (something like that), does not fit in this section, does not meet quality-standard etc.
I may pick one of those reasons myself apparently, because they don't seem to respond to questions regarding this.
Could one of the reasons "too much strict advertisement relationship " with E-on ?.
I don't like conspiracy theories so much , but your images could go in any top best gallery very easily !
I would like to say they are too big and some problems could be related to this..yada yada...
But they look more like wiseacre , greedy and sordid !
Especially if the images aren't made with Autodesk or with the other advertisers software !
Well, honestly these are also my suspicions. On the other hand though, Planetside also advertised there, though less often.
So to blame it on that?
I remember how tough it was to get "Terragen" as an option to choose the software you have used to create your submission.
Can't remember who achieved it, but he had to go through quite some lengths.
There's no way of knowing/finding this out.
For my own sanity I tell myself that I should wait a while and then re-submit?
If the user base and the images who are submitted gets bigger and more they couldn't ignore them.
Wishful thinking of course !
Don't give up Martin :)
Mmm, my last one was rejected too at CGTalk - I just checked, and the last image that even included an element from TG2 (the sky) was Olivier Vernay-Kim's by now well-known "Heading South", submitted on 13 June.
One can read too much into these things - it could just be one person who doesn't like TG2 images, and the submitters have been unlucky that he's been adjudicating each time. Or perhaps there is still the prejudice that TG2 is just "Open and render", with no skill involved. Anyway, it's a shame if there is such a bias - and it could prove commercially damaging to Planetside, which is even more of a shame.
There are some moderator problems related to Lightwave too ! Old users of Lightwave know this problem.
Because of this they don't post much there . If it wasn't for Roberto Ortiz (Forum moderator of Lightwave forum section)
there wouldn't any Lightwave related things too there .
Anyway ; to say something with substance about this is not easy unfortunately , but they do not many positive things :-\