Just finished this one whilst avoiding all the other projects I've gotten embroiled in! LOL
Took over 24 hours to render (+ half an hour on the depth pass!)
Models from XFrog and myself (the grasses)
Render settings at 1600x900: 0.7, 6, 3, 2
I'm "mmm ok" with the result, a bit of "whimsy" really :) Its all a bit symmetrical especially with the buck in the centre (maybe I should add some cross hairs!)
I was of course trying to get the rays of light beaming through the trees but that's so hit and miss. Its not too hard with the sun in view (in front of the camera) but with the sun to the side or behind the camera its seems much more problematic. I even tried taking "detail in camera" up to 2 to no effect. Any suggestions?
C&C very welcome :)
Richard
The foreground is some of the most realistic I have seen done, great work! The rocks and the buck I'm not loving though. The rocks scaled down a bit and maybe shuffled a little further back into the scene in a more natural looking way might help. Only other suggestion would be to put a new bark texture on the xfrog tree models, particularly the one on the left hand side seems pretty smooth.
Mmm, I agree partly with Ryan - those rocks are very "characterful", and as such draw attention away from the buck. If you still want the buck to be emerging from behind a rock, I'd suggest a smoother one, perhaps a bit further back. The vegetation is excellent.
I echo the above, excellent work all the same, awesome vegetation!
The plants are really well worked. I kind of like the fact that the rock obscures the buck. Deer tend to shy away if you get too close. I am not so sure about the rocks texture. Seems like coral. I would smooth it out.
Thanks guys :)
The rocks are the real problem with this image. I made them up as uv mapped obj's a while back but the images never really worked, never quite "rock" enough.
I have some ideas and a few hours b4 I'm off for the weekend, maybe I can come up with a solution and have another render :)
Richard
Nice image , Richard :)
Good suggestions here! Can i ask why you didn't try a fake stone( with masks etc. if needed)?
I actually like the rocks a lot, although I guess we can see a texture seam, and agreed they might not be totally appropriate for this environment (great on a beach though). The populations are also wonderfully complex and well executed. The lighting as well is quite nice. In reality rays are not that frequent either, but if you duplicate real-life ray scenarios in TG2, it should react much the same. You probably didn't need the Detail Region Padding so high, though it may have helped a little in your goal (hopefully you didn't end up actually rendering with it at 2, though that would explain the very long render time).
The DoF also seems a bit unrealistic, though that may be down to the mask.
- Oshyan
Nice work, Richard.
I totally agree with the suggestions made; change the rocks (they're awfull, sorry), or leave them out altogether. Is the buck a model or a plane+image? The grass is fantastic, as is the backdrop.
Thanks guys :)
I do agree about the rocks but I've never managed to satisfactory results with the rock object (even with the no. of sides up in the thousands), for some reason it will not displace, it only reacts as a bump map ???
The deer is an old model from Daz, could do with a little more work but its ok I think.
The DoF is too much, too little, too deep not deep enough?? I usually see DoF way too exagerated and have tried to keep it to a minimum here. When I do the next one I'll try one with less radius and depth.
The issue with rays in an image like this seems to be that whereas in reality unilluminated particals are almost completely invisable in terragen they are visiable. Just using the atmosphere is unlikely to give enough density so a cloud layer is used at camera level (20-30m thick). It would be great to figure out a way for the "particals" in the cloud layer to show up when illuminated and be completely invisable when in a cast shadow.
:)
Richard
If you want to displace the rocks, turn off the raytrace for objects. The raytrace for objects deos a bump mapping. The displacements have to be done using the old version method.
Love the population Richard, dense, varied and very natural. Your deer model if it wasn't centre frame actually looks quite natural. And I don't mind the walnut shell stones, they're interesting. Thing with DOF, is toning it right, so that it doesn't look as if you're looking at a model railway. I don't think you're far off. I'd like to see this with a little less blur.
Ah I think I remember now why I had abandoned an earlier version of this scene.
Quote from: njenebIf you want to displace the rocks, turn off the raytrace for objects.
Yep this works a charm and I'm able to create much more interesting and "realistic" rocks this way (using tg's procedurals) ...
BUT ...
now I have to set all the object populations set to "Very High Quality", and with 18 populations (so far) this is begining to slow down the render times ...
I guess I can't have ray trace objects turned off for just the rocks then ... :-\
Its just a static image so I could render a "rock pass" and comp that in post.
cheers
Richard
This would be a great time to have multilayer rendering.
You'll just have to use fake stones. A bit more cumbersome, I admit. Or crop the stones area and fit them in later in PS.
Its rather annoying ::)
I keep flipping back and forth between RTO on and off.
RTO (Ray trace objects) on and the forest and grasses look fantastic but the Rock Object wont displace.
RTO off and the forest looks cr@p and the Rock Object looks great.
The shadow casting from the Rock Object (RTO off) is odd and wont comp well with the trees and grasses (RTO on).
Round and round I go. I tried Dunes suggestion (thank you) of using a Fake stone shader, it kinda works but makes a different "style" of stone which if its in the wrong place (it will be) needs to be "transformed" to the right location. This causes a shear in the stones displacement. :(
Its looking like my best chance is to go back to where I started and make a physical model of a stone, maybe in ZBrush or similar.
Still its rendering away at the moment (RTO on) and I'll see where I go from here later this evening.
Richard
Quote from: cyphyr on August 24, 2010, 09:22:30 AM
Its rather annoying ::)
I keep flipping back and forth between RTO on and off.
RTO (Ray trace objects) on and the forest and grasses look fantastic but the Rock Object wont displace.
RTO off and the forest looks cr@p and the Rock Object looks great.
The shadow casting from the Rock Object (RTO off) is odd and wont comp well with the trees and grasses (RTO on).
Round and round I go. I tried Dunes suggestion (thank you) of using a Fake stone shader, it kinda works but makes a different "style" of stone which if its in the wrong place (it will be) needs to be "transformed" to the right location. This causes a shear in the stones displacement. :(
Its looking like my best chance is to go back to where I started and make a physical model of a stone, maybe in ZBrush or similar.
Still its rendering away at the moment (RTO on) and I'll see where I go from here later this evening.
Richard
Did you try to translate the fake stones AND its displacement function? This way they should stay aligned when using the same translation setting.
Can you show what's odd about the shadows when you don't use RTO for the rock, but RTO for the trees and grasses?
How does that look when you use non-adaptive AA?
Here is a quicky of the rock shadow issue. I guess this will be the same or similar issue as I came across here (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8949.0).
The shadow is only correct in the last image. In the first two images the rock is heavily displaced but the shadow is from the un-displaced geometry.
I'm worried that with an much larger image the shadow fail will show up badly, since the shadow will be cast mostly over vegetation.
cheers
Richard
Thanks Richard. It's something totally different than I had in mind. So I'm afraid I can't help you since I also think it is that particular bug you mentioned.
Hope you can find a way to make fake stones work for you in this image, because it is a really good render!