This is the first test of a thing I have to render out big for an educational billboard. Had to reduce it or it wouldn't fit here. Stream in the distance, some higher areas where these ancient folks settled, a gathering place right under your dangling feet. The trees and fields need a lot adjustment still, and I have to place farms on the sandy plots, and the gathering place needs a fence and a small building.
I welcome all suggestions for a more photographic reality.... perhaps I need more haze in the distance?
Maybe a slight Depth of field/blur would do the trick. Haze might do, but the lighting would be different across the view.
the tree/bush populations stand out to me... the groupings seem a little too structured and maybe not enough scale variation? Edit: (or maybe there are not enough trees? I cant decide?)
haze or low mist may help also?
cheers
J
If this is an Iron Age settlement, then generally speaking they tend to have an enclosure ditch surrounding them; this is perhaps is what is needed. However If this is a recreation of a real settlement without archeological evidence (Geophysical Survey [Resistivity or Earth Penetrating Radar] or earth staining [Ditch Fill different color from surrounding natural]) then one should not be included.
That is the only thing I can think of at this time, in terms of improving the realism of the image. ;D
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
Hi Ulco
I've been playing around with population anti aliasing, primarily for animaton to get rid of flicker. Anyway, long Friday story short...
Try Detail 0.5 (not much displacement here, maybe 0.6), AA 32 (I know pretty extreem) BUT...
Go into edit sampling and set 'First sampling level' to 1/16. This should give you 64 min samples to fire at ray traced objects to give a better average (more samples = better initial over all accuracy of what colour that pixel should be in ray traced objects, ie your trees). Then set the 'Pixel noise threshold' to 0.15 (this is quite high to keep render times down. If render times are too high, then increase this value, but I'm not totally sure if threshold is an above value or fraction yet).
I think it's better to get an accurate initial pixel colour, before going on to the next level of AA (up to 1024 the 'Max samples per pixel')
Give that a try. This will give you a softer effect on your populations and reduce contrast noise.
More cowbell in the atmosphere will also help blue bleach the horizon.
All the best
Ulco
This is fantastic. The overall scope of this project is well thought out and executed. I'm really looking forward to see were you take this. If you need some special vegetation let me know. I would love to help out.
Marc
So delighted to see another one of those historical scenes. Since you asked about realism Dune, what kind of feels unnatural are the fields. I am sure you are basing their size, dimension and situation on archeological evidence, but they still feel to me like they are plopped down on the land, just a touch too unnatural. Maybe it's the color or the straight lines, but that's my view, which could be way off of course :)
Thanks guys.
@ otakar: You're right, but in fact that's what these guys did. Take a piece of land, clear it, put a small levee around it, and plant something completely different. But is was in the pipeline to make different crops, and make some fields abandoned or less stark (some corners probably didn't grow well and were overgrown by weeds).
@ Marc: I much appreciate your offer, but I think I'll manage with what I have or make myself. Your refinement in trees would be invisible from this height anyway.
@ Jon: I'll give this a try, but I have to see how my machine behaves with these figures. I hope to render out at maybe 6000x6000px or slightly larger (the final print/poster will probably be 1-2m wide), but earlier renders of 5000x4000px stumbled and crashed occasionally. What do you mean by cowbell in the atmosphere? I was thinking of adding some very soft cloud to haze up the distance a bit.
@ Henry: I don't think blur would look natural from this distance, and I think the client wants everything sharp.
@ Inkydigit: That is indeed the problem, but I hadn't come to refining the tree pops yet. These are just 3 species with 0.6-1 size difference and some pop variation and a very rough mask. There will be more species and lonely and dead trees and such. The haze has been another thought indeed.
@ Cyber-Angel: There was no evidence of ditches around the settlements, and I'm not sure yet about levees around the fields. I put levees in, but they're not visible in this size render. By the way: I made the levees by subtracting a hardened (color adjust) mask from the initial soft field mask.
Iteration 2 at jpg quality 75. Still looking for the best shaders for high dry and low swampy country. Sand needs work, so do the farms and fields. I added some more tree species, but I still have to change the masks from fast black-white to gray variations for denser and less dense wood. The mist needs a higher quality, as I detect some sort of grain all over. It may also be that the displacement in the shaders is just too fine. Too much white and yellow in the low areas (old reed and flowers = springtime) to my taste. The sand mask needs to be larger and tighter. Cloud shadows were better last time.
@ Jon; I tried your settings but the rendertimes skyrocketed, so I experimented some more. It's now AA8 with 1/16 samples and pixelnoise threshold 0.1, which is even going faster than default and doesn't show much difference. I'll have another go at this though.
Next.
This is so real looking - amazing stuff - I love the procedural surfaces :)
Looks great Ulco! ;D
If you need renderhelp, then you know where to find me ;)
I'm curious to see how Jon's AA suggestion works out.
Definitely will try it myself some time.
Cheers,
Martin
Thanks guys. I think I just manage, Martin. Thanks for the offer, and yes, I know where to find you ;) I'm now doing some tests at 6x6k, detail 0.5 and AA 4, and I use 2.4 Gig. Jon's settings, by the way, were too high for my machine, but I might try some more settings for the best result.
These are really wonderful. Do you have a link or links to see your commissioned work on the net?
Nice detailed work.
@ Henry: most are used for exhibitions on information panels, or in brochures or books. I can't think of any web stuff... ah, yes there's this: http://www.tuinvandeeeuwigheid.nl/hst/t16u06i/tuin_van_de_eeuwigheid.nsf/Main/Home?open (http://www.tuinvandeeeuwigheid.nl/hst/t16u06i/tuin_van_de_eeuwigheid.nsf/Main/Home?open) And there's this: http://www.geschiedenisvanvlaardingen.nl/ (http://www.geschiedenisvanvlaardingen.nl/), but they did an awful job with the background image. Some of the rest is on my website.
Here's a more direct link:
http://www.tuinvandeeeuwigheid.nl/hst/t16u06i/tuin_van_de_eeuwigheid.nsf/Main/Impressies~Bouwstenen?open (http://www.tuinvandeeeuwigheid.nl/hst/t16u06i/tuin_van_de_eeuwigheid.nsf/Main/Impressies~Bouwstenen?open)
Quote from: Dune on August 18, 2011, 03:26:05 AM
@ Henry: most are used for exhibitions on information panels, or in brochures or books. I can't think of any web stuff... ah, yes there's this: http://www.tuinvandeeeuwigheid.nl/hst/t16u06i/tuin_van_de_eeuwigheid.nsf/Main/Home?open (http://www.tuinvandeeeuwigheid.nl/hst/t16u06i/tuin_van_de_eeuwigheid.nsf/Main/Home?open) And there's this: http://www.geschiedenisvanvlaardingen.nl/ (http://www.geschiedenisvanvlaardingen.nl/), but they did an awful job with the background image. Some of the rest is on my website.
thanks for these links, Ulco...great work, and good to see it being used for these projects!
Next iteration; smoother blended high ground spring colors, some fresh reed beds and yellow flowers as well as dead remains from winter in the lower areas. Finest detail are sand grains, but they will only be visible in the max render. Now I have to wait until the guy who commissioned this is back from his holiday.
I'm going to look for some fresher white birches, and change the overall leaf colors to a bit fresher spring green.
Looking great, man. Seems a little more grainy at the lower end than before, sharper displacements or just different AA?
Loving the signature, too! :D
Looks very good for a image test. Thanks for the links to the exhibition art. I know these are posted by the clients, but the thumb nails just do not do your work justice.
QuoteLoving the signature, too!
Thanks to you, Martin :D
The graininess is the small displacements I made for simulated rough grass clumps. It looks better if I render the image at final resolution, but I might need to get a bit more variation in it.
I really like the way you build this scene. Many details yet each element seems well tuned and integrated. The wetlands are my favorite part.
What a great bunch we are (I mean that). So, to continue like nothing happened (although it's fun in a way, and I've got a nice quote from Martin as a signature now :D ), here's my next iteration. I changed the colors a lot (maybe too much) to get this spring flowery feeling, and tried to simulate reed beds in a muddy swamp, just after a rotten winter. Another POV. Don't look at the distance, there's nothing there, because it falls outside the commissioned render.
Sweet. Not entirely sure on those bright greens (especially in contrast to the rest of the area), but the detail is satisfying. The fields are much improved.
Colors are difficult, but here's another version. The high ground should have some dry sandy vegetation in spring, so I made it less fatty green. The low areas need more swampy veggies, but I think the reedbeds may be a little larger, so it's less scattered. What do you think, guys?
I haven't put my new black alders in yet, and some detail is needed near the farm settlements, like smoke, little stuff and people, but that's for later.
I had to reduce significantly to fit it here.
For such large size I use 10,000 up to 12,000 pixel on long side. Put camera at lower place like standing for better looks. More pixel makes not so blocky.
I wish you had rendered this with a little more AA and render detail... Everything seems to be fine, but the scale question is difficult. There is not really anything to reference for this. The 'balance' of the scale seems very good. There is not really anything that pops out with 'I'm too large'.
I definitely need to buy a faster machine. When attempting to render this at 6x6k I already need to preallocate memory (2 cores=400MB), or it'll make errors. And that's with detail 0.5 and AA 4. Perhaps if I work in crops I can use higher values...
I will have to experiment with memory. I hardly ever run into problems. I do use a flash stick for the memory cache. I forgot how I redirected the cache onto flash from the HD.
Be back when I relearn this...
Found out how I did this. Open the Device manager. Goto the Disk Drives and select the USB flash drive/s. Open properties. Under the Policies tab, select better performance. This gave me much better speed to the write cache. I have a 16 GB and a 4 GB. The 4 GB is used for ReadyBoost.
I can render it for you Ulco if you'd like.
Cheers,
Martin
Thanks Martin, I know you offered that earlier, and I very much appreciate it. The thing is that I have to get all stuff together and redo the links. And I don't know if the client would see the difference in AA and detail anyway. I'll definitely keep it in mind. Thanks again!
Detail from the cult place (early morning rites). I have to refine this for an inset of the overview. Made some fireplaces with circles of fake stones, added lights and piles of branches. I'll do the smoke in post, as it is too much of a hassle to get that right in TG. The big overview is now rendering (in chunks) and going well.
Love the shadows coming out from the centre of the fires and up the fences. I also really like the underplayed lighting you've achieved with the low-cloud atmosphere, you can get some really nice corona effects on the sun this way. You've made a great misty sunrise lighting! :)
The final render is going quite well, although in chunks. Here's a small part of the distance. At 5.5x5.5k it's big enough for a panel of 1.5mx1.5m, luckily, but I'm seriously considering a new machine, just for rendering.
Very nice works! Most realistic !
excellent...love the dawn light/mood, and large panels must be great to see, too!