Planetside Software Forums

General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: Gannaingh on November 27, 2011, 12:22:40 PM

Title: Green Lake
Post by: Gannaingh on November 27, 2011, 12:22:40 PM
Just a little something I created over the past couiple days. The terrain is Diablo Lake in the norther Cascade mountains near where I live. I've always been intrigued by the greenish tinge of the lake so I decided to create my own version. I might tone down the wave roughness since it seems a bit heavier/less peaceful than the rest of the image. Thanks for taking a look!

http://gannaingh32.deviantart.com/art/Green-Lake-271200650
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Tangled-Universe on November 27, 2011, 01:47:23 PM
Great work :)
What rendersettings did you use? The trees look very crisp in the foreground, yet quite soft in the distance. Very realistic work!
I like the tinge of the water, always wanted to do something similar. I'd not lower the roughness that much, but would rather decrease wave size.

Cheers,
Martin
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Tangled-Universe on November 27, 2011, 01:52:38 PM
Perhaps it would be a cool idea to create some clouds which hug the mountains in the background.
Using the cloud function tutorial can give you a guide on how to achieve that.
Otherwise we can try it together :)
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: AP on November 27, 2011, 03:30:21 PM
That mountain is just blanketed in trees. I like the minor color variations in the trees as well.
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Saurav on November 27, 2011, 05:11:12 PM
Really nice render, very well executed. :)
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Alcaeru on November 27, 2011, 05:40:27 PM
Wow! Love this render. It reminds me of some of the vivid aqua lakes that you get in the south Island of New Zealand.
And if you don't mind sharing...
What did you use to make those rocks poking out of the mountain?
Also, have you used any transparency in the trees?
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Redwolf on November 27, 2011, 06:20:20 PM
i seen the image u tried to copy in google images, well impressed at the nearly got it terrain.......loose the reflections perhaps as it is looks like the lake is a glass sheet
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Gannaingh on November 27, 2011, 10:58:26 PM
Thanks everybody!

@TU: The render settings are

detail:.9
AA: 8 ray trace objects/atmo on (default settings 1/4 samples)
GI: 2/4

The cloud idea around the far mountain sounds cool, I'll have to mess around and see what happens. Although if you want to play with it as well (I know you're interested in some sort of collaboration) shoot me PM.

@Alcaeru: The rocks poking out of the mountains are part of the terrain, I just limited the tree's slope to allow the rocks to poke through. Also, the trees don't have any transparency, just customized translucency values as part of the leave's default shaders.
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: otakar on November 27, 2011, 11:31:12 PM
Right up my alley! Great stuff! Maybe a couple of dead trees for the foreground, but that's as far as I'd suggest 'improvements'.
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Dune on November 28, 2011, 02:41:29 AM
Incredibly pleasant and realistic image. Copied it to my folder of favorites. Very inspirational as well. I wouldn't change much. Perhaps a lone (sailing) boat or a flock of birds (not the ugly ones), but it might also spoil the serenity.
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: TheBadger on November 28, 2011, 03:21:34 AM
Yes do share! How are you getting your realism? Great work
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Alcaeru on November 28, 2011, 06:31:11 AM
Quote from: darthvader1 on November 27, 2011, 10:58:26 PM
@Alcaeru: The rocks poking out of the mountains are part of the terrain, I just limited the tree's slope to allow the rocks to poke through. Also, the trees don't have any transparency, just customized translucency values as part of the leave's default shaders.
Sorry, meant translucency. Thanks for letting me know. Also, with the rocks, I more meant, did you use a power fractal shader for the colour/how many surface layers?
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Tangled-Universe on November 28, 2011, 07:14:55 AM
Quote from: darthvader1 on November 27, 2011, 10:58:26 PM
Thanks everybody!

@TU: The render settings are

detail:.9
AA: 8 ray trace objects/atmo on (default settings 1/4 samples)
GI: 2/4

The cloud idea around the far mountain sounds cool, I'll have to mess around and see what happens. Although if you want to play with it as well (I know you're interested in some sort of collaboration) shoot me PM.

@Alcaeru: The rocks poking out of the mountains are part of the terrain, I just limited the tree's slope to allow the rocks to poke through. Also, the trees don't have any transparency, just customized translucency values as part of the leave's default shaders.

Can't refuse that offer :)
I'll send you a PM soon!
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: inkydigit on November 28, 2011, 09:34:23 AM
awesome render, what are the tree(s) models?
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Gannaingh on November 28, 2011, 11:10:22 AM
@TheBadger: That question is harder to answer than I initially thought. I would say that getting the lighting right in a scene is the most important factor for an overall good looking picture. Getting the lighting right is tricky since what works for one scene won't work for another so a lot of trial and error (and lots of test renders) is involved. Also, I've been recently been learning the importance of stuffing lots and lots of objects into a scene...at least for forest scenes like this. If you look at pictures of real life forests the trees are packed absurdly close together which is hard to duplicate without a powerful computer.

@Alcaeru: The rock surface is really simple. It is just the base color shader and a surface layer with Mr. Lamppost's procedural granite surface as a child layer.

@inkydigit: The models I used are the medium and young versions of the freely available x-frog grand fir as well as a population of dandelO's larch tree.

Thanks for the comments everybody, I'm glad you like it!
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Jonathan on November 28, 2011, 01:18:02 PM
Really nice render.  I agree that changing the translucency would make a big difference and reducing the wave size would improve the image too. Nice one!
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: inkydigit on November 28, 2011, 02:17:32 PM
Quote from: darthvader1 on November 28, 2011, 11:10:22 AM
@TheBadger: That question is harder to answer than I initially thought. I would say that getting the lighting right in a scene is the most important factor for an overall good looking picture. Getting the lighting right is tricky since what works for one scene won't work for another so a lot of trial and error (and lots of test renders) is involved. Also, I've been recently been learning the importance of stuffing lots and lots of objects into a scene...at least for forest scenes like this. If you look at pictures of real life forests the trees are packed absurdly close together which is hard to duplicate without a powerful computer.

@Alcaeru: The rock surface is really simple. It is just the base color shader and a surface layer with Mr. Lamppost's procedural granite surface as a child layer.

@inkydigit: The models I used are the medium and young versions of the freely available x-frog grand fir as well as a population of dandelO's larch tree.

Thanks for the comments everybody, I'm glad you like it!
thanks, they look great!
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: jo on November 29, 2011, 11:12:25 PM
Hi,

With a different tree model (Beech tree) this would look a lot like some of the glacier fed lakes in the South Island of NZ :-).

Regards,

Jo
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: efflux on December 07, 2011, 08:25:45 PM
The trees look great.
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Gannaingh on December 07, 2011, 11:07:04 PM
Thanks everybody, now that final exams are over I can get back to working on this one, hopefully it won't be too long before I have something new to show you.
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Themodman101 on December 09, 2011, 11:30:41 PM
You said that those Grand furs are freely available? I cant find them for free anywhere. Can you perhaps link meh?

I love this scene, I made a very similar type scene myself.

Your work is amazing, and I hope I can get similar results myself someday :D
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Gannaingh on December 10, 2011, 03:45:29 AM
The tree can be found at http://www.planetside.co.uk/content/view/21/36/ in the Xfrogplants free sampler towards the bottom of the page. If you click on the link it will start a download that contains 5 species of plants, each with three different models. One of these models will be the Grand Fir.
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: Antoine on December 10, 2011, 04:58:32 AM
This is a great photorealistic rendered image.
The only thing I would perhaps change personnaly (depending where the scene is) is the water translucency color. Here it looks more like the acid water we can see in some volcano crater's lakes.
Title: Re: Green Lake
Post by: digitalis99 on December 10, 2011, 06:47:47 PM
This scene is awesome and very well done.  I'm trying to get a scene with very similar coloration for a project I'm working on.  The water colors are actually pretty much identical to what I need.  The lake I'm modeling is Ross Lake in Washington State, which has the same chalky/milky turquoise coloration with low transparency. 

The only thing I'd change in your image is to pull the trees just a bit further away from the shore.  Most of those mountain lakes have such varying water levels that most of the time they have an exposed dry shoreline that's 2-7 meters above the waterline.

Top notch work, though, no doubt.