Had to get this in before the snow flies. Elements include:
- The Noble One by Walli
- Grasses by Walli
- Buck, thanks to Mark
Enjoy,
Bob
I think overall this looks nice - but something puts me off, not sure yet what it is.
Probably because it looks a bit as if there are several planes, it almost looks as if this is a landscape made out of cardboard standups (not sure if this is the right translation). Because apart from that, there´s a lot of nice detail in surfacing.
Perhaps its just the sun angle?
You just beat me to a response, Walli. I think what you mean is caused by the 'flatness' of the right hill. It has shadows, but not a big shadow showing the roundedness. Indeed, some other sun angle might do wonders.
I really like the atmosphere and shore detail, must use something like that in my falls. But what I miss in many renders of many users is the use of population variation. You can distinctly see 'two trees', more subtle distinction would enhance it as well, IMO.
I would say 'a lot more trees or far less, just not where it is now. Great shot though, keep at it!
Thanks to you all. Yes, I am not totally pleased with the results and appreciate you folks pointing out the possibilities of improvement. The only thing is, this was a 70+ hour render - not sure I'm up to doing it over.
Edit; What I will do is run a few quick renders after playing with the sunlight. Also, will remove some of the models and post the .tgd here (or on Image sharing) for anyone who wants to play with the scene. It uses a .ter which you will have to load which I'll include.
Agree with the others, very promising scene but something not quite right yet. But I did want to mention how natural-looking the deer's pose is, almost as if the photographer has just spooked it and it's about to run. Often times such models fail to achieve good integration with the scene, but I think this is mostly an exception, which is good.
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on December 01, 2011, 06:12:25 PM
Agree with the others, very promising scene but something not quite right yet. But I did want to mention how natural-looking the deer's pose is, almost as if the photographer has just spooked it and it's about to run. Often times such models fail to achieve good integration with the scene, but I think this is mostly an exception, which is good.
- Oshyan
Thank you Oshyan. Yes, I believe it is the flatness of the mountain on the right. Although it has some small features, it still has that flat look. Trying some other sun positions. I've not been able to re-shape the terrain without screwing up the whole thing ...I'll be back on this one soon. The original took 70+ hours to render.
Perhaps we can also help with some optimized render settings. I don't think that should take 70hrs...
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on December 01, 2011, 07:28:35 PM
Perhaps we can also help with some optimized render settings. I don't think that should take 70hrs...
- Oshyan
Thank you Oshyan. I've deleted one model; Walli's 'Dry Grass Patch' from the list. The other models are available here except the Buck.
The Terrain is a 4097 .ter which I imported (32MB). It is called 'Land of the Goshute' by Buzzzzz which I've had since back in my Terragen Classic days. If you need this .ter file, let me know and I can put it up on MediaFire for your download.
Appreciate your help and suggestions.
Bob
Always interesting to have a peek inside other kitchens. Thanks, Bob. But why the second compute terrain? It'll take longer, but isn't necessary, IMO.
The 2nd Compute Terrain is probably unnecessary in this case, yes. Although there is one Power Fractal between it and the first Compute Terrain that is providing displacement, it is plugged in to the Color input of a Surface Layer so I don't think it's actually causing displacement that would need the re-compute of terrain for proper population placement.
When I first looked at this scene I wasn't quite sure where the render time was coming from. The atmosphere is up at 32 samples which, when using Raytraced Atmosphere and an AA of 6, is really unnecessary, so that should be down more around say 12. But the cloud samples were fine, albeit with no acceleration cache, but as a 2D layer with minimal samples it really shouldn't matter. And indeed that was the case, when I started a (much lower resolution) test render, the sky rendered quickly. I expected the water to be the next slowest thing, but in fact it took ages just to render the terrain, 28 minutes and the scene had only rendered 38% on my overclocked i7 quad at 4.6Ghz. So I knew something odd was going on...
With the terrain taking so long, I started digging around in the surfacing nodes and found tons of nesting and very complex surfaces. The surfacing work in the scene is nice, but this is still probably overly complex. The real culprit though? Reflective shader with raytraced reflections in one of the Fake Stones layers! Once I simply disabled the raytraced reflections, the entire scene at the same resolution and detail as before took only 13 minutes to render *completely*. That's less than 1/4 of the render time (projected) as before, and that's just from disabling one unnecessary setting.
Beyond that you could probably simplify the surfacing quite a bit, and there are other reflective layers too that are of questionable necessity, but none I saw with raytraced reflections enabled, which will really kill your render time, especially for complex displaced surfaces. It's also not going to contribute noticeably to a scene like this so it's really just wasted time.
In addition to that, I think detail 0.9 is probably overkill. I've tweaked that and a few other settings and attached a modified TGD. This should render a *lot* faster and give you a near identical result. It took only 10 minutes on my machine, compared to 13 minutes for the scene just without raytraced reflections, and a projected 1hr+ in the original config. If you find you still want more detail, up the main detail back to 0.9, but I really think 0.75 should do. I've actually increased the AA to give you better smoothing on your complex plants since you'll be saving a lot of render time in other areas, and I also upped raytracing quality so your water reflections look better, and still a ton of render time is saved due to not raytracing reflections on those stones. I predict this will render in about 10 hours at full resolution. ;D
As I said you could probably save even more render time if you simplified the surface mapping a bit, for example consider removing all the reflective shaders entirely, I'm really dubious whether they actually add anything visibly to the scene.
- Oshyan
The only reason I can think of for using that second compute terrain node is that it often helps to re-compute your terrain again if there are displacements after the compute terrain and you want to add in a layer which uses smoothing in order to have it properly act as a base for fake stones. That's what you can see in the screenshot.
However, the screenshot also shows that there's no additional displacements after the first compute terrain so re-computation for proper smoothing of the fake stone base layer is not necessary here.
Nice detective work Oshyan :)
This forum and the help it gives us is priceless. Thank you Oshyan and all of you who take the time to offer such good information.
I will study all of your input here Oshyan and retain the information and suggestions for this and future projects. I'm sure many others will benefit from this as well. I'll be back with more on this scene as I want to improve upon the appearance of the hill/mountain on the right.
I've had thoughts of making a winter version of this scene with snow and a frozen lake/river.
This is much appreciated,
Bob
What a difference these changes have made with speed of render. Thank you again Oshyan for this explanation of optimization. As mentioned, will make some lighting changes to improve the scene.
One other thing - this continues to bug me: the issue of obtaining color variation in the fake stones. I've had some good tips from FrankB in the past on this; but, it doesn't work all the time. You saw I had a second compute terrain in the node make up - this was to be sure I would get the color changes of the fake stones; but, as usual, the stones pick up the base color regardless of what I do.
Any thoughts on this?
Might be that you're using the wrong 'slope key' in the constraints for the stones, Bob? That's usually the problem when this type of thing occurs...
Quote from: dandelO on December 03, 2011, 01:17:46 PM
Might be that you're using the wrong 'slope key' in the constraints for the stones, Bob? That's usually the problem when this type of thing occurs...
I'll have to check this out Martin; thank you. I think I used altitude constraints only, not slope.
This was a lesson well learned; thank you Oshyan. Your prediction of a 10 hour render time hit the mark - render time for this optimized version took 9.53.17. As mentioned earlier, the original rendered in 70+ hours. I've archived this thread for future reference.
I lowered the sun for improved shadows on the right side mountain. Replaced one of the dried grasses.
Earlier, I forgot to mention that the 4097 .ter file here was created by Buzzzzz in World Machine some years ago. And, the dried grasses were converted by him.
Nice work on the changes overall. I think the new lighting angle helps with the "flatness" in some areas of the image earlier. However I will say I miss some of the greenery in the small plants. I think the dry ones maybe make more sense with fall, depending where you are, but a few green ones mixed in would break it up nicely I think; it's a little visually monotonous now. Other than that it's looking good, and any opportunity to learn more about how to get the most of your render time is good too I think. ;D
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on December 05, 2011, 12:42:55 AM
Nice work on the changes overall. I think the new lighting angle helps with the "flatness" in some areas of the image earlier. However I will say I miss some of the greenery in the small plants. I think the dry ones maybe make more sense with fall, depending where you are, but a few green ones mixed in would break it up nicely I think; it's a little visually monotonous now. Other than that it's looking good, and any opportunity to learn more about how to get the most of your render time is good too I think. ;D
- Oshyan
Thanks Oshyan. I was pleased with the result of changing the sun's altitude. This worked better than other sun re-locations I tried.
The green grass model was a single plant and even though my population spacing was tight, it didn't clump very well. The dried grasses are a combination of a number different plants and made a better display of variation. I agree that a little green would improve upon for a more natural look.
I think this image is a good base for a snow covered version with a frozen lake. Maybe I'll try that next.
I think a winter version would be awesome. :)
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on December 05, 2011, 01:28:17 AM
I think a winter version would be awesome. :)
- Oshyan
Thank you for the encouragement. I've started working on it. I'm a slow mover ...hopefully something in the next few weeks.
It is very much better indeed, Bob. And I look forward to your snow version.
Quote from: Dune on December 05, 2011, 02:11:33 AM
It is very much better indeed, Bob. And I look forward to your snow version.
Thanks Ulco, its getting cold here in the desert; but, just a few hours north, snow and ice prevails for a few months - however, I had enough of the white stuff back east ...that is why I'm here. Working now on trying to come up with the frozen lake ...hopefully, we'll get there.
I like it better now too. Still a little bothered by the tree population though. Probably just me.
Quote from: TheBadger on December 06, 2011, 04:01:51 AM
I like it better now too. Still a little bothered by the tree population though. Probably just me.
Thanks Badger, I think the eye is looking for some vertical trees sticking out amongst the rest. The entire image has no verticals.
The final iteration of this image is modified as a winter scene which I call 'Chill' and can be seen in Image sharing here: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=13667.new#new