to reproduce a pic I found on the net....can't quite get the lighting right.
great start, cool idea!
the trees need to be much closer to the camera...
look forward to the next!
:)
Looking good!
I'd add in a low "blank" cloud layer at camera height, extending to just above the height of the tallest tree, with a very low density. It will soften the saturation of the trees and with "soft shadows" enabled in the sunlight node you could get those soft shadows. It will also lighten the sky :)
Richard
cypher...........what do you mean by "blank".
Could try a haze setting of 4 to 8.
I'd set the haze density to something like 4 and increase the amount of glow to make it just not overcast (as you can see in the reference the sky is glowing, but still blue sky is visible).
Then enable soft shadows, use something like 1 for radius and at around 15 samples at least.
The sun's elevation is not very high in the reference, otherwise there wouldn't be so much shadowing, so keep sun elevation at default 25 or 30 at most.
That's at least how the reference 'feels' to me.
Nice effort so far! Keep playing.
2.0 is rendering as I type this........could be awhile though. In order to get the lighting even close, I used the sun and 4 light sources at varying co-ordinates, heights, and strengths. All lights have soft shadows checked. Prepass took an hour.......render could take considerably longer(maybe a week). ???
Yossam , i would try to use higher "Strength on surfaces" in the "Enviro light" node
or the light exposure settings in the "Render Camera" node
or used more luminosity in the textures...
You could render the scene and make use of the EXR format
and make some adjustments in post too.
Many ways for sure!
The render i make now uses more then one sun too and render time does suffer.
Kadri, I basically tried everything that you have suggested. I still wasn't happy with the outcome of the renders, that is when I got light happy ::). I always render to EXR format since it gives so much adjustment leeway in post. Just checked the render......right at 30 hours and maybe 50% finished. Good thing that I am a patient person :o(not). Thanks for the suggestions. I will definitely post to the forum when finished, if I live that long !!!!
Photoshop will be working overtime on this one...........
Yeah as i said i use more then one light too , exactly 4 lights !
If they all are so much needed or not , i say yes to myself ;)
Nice project, I am looking forwrd to see the outcome.
I think when you look at the original closely, there seems to be a lot of light to be coming THROUGH the foliage, even though it´s conifers. so try playing with the transparency on your trees, that often adds greatly to realism.
Best Regards
Jan
Well, after 73 hours and change render time.................
Still not happy with the outcome..........the shadows(or lack thereof) are almost non-existant. Until I can figure out a better placement of the population, this is on hold. There is hardly any light filtering through the trees. Seems like I changed the spacing, rotation, size, etc. a million times.
Any and all suggestions are welcome :o
There isn't much sunlight coming through the trees because the leaves are too dense. You can't really see much sky through them. In the photo there are more gaps between leaves.
Matt
I am re-rendering with some slightly modified suggestions by T-U. I do believe you were almost spot on. ;D
Be aware that Matt's estimation also is quite spot on ;) These are difficult models to light and render. Looking forward to see the result!
I don't know about your workflow, but you can save a lot of time just by performing crop renders to check if you get proper shadowing and lighting, instead of rendering full frames only.
Rendering an example now...see if I can get close to it...
Which models do you use by the way?
The adult Giant Sequoia on the xfrog DVD. Good luck
Ah ok, I have those too, so may be I'll use those in a second attempt...
Anyway, here's a very quick doodle using NWDA HQ Pines.
It's not completely there yet, but if it works with these models then it should definitely work as well for the Sequioa's.
I used the settings I suggested before, although I also increase 'strength on surface' in the enviro light node as well as camera exposure to 2.
I'll post a tgc/tgd here when it's improved.
How close does this come?
Pretty damn close...................mine will be finished in about 4 to 5 hours :P
I will post then and we can compare..........
Well. this one only took about 40 hours. I got rid of all the extra light sources and basically followed T-Us' recommendations. I changed the haze to 8 and checked receive shadows from surfaces to get rid of a hotspot. I want to thank everyone for their suggestions and I totally agree with Matt.....some of these models are a pain to light.
40 hours?
What are your system specs and what were the rest of your rendersettings?
Mine took only 3 hours with GI 3/6/8 and AA16 (quite adaptive, though).
My render machine is an old quad core 2.4 Ghz with 8 G of ram. I had it set to use only 2 cores and 400 M of memory. The render settings were:
Quality-.85
AA-6
GI-2/2/8