WIP for an upcoming work. Stones turned out a little different than I wanted, and the grass is a bit monotonous, but that keeps me off the street.
Looking great so far! :) But I would mix up something with your trees as they look too uniform. Maybe add some dead trees in there and add some other model, some birches or thin spruces.
Very nice; like those boulders too.
Nice! That got me thinking of a swamp scene...... bald cypress trees with knees. Lots of green algae....
Looks great, Ulco. The right side mid-ground is particularly beautiful and realistic, in my view.
Some really outstanding realism, especially in the background. Foreground rocks are a tad odd somehow, but overall very nice.
- Oshyan
Probably one of my preferred of your pictures. If I can afford it would be nice to see some lichens on the rocks.
The backgrounds rocks! More variety and you're there. Foreground needs to more work obviously.
Nice like it, maybe some water closer to the camera. Stick some birds in the background and some midges flying close to the camera. Well done.
Actually, I just thought to make a version with calm water in front, some grass and the rocks, so I might just do that.
Two more versions, more variety in trees and shrub, but the ground itself is poking through and not nice, and there's too much grass. Rocks... mmmm. I don't know, not necessarily better, I think. I'll do some more work to it. The birches need lighter leaves as well.
Like then both - for the rock specimens and, the vegetation. Especially like those leafless bushes.
I like the second one, mainly for the rocks. I agree about the grass. And I too like the leafless bushes, never thought to do that. I've done it with trees, but not bushes.
;)
TheBackgrounds in all the images are rather great. Agree with Frank about the mid right area.
Its looking good Ulco. I like the area chosen as the subject. Tundras are beautiful places in the spring, summer and early fall. I don't believe I have ever seen a documentary, or photo series of one that didn't make we want to visit it.
Hi Ulco,
Really great image, for some reason I prefer the first image so far, maybe the background trees need a little bit more variation / color variation, but the overall compostition is better for me eyes.
I like the 3rd one, excellent veg placement and convincing rocks
Excellent, Ulco!
I agree with pac. I like the first one most. The clouds look fantastic. You changed something in the sky for the second and third image, didn't you?
So I'd prefer the first one with a little more variation in the trees and the grass.
Thanks for your comments, guys. Very helpful. I indeed changed the sky for the second batch. First one was with the default (for TG3) where the haze exp height is 2000 instead of 3000, I changed that to the old default. But changed it back again now. Hit seed for the cumulus a few times as well. They're large clouds 4500m, but with a low gamma (0.25), so they're sparse. Plus a tiny bit of localized low cloud, without the fractal.
The scene is getting a bit full, but here's a new iteration. Soft shadows (1), but for the sake of speed with a low sample number (3). Rough terrain, so it's hardly visible anyway.
The rocks are large (10m), so you know. One branch seems to hit it...mmm.
I'll do another one today, I think, with some water in front.
Quote from: TheBadger on June 23, 2013, 05:08:02 AM
TheBackgrounds in all the images are rather great. Agree with Frank about the mid right area.
Its looking good Ulco. I like the area chosen as the subject. Tundras are beautiful places in the spring, summer and early fall. I don't believe I have ever seen a documentary, or photo series of one that didn't make we want to visit it.
For true!
These are places I grew up in. I love the raven in the last one :)
A couple hints about the trees: they are Black spruce,
Picea mariana. They really do have a rough, very dark black bark and they vary in size considerably in the same stand. Some in wet areas are no taller than a man and be many years old while others nearby on better soil might be 5-10 meters. They can clump together quite dense–almost choking each other or stand alone like you have shown.
you do awesome work. The sedge grass and shrubs are convincing. The clouds you made are perfect for the hot high pressure systems we get here far inland in the summer.
The sun angle always seems to be low up here, Which makes a yellow atmosphere usually. Even on the 21st of June at noon the sun is just at 65 degress in the sky. But for most of the evening until very late it is a lazy, yellow afternoon feeling.
I wish I could do this work 8)
Russ
Thanks very much for your comprehensive reply, Russ. Very useful! I'll do some changes. By the way, the raven is a buzzard (I had it for sale at NWDA, which will be online again soon), but you couldn't know that. I might make a raven though, nice idea.
3rd one is my fav too. Latest one seems a bit over-bright and lacking in contrast (flat-ish lighting). But there's nice progress and aspects to all of them. Probably a combo of 1 and 3 would be ideal, I like the foreground rocks and dead bushes best in 3.
- Oshyan
The over-brightness is probably the quick automatic color adjust in Irfanview. I have to do that more carefully of course.
Beautiful!
Agree, the best thus far. And, love those rocks. Telling your procedure of creating them would be helpful.
I can't share a tgc as it has some new nodes, but it's quite easy actually. I used a default shader as basis for color and displacement input, which is used as texture for 10m stones.
Inside the default shader I made 2 lines of PF's; one for color input, one for displacement input. The one for color input has some colored fractal mixes and 2 added surface shaders (for ochre and greenish-grey colors) set to 50% coverage and blended by some 'lichen' PF's (hard, small billows, a bit warped).
The displacement line is a small scale (2/10/0.1) warped billow fractal with Z and Z stretched x3 (color roughnes set to 1), then 2 transform shaders, then a merge shader. The first transform shader is set to rotate Z by 80 degrees, the second to rotate 20/50/-90, and change the fractal XYZ scalars by 0.15/4/0.15, thus changing the fractal from horizontal to vertical. Then mix normal or play with versions. Finally I merged a tiny (0.1/0.4/0.005) fractal with low color contrast (0.2) and high color of 0.2. This kind of adds little specks to the main color variation. So it's all done in color space, not displacement. This color is set as input for displacement (2m), with offset of 1m.
This is stunning! I really like the yellow lichen, but I'm not sure about the dark red colour. It looks a bit like blood.
I envy all you beta testers already playing around with the new version! ;)
Agree with Hannes, this is excellent. The added water really contributes to the tundra feel. For me the red looks like some vandal has attacked the rocks with spray paint!
Excellent! What I would do with the red is to adjust the color to a lavender/grayish tone. However, your color choice is not uncommon when it comes to lichen.
It's a murder scene ;) I know about the red, my wife also said to get rid of it. I will. On the other hand, stones may contain some iron... rusting away.
Great looking scene, very natural! Nothing wrong with the red at all though I would perhaps make it a little rougher in texture.
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You all are right but pls give that man a well earned and maybe needed break after he was figthing teeth and nails (i guess) for this/his great scene.. ;D
Thanks, guys. No rest for me though. Hooked to TG3, you know....
Great improvements!! :) v1_7 is my favourite.
Another setup and some vegetation testing...
Also great.
For me, the water is the "king" in that scene.
It looks super realistic to me in it's visual and spread/arrangement!
Nice, the vegetation looks really naturally spaced.
Thanks guys, the veggies distribution was indeed my goal. Added some shrub, a winding creek and a railroad here, the latter just for fun.
After seeing this second image, I get surprised. Thought the vegetation was weeds among the rain puddles. Then, the second image gives a whole new perspective and scale with the added railway. Nice work!
Hi
Like #32 (v5) a lot
Excellent light here
Luc
Nice tests!
Is the railroad a little width Ulco?
Very nice work again !!!! I prefer the picture without the railway !
The GI seems to bright on the vegetation, i would think the shadows would be darker. Color could be more saturated in some places, maybe a mix of less vibrant flora mixed with more vibrant.
I too noticed that some small shrub is too light (translucency too high). Good idea to make the colors more vibrant, sometimes tundra's are quite red/orange. I'm always a bit (too) careful about color.
The railway's width is exactly 143.5 cm, I measured it all out, even rail and sleeper widths and heights, etc.
I was thinking of adding a small station on an 'island' in the middle of the largest lake, plus a landing and a boat and maybe some more stuff to add a little story to this......
So, here it is.
Very nice one. I hope that person on the platform has plenty of bug repellant. Those could be clouds of mosquitoes and black flies in the distance.
Beautiful image. And, the view and light set off so many details ...fine work Ulco!
This is amazing... perfect foliage placement; the water is perfect... lovely!
Wow!
That's looking more convincing every version.
I keep thinking the water looks like it just flooded from snowmelt or too much rain, but I don't think that is your intention. Most of those tundra ponds have some kind of plant at the interface of the water and the land, and the bottom is just a very dark decomposed plant goo. I wonder, can you mask the ponds so the the populations are different types or species under water and the edge can be a zone of distribution for clumps of bushes?
These are certainly not criticisms, you have just got me thinking and imagining more detail. Like I said earlier this summer, I wish I could do this kind of work. My system is just too slow for big populations.
cheers,
Russ
(latitude 64n longitude 147w)
Looks good Ulco.
I feel like the greens are out of balance though. Maybe some more earthy browns mixed in, blacks too?