The character is one of those free samples that once were available here:
http://www.ten24.info/?tag=3d-scan-store
As far as I remember this guy is called Jamie. Hence the name of the image. It seems they do not have any free samples anymore, but I have them on my HD!! :)
The temple is a free Turbosquid model (search for Hatra temple), which I had to modify: the columns were too thick.
Trees and ferns by X-frog, grass by lightning (I still like to use this), birds by myself.
Geee... That's monumental Hannes!
Those god rays - is the "receive shadows from surfaces" the way to do it?
That is GRAND, Hannes! Very powerful work. I also like the way the sun shines through the birds' hand feathers. I suspect you didn't use soft shadows; it might even be better with it (if you don't mind me saying so).
Thanks guys.
@N-drju: exactly!
@Dune: you're absolutely right. During the render in high definition I saw the very sharp rays, and I thought as well, that soft shadows might be an improvement. This one took 30 hours to render. I might try it with soft shadows, but I expect at least 40 hours of rendertime :(
Yeah, it wil be a dramatic increase. Hopefully one day a different calculation method can be introduced so that soft shadows (and water) take less time.
Doing some tests now.
40hrs? Hmm... and what settings do you use when doing soft shadows? I usually stick to diameter around 0.7 and 10-12 samples. Larger diameter seems far too blury for me, I don't like that effect. :P
How much do god rays add to render time...? Tell me or kill me now... :-\
0.5 is supposed to be reality, but I often go a little higher also, up to 1. But I try to reduce samples as much as possible, more samples meaning more render time. When ground is rough, even 4 samples will do nicely.
Since TG has to compute the shadows inside the cloud it may take a lot of additional time to render. I don't know how much exactly, but it's quite some time.
I'm testing the default settings right now. I only want to soften the rays a little bit, not too much. Just to make them look a bit more realistic. If I'd use a much higher diameter, I think the rays would lose their dramatic effect.
Great composition. Everything just look right ;)
I forgot to mention that I used the ivy generator as well. Lovely program!
Can I have a render with a crop something like this for my desk top please? :o :o :o :o :o
[attach=1]
Interesting pose for the figure too in light of the other content. Quite provocative. And of course the classical elements add instant weight and implied meaning. I like it a lot Hannes.
Superb work. Well worth the the long render time!
Beautiful composition.
The image looks great Hannes.
Have you tried the render layers for blurring the shadows and light rays a bit.
Maybe you could use them for such a postwork.
I haven't done it but in theory it could work.
Have anyone tried it?
Thanks again. I have to admit that I haven't used render layers yet. Might be more comfortable.
Kadri, I think blurring the atmosphere pass would blur the beams completely, which is not wanted. Using soft shadows leaves the beam shadows sharp where they begin and makes them softer the further away they are from the object that casts shadows, so I think I have to bite the bullet. :(
Really good image...........waiting for the next. :)
Me too. See you in a few days... ;)
Killer work Hannes
An inspiring and visionary work, very, very nice!
8) Very illuminated.
At the moment the Ten24 guys only have some excellent scanned head
reference images for free.
Sigh...,maybe in the future they'll share another one.
Here is the updated version. Soft shadows enabled (default settings). I think it's just enough soft. More blurring would look unnatural.
To reduce rendertimes I slightly decreased the quality settings of the render (from Det/AA 0.5/6 to 0.4/4). It took only 19 hours to render without being too noisy I think.
Additionally I added some more birds. I wanted at least one of them flying in a lightbeam casting a shadow in it. Took some time to place it, until it worked.
Thanks again Ulco for the soft shadow suggestion. It really looks more natural I think.
Looks great Hannes.
Maybe with another 5 hours or so you could get rid of all the noise.
Now make an animation.
Just kidding ;D
awesome!
truly awesome!
:)
Great image............ :)
Thanks guys.
Kadri, I really thought of animating the camera so that it moves slowly around Jamie. Maybe I'll do some tests. I still have my animated bird object sequence.
I would really like to see especially those god rays moving Hannes.
Just those render times are deathly unfortunately :)
I'll try to make a very very low render quality animation to see if it's worth it.
Actually as we talk about this,
if you use those clouds far away as a background image and even many of the background trees etc.too,
you might get a much lower render time probably.
Good idea, Kadri. Maybe I'll give it a try and see how it looks.
Soft shadows did it, Hannes. Great image.... hope the animation will succeed (in my life time) ;)
I'm rendering a very small animation right now. I left out the clouds and the trees for testing purposes. I could shorten rendertimes a lot by decreasing the radius of the localised cloud that represents the mist. It was way too large. But I realized that I have to check "receive shadows from surfaces" in the atmosphere's tab as well, because the sun is visible through the columns.
Some other ideas: I'll try to animate the mist (very subtle, not too much) to make it look less static. And I'll do some tests to animate the olive trees by using the mesh displacer. Maybe I can restrict the movement by the height control of a distribution shader?! They are all standing on the same level. They are single objects, no population.
And then there are the birds. I have the animated obj sequence, but it may be a problem to place them in a way that they don't fly right through the walls or columns of the temple.
Wish me luck! ;)
Sounds good, should work what you say. Birds is a problem indeed, maybe leave them out? GOOD LUCK!
Good Luck!
How many frames do you plan to use Hannes?
Thank you all. I'm thinking of 250 frames. Ten seconds might be OK. Probably a very slow camera move, just to let the beams play with the camera a bit.
Estimated time of the test to finish (that sounds so serious :) ) ?
Very fast probably ?
A sunrise would be cool as well, with color shift and play of beams, but that would take more than 10 seconds. Or as a time lapse idea.... add a population of people and change the seed every frame (or 2+).
Oh boy oh boy! Looking out for this everyday!
Would be cool to see the figure in a pair of wings. ;D
Thanks again.
Kadri, I made a lousy little test animation to see how the beams look. As soon as I have time I'll show it.
At the moment I'm struggling to get the trees animated. It looks quite promising, but the trunk is still wobbling too although there is a distribution shader with an altitude constraint. It is set correctly (I tested the distribution with a b/w surface shader).
Super cool....how about having a giant bird or gorgon swoop in and pick up Jamie and fly off with him....yeah, Ray Harryhousen Hannes.
Just kidding.....this image rocks!!!
Quote from: Dune on April 05, 2014, 03:57:24 AM
Soft shadows did it, Hannes. Great image.... hope the animation will succeed (in my life time) ;)
Yup...a big WOW for this scene...really gotta get to this section more...so much to catch up on.