I'm building a 'new' Roman ship, as the old one I made a few years ago was quite primitive. Here's the first state of the ship, some additions will be made, and I will do the sail in ClothFX so it blows more naturally.
Looks nice Ulco.
Were they build as you build it and which century ?
This is based on the ships they dug out in some Dutch towns along the 'limes', the border of the Roman empire in Europe. Thirty meters long, about 4-5 wide, sailed mainly downriver with stuff and wood from upriver. Around 100 AD.
Thanks :)
Nice model. Love to see where you take this,
Looking good.
Your modeling skills are coming on very well. Looking good.
already looking nice :)
This looks promising. Very good work.
Next version. Must do work on the wake as well as the boat. Of course this is not very real, as these boats were only used on the Rhine, not on a global water expanse.
Nice bow wave. Great model, a little piece of history brought to life.
These improvements are looking very good. The sail, aged wood and the water/wake are approaching realism.
Looks very good. Do you use a Luminosity image for the sail?
No, just an image map for the color variation (greyscale; fields and stitched borders), and a bit of translucency without the image map.
I can build on this thing forever of course, refining, adding stuff, but I think it's good enough now for my purpose.
Great model, Ulco!
A tipp: some time ago I was modifying a sailing boat model, and I wanted to blow the sails like you're planning to do.
First I wanted to use a cloth modifier as well, but then I decided to make it easier. I selected the inner sail object's vertices and used soft selection, adjusted the falloff so that the outer parts were unaffected. Then I stacked a noise modifier on top of that. Works quite nicely for animations as well, and doesn't take as much time as a cloth simulation.
I don't know which 3d app you're using, but this should work in any program. Hopefully.
Thanks Hannes. I work in LW 9, and I don't think such noise modifiers are possible. I made the sail by taking the points in the center (not the edges) and indeed with a soft translate, pulled it out to a rough ballooned sail. But with the cloth simulation I could take some points where the sail is attached to rings and ropes and have it pull more in one way, so stretching occurred between those points. And it only takes a minute or so.
Nice boat.
About the sail:
In my experience, when the wind is good, there isn´t much flapping and folding of sails. On the other hand, a realistically tense sail might look less realistic.
Cheers, Jan
Looking better and better....
You're right, Jan, but I'm not experienced enough to easily make a realistically flapping sail (yet). I can do it by hand, but best would be to let simulated physics do their work.
Last for now.
Love the lighting :)
I'm pretty sure LW9 has a cloth sim. If I remember rightly it was a bit of a headache to get it to work but once understood the results were definitely useable.
Check out this, it's a start and I'm sure you can figure out the rest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxM5W4edGXA
looking good. The figures read as a little bit cartoony though, but what can you do?
Thanks Richard, I saw that video once, but 'dirpied it' now to have a better look later.
A few years ago I did this test animation by just animating a PF power fractal as displacement for the sails. Of course I had to uncheck RT objects.
http://vimeo.com/13200441
Since we have the new mesh displacing feature for objects this should be possible without unchecking RT objects as long as the sails are separate objects. Of course the whole sail is going to be displaced, but it shouldn't be too noticeable.
Yeah, I remember your animation, that was really cool. Well, I must thank you again, Richard, for the link; works like a dream. I have put 3 sails in the object, so with opacity tab I can choose which to use. I have to check the mesh displacement, perhaps it can be masked for the central part (though I doubt that). On the other hand, I do mostly stills, so it's good enough to choose an appropriate sail. The bubbly one isn't too good, but ok.
Re. test 19 is looking good with the lighting setup. The ship and water stand out nicely against the darker surroundings.
Quote from: choronr on August 23, 2014, 02:03:34 PM
Re. test 19 is looking good with the lighting setup. The ship and water stand out nicely against the darker surroundings.
And good work on the wake including the rudder lifted a bit...that works way better.
Not a ship, but a new tower and soldier I just made...
Sweet. I like the lighting in the tower Ulco.
Looks great, Ulco!
Very nice, illustrative with a story lurking in the twilight shadows. The subtleties of the sky and bird really sets a mood, and the foliage is par excellence (as usual). One slight distraction though (at least for me) is the light in the tower. While I appreciate the technical display, the 'story' is somewhat spoiled; unlikely that a watchtower would be so revealed, and the interior light would limit the sentry's view into the darkening terrain. But that's a very small point in an image this finely wrought.
In all, a super detailed image. I especially like the atmo light and the composition.
You're absolutely right, Doug, but I wanted a way to show the soldier on the top floor. I wouldn't actually know how these guys 'lived' in these towers at night, probably closed all shutters, and have some lamps and play dice, with one sentry on the balcony....
Maybe you should change your handle to VOLCO :)
(seeing it on the tower made me think of it)
Lovely lighting and very well posed characters. Are these just sketches or are you building towards something?
:D
DAZ is really quite handy for a bit distant figures. This is just a test to see what the newly built tower would look like, and I dumped in some other stuff to make it look good. And actually, I like it myself ;)
Great image...well modeled tower and effective use of characters to give it humanity and a story direction...Bobby like.....like the light in the tower as well but I'm a bit of a lighting freak in any case.
EDIT
maybe a bit much reflective on the armour...don't think they had stainless steel or chrome yet, heh heh heh
Fascinating. Bright lights definitely belong to modernity. For the period you probably would expect some faint light from a torch or oil lamp. Particularly on foggy or overcast nights it must have been dark...
Agree. Must have been darker.
OK, I'll make one darker.
OK, last one for now. Time to make some amphora's.....
The lighting is perfect now. Agree with Bobby about the armor's reflection. Could be a bit less.
Quote from: Hannes on September 03, 2014, 07:15:04 AM
The lighting is perfect now. Agree with Bobby about the armor's reflection. Could be a bit less.
Still a bit "Marvel Comic" like on the armour but the lighting is better. I'm really gonna have to learn how to pose etc. with DAZ as I currently use it mainly for converting cr2 and pp2 files into textured geometries....
Looking great Ulco. The low light enhances the image and adds to the caution of the guard.
Yes! God I love this.
Very nice . Lowering the tower light, brings it together to allow the back story of it to be pondered.
(hate to admit it but I've been playing Dark Souls II lately and in a game that tower light would have invited enemy bow shots)
Thanks guys. It's an improvement allright, though I could have thrown in a lot more veggies. For a commission I would, but this was merely intended as a test for the tower.
Regarding the armor; I had a refraction index of 4 at first, lowered it to 2.5. Still too much? I was also working on bronze, and found that multiplying the RT reflection with a color will do that trick. The colors I still have to work out, had a greenish tint at first, but these helmets were polished and shiny new in those days, so no verdigris like old bronze (though that would be nicer).
I keep forgetting that the time is the past but what they were wearing was in fact shiny new then....ooops
A new group of soldiers. A little painting post will get rid of nasty stuff. The horse will hopefully be replaced by a 'real horse'. Clothing is horribly hard in DAZ. And draping it in LW can be done after the posing, but takes a lot of time, so I hope I can get away with this. PS will do 'wonders' ;)
Amazing! Maybe a tad of light dust surrounding the soldier group; and, some light tracks behind the small cart?
The composition is nice.
You have Lightwave Ulco.Rendering the guys in Lightwave and comping might be better probably.
Uh, did they wax their legs back then, seems they should be more hirsute don't it? Great scene..agree a bit "clean" though...
Quote from: bobbystahr on September 06, 2014, 04:23:35 PM
seems they should be more hirsute don't it?
And they should be more hairy, too.... ;D
@ Ulco - did you model the horse yourself? if so may I ask what software you used?
Rendering in LW is something I've never attempted (so far). But, mind you, the settings on this were very low for testing it; detail 0.4 and AA 4, I think. So they may loose their hairy legs ;) Or did you mean they should have hair on their scalps? I think soldiers didn't have too much hair, even in those days... someone might grab you by it. They didn't have real beards either!
I found the horse on the web, a couple of years back I think, but I had to work on it in Lightwave and Mudbox, and texture it again. Also made a saddle and stuff for it. It's not very good, but a replacement is probably due.
I'll do some dust and dirt and extra tracks in post, was also thinking of their legs and sandals on that sandy road.
Thanks guys.
I'm diverting a bit, but wanted to show you guys some quality results. Actually there's not even thát much difference (there is a difference of course) in rendering at detail 0.3 and AA 3 versus detail 0.5 and AA 6. Not as much as I expected. At least not in the daz objects. The detail 0.5 AA6 crop also has soft shadows and that makes a huge difference.
The veggie crop looks not too bad, IMHO. Also detail 0.3 and AA3.
The slight difference with a wee bit more of shadow is apparent and noticeable ...very good! The vegetation is very dense and packed with details ...well done.
The veggie pic is very convincing,nice distribution and lighting,
the slightly hazier background is the cherry on top.
Personally I could do without the dark green leaves of the yellow
foreground plants and the somewhat flat white blossoms,though.
Hi Ulco,
The people look great at a distance, but up close, not so good, unless you change the lighting/atmosphere to accommodate. For what it's worth, I would change up the lighting some, maybe back-lighting or something like the previous shot with the single garrison and soldier, which was brilliant by the way.
The vegetation is wonderfully dense and varied, very nice! I suspect that TG's renderer may not cope with skin coloration all that well, but for illustration purposes it may serve. You are creating a nice library of artifacts and people; maybe "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" is coming to TG soon?
The vegetation is indeed fantastic!!!
But I have to say that I don't really like the DAZ (or Poser-) humans. It's a matter of taste I know, but to me they look kind of dead. Anyway it's an easy way to fill a scene with people when the camera isn't too near.
The skin shader looks quite convincing. Almost like SSS (...and I don't mean the simple shape shader!) The armor shaders could use some more attention. The helmets for example don't really look like metal.
I hope you don't mind me nagging!!!!! ;)
No please, nag on! I really appreciate your crits. The things I agree with, I'm more than willing to improve. In this case the lighting e.g. needs to be like this, as this will be comped in with a frame of Roman pillars in the same light. I'd prefer backlighting and people further away. I agree with the 'flatness' of these guys, but hey, I just got into modeling, and am quite happy already with the fact that I can now quite easily pose some people. With extra effort their skins and suits might be made better (I could load them in Mudbox and wrinkle their skins a little), but there's a limit on the time I can spend also.
I might do this for myself with different lighting though.
For the helmets I used an additional (after the texture file) RT reflective shader, refraction @3 or 4, followed by a merge shader, multiplying the then turned stainless steel color by a redbrown and orangy PF to make it bronze again. But that last bit wasn't yet on this helmet. Any ideas how to improve more?
I have to agree with the Daz crit. And I really don't think its TG's fault at all. I think mostly DAZ figures look terrible in every context I have seen them... All of them. From the lack of naturalism in the poses to the textures. To the details of the clothing and all. Sorry.
I do think Daz can be a useful time saver. But DAZ is pretty worthless when used "out of the box". poser seems to be a bit better for skin textures, but not really very much better in most cases (again, that I have seen).
Even so, I really love seeing figures in TG scenes. So I don't want to be so negative as I am. I guess just keep working until you find the way to make it all look good together. I think it is worth it. Figures really add just sooo much when they look good.
Regarding human figures, I think part of the problem really is in Terragen. I've seen human faces modeled in Blender that were so life-like that I did a double take. But when imported into Terragen, they loose much of the realism. Probably part of the problem is that TG3 doesn't offer some things like Sub-Surface Scattering (this SSS has nothing to do with Terrragen's SSS - Simple Shape Shader). Terragen is brilliant at some things, but not good at others. Like falling water. Mix the uber-realism of sky, rocks and ground with starkly unconvincing artificiality of a Terragen waterfall, and you got an image where the bad parts are jarringly noticeable.
It might be an interesting challenge to work on the object textures of these DAZpeople so that they become more believable, with added PF's and reflection (which I did, but perhaps not good enough). I'll work on that, given time.
I did a little more work on the texture settings, and I don't think it's too bad. I used low resolution textures, that's part of the 'problem' too. Replaced the face by my own, more or less ;)
First one I tried some translucency, but that doesn't really work.
Bronze enough?
That's better! If you make the base color (below the reflective shader) darker, it may look even more realistic.
Wow :o
Dune, that is great realism!
The helmet looks nice.
I have no doubt that you will make those kind of things better Ulco.
The real problem are those human objects.
Even in some other software it is hard.
With the renderer-shaders we have in Terragen i think you won't get the realistic look you are after.
But would be nice if you proofed that it is doable :)
Quote from: Dune on September 09, 2014, 10:11:43 AM
Bronze enough?
Ooooh, I'll say so...y' gonna share that shader? ;)
Quote from: Dune on September 09, 2014, 02:14:05 AM
It might be an interesting challenge to work on the object textures of these DAZpeople so that they become more believable, with added PF's and reflection (which I did, but perhaps not good enough). I'll work on that, given time.
I have a Poser pal across the street who makes brilliant maps, never uses commercial ones and I'm trying to seduce him into TG as it's the best render around in my opinion and it has all the elements he wants that Poser lacks in terms of environmental/atmospheres and vegetation...they fake terrains O K.
If it happens I'll get him in here.