I had this idea to make a sunset kind of river scene, so here you are (WIP). In the distance the low marshy lands end into a row of dunes before the river flows into sea. The Roman border road lies alongside the river, a watchtower every few hundred meters (edited pop). Maybe I'll add a boat or two, a castellum, and change the vegetation. The encircled river area lacks depth, and I have to set that right, as I want a continuous glowing river.
This (detail 0.6, AA 6, soft shadows, masked out water areas) took 1hour and 17mins on an i7.
Nice.............like the pov. :)
indeed the pov is great!
Agree re: POV - that's one heckuva nice view!
Stunning view and work on perspective is really nice :)
Actually, it's all good looking and the composition really leads the eye, I like that.
The road is distractingly wide and "dominant" though?
Great POV and the atmosphere is wonderful. I agree with TU about the road but I suppose you have little choice but to include it. Perhaps it could be partially hidden by vegetation and trees? I like the river banks and the ponds but the trees seem too sparse, though I like the long shadows they cast.
Nice composition Ulco.
Quite a good impression of distance and scale. The atmospherics look well lit and convincingly heavy. The smaller ponds are neat to see as well. Like the upper Canadian Tundra and Taiga. The roads do seem to stand out in certain ways but as was mentioned it might be necessary the way it is.
Thanks guys. I really don't know how the Romans kept their roads, but I guess they were pretty good at it, this being their main military artery on the northern border of the empire. Should be 7m wide, which it is. But I agree it stands out. Too much vegetation would have been cut down, as the watchtowers should be in sightlines.
I think I will add more trees in the marshy areas away from the river, and improve the castellum. And I don't like the flat light on ground, perhaps more diversity in low vegetation. Will be continued.
I noticed the water shader has some ugly black patches down below. Mmmm.
Yes, i can see adding more trees in those areas now when i look at it again and agree about the low vegetation. What about some stones for less flat ground also? Would there have been a good amount in this region?
No stones in that area at all. The only big stones to be found in our country are deposited here in the ice ages, and that didn't go all the way across the country.
Very nice project again, Ulco :)
In the first image I didn#T like the sand banks in the river but in the second it's ok now.
Good that it seems to be just a trail. Some weeks ago I saw a documentation and learned that the romans built most of the paved streets only straight and rectangular because of their way of measurement. They couldn't build curves.
(hope the documentation didn't lie at me... )
The Romans did not have mowers (but again who knows, they were advanced? :) ) so at least grass and bushes on the margins should make that highway stand out a bit less. Cool view.
I thought all Roman roads were brick or cobble paved.....but awesomely massive image...Bobby Like.
Quote from: otakar on February 03, 2016, 11:35:35 AM
The Romans did not have mowers...
maybe sheep and goats?
The area was largely uninhabited, 'hostile' tribes living in the northern area, 'domesticated (by the Romans) tribes and Romans in the south, the Romans principally in castella and larger 'towns'. The rivers found their way through marshy, boggy low land, and deposited sandy banks. Off those banks it was very wet and boggy. Later these extensive bogs were cultivated, excavated for peat and dried down, so nowadays the rivers mostly lie higher than surrounding countryside, hence the need for Dutch dikes. The Roman border road and castella were built on the river dunes area.
So this morning I had this better idea to first raise an area of wide sandy deposits, use the inversed mask for the bogs, then make a shallower line for the river and smooth that down again (partly). I also want to make more dunelike areas.
Still no need for a compute terrain ;)
The areas between the towers would have been cut low, but for the rest there may have been large extents of 'wet trees' and shrub.
Some next WIP's, still no good at all.
Quote from: Dune on February 04, 2016, 02:51:08 AM
The area was largely uninhabited, 'hostile' tribes living in the northern area, 'domesticated (by the Romans) tribes and Romans in the south, the Romans principally in castella and larger 'towns'. The rivers found their way through marshy, boggy low land, and deposited sandy banks. Off those banks it was very wet and boggy. Later these extensive bogs were cultivated, excavated for peat and dried down, so nowadays the rivers mostly lie higher than surrounding countryside, hence the need for Dutch dikes. The Roman border road and castella were built on the river dunes area.
So this morning I had this better idea to first raise an area of wide sandy deposits, use the inversed mask for the bogs, then make a shallower line for the river and smooth that down again (partly). I also want to make more 'dunelike' areas.
Still no need for a compute terrain ;)
The areas between the towers would have been cut low, but for the rest there may have been large extents of 'wet trees' and shrub.
Some next WIP's, still no good at all.
Heh heh heh, pretty much all your work is
'dunelike'
And seriously, thanks for the early Dutch history vignette. I never knew that stuff and now I do and am better for it.
:) This illustrates the riverlevel above ground rather well.
I Like these better - somehow the road has become more subtle with the changes in vegetation. Hearing the history really helps to understand why you are doing things and adds to my understanding of the image, great!
Thanks, Mick.
I've made a completely new setup this morning, building up as described, which of course became more complicated while working all masks out. Now the vegetation in the dunes can be adjusted to fill valleys, water level, waves and coloring can change between river and marshes, dunes can be raised or lowered, etc. I am curious to see if I can make a braided river out of this, or at least some parts to braid in and out.
Another light direction is now rendering. Still no compute terrain, so rather fast (39mins at detail 0.6 and AA6).
And other light.
Quote from: Dune on February 04, 2016, 03:28:07 AM
:) This illustrates the riverlevel above ground rather well.
If I ever get overseas Holland, (Mom's family), is going to be right after Scotland (Dad's family). Every picture I see of Holland, modern or ancient, has resonance in me.
Quote from: Dune on February 04, 2016, 08:16:21 AM
. Still no compute terrain, so rather fast (39mins at detail 0.6 and AA6).
And other light.
I like em both, maybe the darker a bit more...and
"Still no Compute terrain"?
Right, I don't use slope restrictions, just heights, so I leave the compute out. That's the benefit of a flat country ;)
Getting there... but there's a mistake in here (in masking) :( And the trees will be much better, just finishing some new willows. Shores haven't been done either.
well well well...I must try that....live and learn. I live in one of the flattest areas on the planet....apopros.
Really like the wee folk on the road...as small as they are they make a large difference....
Well, no real input on this so familiar landscape from me, just that I'm in awe. These scenes are beautiful, Ulco. Oh and about the Roman roads: Didn't they use so called "knuppelwegen" (stickroads?) in the marsh areas?
Ulco, looking real nice, but this piqued my interest in Roman roads again. They strived for straight lines, going as far as diverting streams and draining marshes and of coure building bridges. Not sure if they would follow large rivers, in particular in the provinces, could not find any definite pointers towards that in my google session. But I found this Dutch project, which is quite interesting. http://mappingtheviaappia.nl/project/
The Via Appia itself had a perfectly straight 90km long section. Incredible feat!
Thanks for thinking along, guys. Your thoughts made me think again and send some emails. I have to know for sure (if they know) if the northern military roads were also straight. Technically, I hope not, as procedurally it's much more cumbersome to implement, if not impossible. Interesting site, btw, thanks for the link.
@Andy; yes, they made 'knuppelwegen' through marshes... nice idea for another impression one day. Thanks for bringing it up.
The POV looks much better now with the river from bottom left to upper right!
I love that wide view!
...and good to know that I was not dreaming with the straight streets.
I read ome more details: The romans led their "via strata" even straight through swamps using dams. and they didn't pave their roads continuous, but only before crossings, towns and in difficult terrain.
Great and very informative thread. Sometime these are like going to the school I wish I'd had as a kid.
Great! The colours are so much better - the road now looks as though it belongs!
Sun set one is striking!
I abandoned the previous setup for a new one (having learned one or two things), where I tried to get the river to 'erode' and 'deposit' in a more natural way. Base needs some work, as the far river is drained by too large X to scalar northern hemisphere morenes.
That is a good more realistic river concerning the shore morphology.
I wonder how you manage to fit the water object into the bed over such a large distance; if I try this the river disappears and leaves a dry bed or it spills over the bed and floods the land. But I figure from the
Quotefar river is drained by too large X to scalar
part there are blue nodes :o involved.
This last update looks really nice Dune!
Very natural behavior, looking forward to it...
You have to use simple shapes that overlap eachother, the river area (banks and such) being a wider SSS than the river itself. Then warp both, and if needed transform each warped SSS (move or stretch, or whatever) or warp again to make a difference between the total river area and the river itself. The blue nodes I mention were for the high northern land, but I dropped that and used a huge oval SSS as well, worked better.
River area is claylike, so no bright yellow-white dunes any longer. High ground on right is poor heath, and grass. Southern part, beyond river is wet and boggy.
I like this new river bed very much!
It's very interesting to follow the project growing or changing.
It would be interesting to see somthing complicated like the river bed as a "SSS tutorial"... untill now I just tried easy and really simple shape shaders like rectangular and combinations of rectengulars in my "SilentHill street" . did I miss an interesting post somewhere?
Nice work - look forward to the finished work.
This will be nice too i am sure but curious why you abandoned the other one Ulco?
@Kadri; I learned from a few archeaologists that river areas and beyond were different in terms of soil and layout, and vegetation. So it wasn't really correct in that sense.
I see.Thanks :)
I like this, the topography is much more what I envision around a slow waterway.
@Nils: probably; I've posted a basic river setup a year ago or something, but basically it's simple; use a warp shader with the SSS as input and a vector displacement as function and feed a PF into the function input of the vdisp shader. For warp in X direction, set the scale of X a bit bigger for more even width of the river, I usually set Y scale at 1000, just to be sure the fractal doesn't change over height (especially for roads). Vdisp shader X at 1, rest at 0, offset of X at -0.5, so the basic line stays centered. And then you can play with PF settings, and add all sorts of variations (extra PF+vdisp). You can even (don't tell anyone ;) ) use this as a mask for a surface shader, give a nice white color and use the breakup for some nice effects (breaking op the [grey] sides of the warped soft SSS). It's a huge playground ;D
It's kind of done, just have to check with the experts. Reduced for posting, though. Second image is the area it's based upon.
Looks better way back when than the modern view with all the earth movers....
A lot of nice things going on all over. The populations look well layed out and believable enough. I like that small path.
Dune, looks beautiful, and I'm very curious about render settings you use to get this image to achieve the sharpness and detail seen here?
In fact it was rendered bigger (3000px wide) with soft shadows on at detail 0.8 and AA8, but reduced using Irfanview and sharpening. Not the perfect degradation of course. And, btw, didn't use a compute terrain here either, so it was a relatively fast one at 2hours. Here's a part at 100%.
Forgive me for inquiring just in-case this was asked by other people but how can you get away without using a Compute terrain shader?
Try it and see what happens. If you use final altitude and no slope, that goes very well.
This looks great! I've enjoyed seeing your progress on this one
Quote from: Dune on February 14, 2016, 12:16:10 PM
Try it and see what happens. If you use final altitude and no slope, that goes very well.
If it shortens render times even to some degree, why not.
Quote from: Dune on February 14, 2016, 06:50:40 AM
In fact it was rendered bigger (3000px wide) with soft shadows on at detail 0.8 and AA8, but reduced using Irfanview and sharpening. ...
Well, guess I learn something new everyday. Somewhere I got the idea in my head that my image size could not be larger than my monitor size (1920 x1080). But when I rendered larger (3000x1687 p) and saved to hard drive, the properties file did indeed indicate the render was 3000 x 1687. Thanks Dune!!
The sense of scale and distance is really an eye-catcher, and the vegetation looks very natural. Always a pleasure to view your work!
Thanks guys.
@masonspappy; that's a strange notion. I'm glad your off it.
I needed some new Roman houses, so I built some. The tree is an olive for which Jochen remodeled the trunk in ZB.
Great river scene - I wish I had your sense of colour. House scene is great too!
I like the last image. The color use looks a bit different here then your other images Ulco.
Great progress Ulco on your river.
I like this better than where it came from. Good work!
I really like your 'deviation' too, the last render.
Which grasses did you use there?
I just made 2 new wild ST grass patches yesterday, that's them. As well as some pigeons ;)
Quote from: Dune on February 15, 2016, 02:28:06 AM
Thanks guys.
@masonspappy; that's a strange notion. I'm glad your off it.
I needed some new Roman houses, so I built some. The tree is an olive for which Jochen remodeled the trunk in ZB.
Very nice houses man, you could sell those.
Quote from: Dune on February 15, 2016, 07:56:09 AM
I just made 2 new wild ST grass patches yesterday, that's them. As well as some pigeons ;)
As always I'm envious of the ST grass and lovely pigeons...you make those as well?
Yes, pulling and tugging at a sphere in Zbrush, then painting it.
Quote from: Dune on February 15, 2016, 10:25:05 AM
Yes, pulling and tugging at a sphere in Zbrush, then painting it.
It certainly helps that you are an accomplished 2D artist to start...never got much into life drawing as drawing was always my escape from reality and 3D was my first foray into 'sculpture' as it never got to me till the computer jumped into my life.
I love the house and the birds...
It never ceases to amaze me that most of your "tests" are much better than all of my "finals" ;)
It helps that I've built quite a lot of stuff over the last years, and just have to import them ;) The only problem now being that a lot of older files use older (less interesting, or plain ugly) objects, but I can't really delete them (or can I), so my folders are bulging, and it's harder to find good objects in the tangle of them :P
absolutely stunning work as ever Ulco...
heh, those pigeons look mean!
:)
I know :D A bit overdone on the eyebrows perhaps. Easy to overdo things in ZB, the sculpting is so nice ;)
The last few renders take my breath away. As for the sharpness downsampling seems to be the recipe. It looks glorious, your river.
I finalized this project, so here's a reduced version. Up to something new.
What a beauty!! Great image, Ulco!
If this was FB I'd select a heart; love this! Petje af! But what's up with that blurred zone? A way to prevent unauthorized copying?
Looks nice Ulco.
Very good, did I miss the reason for the pixelated bit?
Another stellar image, a complete world artfully composed and rendered!
Brilliant, Just brilliant.
Absolutely Fab man...makes me long for a modern computer so I could do scenes this complex without having trees truncated, or the whole scene freezing up after 5 pops of any size....running into the same problems Bob had doing that sheep on the path scene he did near the end of his time here...still miss ya Bob...
that is beautifully done!!
Fabulous! Running out of superlatives here :)
Draws the viewer in again and again, really a marvelous render. :D
All available thumbs up. :)
Thanks you, guys! Not working from one basic set of drawn maps/masks, but having all procedurally from simple shapes makes it quite a complex set of masks, with lots of blue node multiply/add/subtract nodes. Here's a part at 100%. Still some mishaps, as you can see, like bushes in a field.
Hey Ulco, have you ever tried the Stroke in the SS shade for doing borders like around the tower etc...
Quote from: Dune on March 05, 2016, 03:16:29 AM
... Still some mishaps, as you can see, like bushes in a field.
Those are natural random features ;)
I am working on a scene that is 11 seconds since months.
Probably very few people will see whats going on and only if they replay it 3-4 times probably.
After a certain point you have to let it go, you know :)
last one on page 5 works for me! too
@ Andy and Richard; yes, to discourage misuse. Always a bit paranoid, though I like to show stuff and encourage other TG users, I can't often post large finished (commercial) images, at least not without any form of 'disfiguration'.
@ Bobby; yes, I think I've tried almost every node and combination, but the stroke is too hard for a moat. I do have a setup with 2 SSS and some subtraction, but the corners are always a bit too sharp. So in this case I have simply painted a simple grey mask in PS, set it at 0/0/0, and located/rotated that on 2 locations through 2 transform shaders.
This render will be blown up to 80cm wide and framed as a farewell gift for an archeaologist, so, though I started it as a private thing, I didn't make it for nothing.
Quote from: Dune on March 06, 2016, 02:22:58 AM
@ Bobby; yes, I think I've tried almost every node and combination, but the stroke is too hard for a moat. I do have a setup with 2 SSS and some subtraction, but the corners are always a bit too sharp. So in this case I have simply painted a simple grey mask in PS, set it at 0/0/0, and located/rotated that on 2 locations through 2 transform shaders.
This render will be blown up to 80cm wide and framed as a farewell gift for an archeaologist, so, though I started it as a private thing, I didn't make it for nothing.
Nice the way that worked out...but art is never for nothing though. Yeah I thought you may have...it's sharpness and undisplaceableness (izzat a word?)make it mostly not that useful. I like your more portable solution.