This is the scene I had some problems with shown in this thread:
https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,27613.0.html
I spent a lot of time posing, editing and shading the two characters (both from Renderhub). The skin parts of the two of them have a subsurface scattering shader assigned to. Additionally I added some modeled drool strands with a glass shader assigned to.
The whole scene is lit only by a great white selfilluminating plane above, which creates a nice soft overcast type of light. The clouds are a backdrop. Atmosphere is completely disabled.
Plants by Evermotion (a free one heavily edited and with my own triple leaf texture I once shared here), XFrog and Quixel. And there is René's moss as well, which looks great. Never used it before.
;D I love it! The lighting is very nice indeed. How light did you set the plane (so, no dome?), and did you change exposure?
Brilliant work, love it!
wow, that's some croc! Awesome scene, brilliantly implemented...5 stars for sure!
Quote from: Dune on February 20, 2020, 04:23:22 AMI love it! The lighting is very nice indeed. How light did you set the plane (so, no dome?), and did you change exposure?
Thanks guys!
It is a 10m square plane (positioned 15m high) with a luminosity set to 18. No exposure change.
Looks nice.
Was there except render time any specific reason to disable the atmosphere Hannes?
How much faster was it (if you tested it)?
Not sure if you need Terragen actually if you use it that way. You could use Maya, Blender, Lightwave etc. in the same way i think.
That's the reason i ask. Just curious.
Great again, Hannes! :)
Wonderful composition and overall look!
Would you mind a little dramatic change? (only if you can change the girls pose easily):
Could you portray her as passed out with her head fallen back? She seems not really panic enough for an awake person ... and he's drooling too much for a peaceful get-together (I don't think she wants to kiss him under these circumstances) ;D
Thanks again!
Kadri, it was mainly to speed up the render after I realized, it's faster. I can't tell you how much, but it's quite a bit.
This is a scene that uses mainly objects, so it could of course be done in other apps, but a great advantage is, that TG handles vast amounts of objects easily, and I remember that in 3ds Max I once was playing with a very detailed model, and Max responded extremely slow to any changes or even moving it around, whereas in TG I could even create populations with exactly the same model without any problems.
Doc, I know, this girl should look at least scared to death (unless she has a croc fetish...) or be passed out, you're right. It took quite a while to pose her, because unfortunately the croc character was already posed, and at the time I hadn't thought of putting some prey in his hand. So I had to fit her somehow. Maybe I'll try it, but like always, when I've been working on a scene for quite a while, I get a bit tired of it.
But I know, this sounds probably ridiculous to you, since you are most likely the one with the highest persistence here. Except Matt maybe... ;)
Quote from: Hannes on February 20, 2020, 06:52:35 AM...
Kadri, it was mainly to speed up the render after I realized, it's faster. I can't tell you how much, but it's quite a bit.
This is a scene that uses mainly objects, so it could of course be done in other apps, but a great advantage is, that TG handles vast amounts of objects easily, and I remember that in 3ds Max I once was playing with a very detailed model, and Max responded extremely slow to any changes or even moving it around, whereas in TG I could even create populations with exactly the same model without any problems.
...
I see. Yeah in those areas i had not much a problem with Terragen. Thanks Hannes.
Quote from: Hannes on February 20, 2020, 06:52:35 AMMaybe I'll try it, but like always, when I've been working on a scene for quite a while, I get a bit tired of it.
But I know, this sounds probably ridiculous to you, since you are most likely the one with the highest persistence here. Except Matt maybe... (https://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/Smileys/fugue/wink.png)
Oh, I understand you soo good ;D sometimes it's almost physical pain to go on fiddling on one and the same scene again and again ::) ;D
Persistance? Me? ... I would have given the praise to you or Ulco... :)
Quote from: DocCharly65 on February 20, 2020, 09:34:29 AMPersistance? Me? ... I would have given the praise to you or Ulco...
How long have you been working on your movie so far? ;D ;D ;D
Cool stuff. ;D
The young woman is just a tough contemporary woman.
Not a girl of the sixties or so and thus the pose is right. ;)
Hahah wow that's awesome. That's definitely different.
Quote from: Hannes on February 20, 2020, 09:52:12 AMQuote from: DocCharly65 on February 20, 2020, 09:34:29 AMPersistance? Me? ... I would have given the praise to you or Ulco...
How long have you been working on your movie so far? ;D ;D ;D
The appropriate answer to this question is: "uups... ::) ;D "
Love the lighting. Skin tones and vegetation have a nice rich glow. Reminds me of the look we used to get with Kodachrome.
Thanks, Steve!
Fortunately I had kept the Max file with the rigged girl's mesh in King Croc's hand, so I could easily pose her again.
Thanks for the suggestion, Doc! You were absolutely right.
Yes, that suits her!
Thanks, Ulco! That's what I love in this forum. Constructive critisism leads to better results.
Yes, so do I.
Great, Hannes!
You have perfected it! :)
Hannes, you always surprise me with your work. It can be anything from Star Wars to realistic sci-fi (spacestation stuff) to postcard style to fantasy like this :)
I have some strange feedback perhaps...because there's something I really like about the foliage in the right background. The way it's rendered or the light interacts with it, it looks really good to me!
If you don't mind I have feedback on 3 aspects:
1) The "skirt" of King Croc looks too saturated to me if I consider general scene saturation. For instance the right foreground models have quite saturated greens, but the skirt has an almost fluorescent brightness which is a bit distracting to me.
2) The new pose is indeed more dramatic and works well! If I consider the grip of the hand on the body then I can imagine that her upper right half gets some support from the thumb, but her left side is not supported at all. Thus with a grip like this I would expect her to hang backwards to her left, almost draping over his index finger.
3) Lastly and this is perhaps because of rendertimes and such...I think the skin of King Croc would look great when using subsurface scattering in the path tracer.
I say this because I remember you rendered some hairy creature with orange/brown skin and it looked really good. Given your experience with portraits and subsurface scattering after that render I think you can squeeze out more from this scene/model.
Cheers,
Martin
Thanks a lot, Martin!
I don't think, your feedback is strange.
1) Good thought! I might try some other coloration.
2) This may be some artistic freedom I took. I tried some other poses, but didn't like what I got. The girl looked unnaturally stretched. And I think, the facial expression shouldn't be too visible, since she looks quite neutral with open eyes, and that that didn't match her passed out state.
But from a physical point of view you're absolutely right. I may do some more tests.
3) I already did use subsurface scattering, but I didn't want to exaggerate it. Maybe it's more visible in an earlier test render I attached below.
Subjective but i like the last version with more subsurface scattering more Hannes.
Quote from: Kadri on February 21, 2020, 06:18:49 AMSubjective but i like the last version with more subsurface scattering more Hannes.
What do you mean? The subsurface scattering settings are the same in each image.
Quote from: Hannes on February 21, 2020, 05:12:38 AM... Maybe it's more visible in an earlier test render I attached below.
I mean "SSS Croc10Edit.jpg". It looks different. Am i wrong?
I see that i wrote "last version" before. Should have wrote "last earlier test render" or so.
The lighting in "SSS Croc10Edit.jpg" is different, but the SSS settings are the same.
Interesting. Would like to see a similar lighted scene.
Sorry Kadri, not sure, what you mean. Similar like which lighting?
Nah forget it ;D
Nice work! Not sure whether his appearance or breath knocked her out. It does look a bit too dark on my screen to see detail, so I brightened it up some and altered color slightly. Is this too bright on your screen? Here's a few suggestions if you want: 1. add water ripples around his legs 2. add some crocs in the water waiting for some breakfast (may need to back camera a bit) 3. have some drool hanging from his belly too 4. where did he get her? maybe put a lanyard hanging down from her neck from where he escaped ;)
Thank you Hannes for showing the test render.
Indeed, the subsurface scattering sweetness seems quite specific to the lighting angle, which makes sense in a way.
Since you used the same settings for the main render it seems that either the lighting needs to be changed -like what Kadri suggested- or the subsurface scattering settings needs tweaking specific for this scene.
Some good points from Dorian.
Thanks a lot, guys. I'm not at home for the weekend, so it'll take some time until I get back to my computer.
OK, here is the (hopefully) final version.
I reposed the girl again. I refined the mesh as well, since there were some bad polygons.
I changed the tint of the skirt and added some ripples around the feet.
I rendered the whole image with slightly better settings (I increased AA from 9 to 12), which had the effect, that the drool strands are less visible, since these are very thin meshes.
Within TG I used the default contrast and gamma settings, which were a bit different in previous versions. Additionally I made the image a tad brighter in postwork.
There's still a bit of grain in the image. I used Max paths per sample of 64 (Architecture), and in the robust adaptive sampler I used a first sampling level of 1/16 and a pixel noise threshold of 0.02.
Rendertime for 3.5k was 19 hours and fifty minutes.
Yeah, final! It's great.
Much improved, more drama...well done!
Great final! :)
Thanks a lot, guys! :)
Nice! One frame down. Can't wait to see the final animation ;)
You'll probably have to... ;) ;D ;D ;D
Yowza!
Great work my friend!
Can't believe this is a year old already. Time is flying.