Another thing I'm working on. Still WIP. It's supposed to be an Eemien era image, with a tundra-like vegetation. Two pops of no-antler reindeer, 4 pops of loose antlers (2 small and 2 big) with masking to give some an antler, others not, others a big one. And one pop of the same reindeer with the object tilted, so they were kind of swimming.
I am not satisfied about the sky, though. I like the lightness, but not the overly bleached clouds. I also wouldn't want it to be a normal sky, as the sun is facing you and a certain amount of bright haze is good.
Any comments are greatly appreciated.
Great scene - perhaps bigger less featured clouds (smoother) or maybe just cirrus.
Although it depends what your overall "sky concept" is, I'd just increase the cloud density or reduce light propagation. Changing the cloud colour to more grayish would, probably, also do the trick. Also, check the fractal size - a feature scale too high kills smaller displacements easily and influences the amount of lit surfaces of course.
To be honest, I can't see anything wrong with the reindeer pop, even after being told where to look! One thing I find somewhat implausible though is the reindeer on the far right that walks straight to the cliff. I'm not an animal expert, but I figure it would walk around an obstacle rather than jump off of it. ;)
Thanks guys. I think I've got a nice sky now. Tried some v3 and v2 and this is v2, with increased light propagation mix (0.5) and reduced glow amount (0.5).
To me there's nothing wrong either. And I don't think they would take a detour with such a small 'cliff' in their group frenzy to cross that river, they just jump off or jump/walk/straggle/slither/tumble down. Like the wildebeest do in Africa.
I like the new clouds! Much better!
Nice WIP Ulco.
Some of the leg poses might be slightly exaggerated,
other than that I can't see anything 'wrong'.
Keep on trudging across the tundra. ;)
Nice - like this. Only thing that strikes me is, would the caribou on left (on grey surface) be making hoof marks in the soil?
On sand they would, was my idea. And I did my best to get a decent set of rows of hoofprints, and I understand they don't fit perfectly, but if this thing has rendered out, I can always paint some extra.
I'll have a look at the poses. I need to adjust the caribou texturing too, as it's not perfect in big close-up.
Looks great so far, and the clouds are definitely better in the last version.
Thanks Hannes. Next problem was the reindeer. The texturing sucked, so I had to redo it, painted on a new texture in ZBrush. Now I still need to add some more accurate and fine bump. Or give the guys (and girls) some hair. But I still don't understand how I can get the overall hairs of an object take over the colors of the skin....
It looks great :)
Have you tried increasing the soft clip effect?
Well done my friend!
I don't think anyone's mentioned the grass and scrub vegetation yet, so I will. The mix of plants and colors is really something. What do you use as a source to identify what species to use?
I've wondered about the relationship between skin and hair color, too. There may be a way to handle that in Maya, but I haven't delved that deep yet.
More poses for the reindeer would be good, but it looks like you're working on that. This is going to be a nice scene when it's finished.
I love the scene but I feel the sky is a bit bright. Maybe more twilighty, more blue from inclination of the sun. It seems the sun is really high right now. Does it get that high. I'm in WA state and in winter are maximum inclination angle is 18 degrees and about 40 in fall/spring. I imagine this will be much lower the more you enter the Arctic region.
The ground coverage is marvellous!
I could search for my old user guide to make hair or even quite satisfying fur with blender. As I remember it was possible to let the hair take the Color of an objects surface -- but believe me you don't want to use that... If you perhaps remember my cat render some years ago - its fur was a 2.5 GB model... ;D
Thanks, sjefen, I will try what that does. And regarding the sky; WAS, this is not an arctic scene, but a Dutch late summer scene in Eemien era, so a lot lower latitude. Sun can be pretty high. Actually I like the bright sky, as it doesn't fill the image with too much 'information'. It keeps it still, so to speak. I only don't want the clouds to have large bleached areas.
In the meantime I've asked on the ZBrush forum about hair colors, and guess who helped me out; Jochen. Big thanks to him. But thanks for your offer, Nils. I have a video telling me how to proceed. I will keep it decent in terms of GB's.
More poses would be good, indeed. But that would need to be bending legs in ZB, as I've never rigged anything (yet). Maybe I should add one or two standing and looking back, just to offset the running herd.
For speed of rendering no RT-reflection. They wanted a different spread of species at front, so here goes. Now hopefully find out how to export fibers from ZB with colors of the skin, but that seems to be pretty hard. Added a few different poses as individual objects so far.
Soft clip at 2. I still have to find out what it exactly does, though. Never altered it before.
Looks good. I like the close-up very much too.
Quote from: Dune on April 20, 2020, 02:10:03 AMAnd regarding the sky; WAS, this is not an arctic scene, but a Dutch late summer scene in Eemien era, so a lot lower latitude. Sun can be pretty high. Actually I like the bright sky, as it doesn't fill the image with too much 'information'. It keeps it still, so to speak. I only don't want the clouds to have large bleached areas.
Netherlands is more north than my location with a high of around 22 degrees in late summer. But I see your reasoning. It just doesn't give me the impression of a tundra. More like boglands. Which would be definitely more true to Netherlands.
This was the Eemien, so nothing is really directly comparable to an existing place, due to differences in climate (which are not only dependent upon latitude). The North Sea was 150 lower than today, and you could walk to England ;) Early rivers carved through this landscape, much later these valleys were filled again with sandlayers up to 20m thick, giving us todays much less deep undulations. Back then the 'tundra' had mostly mosses, low grasses and sedges, low shrub, and this cottongrass. The only inconsistency in this render being that the low shrubbery has a late summer coloration, while cottongrass still is its magnificent self. I still have to ask how bad that is :P
Interesting information, thanks for sharing. You could probably fix the cotton grass easy enough. Mask up the cotton to be more patchy like it's released some seeds, and change up main texture color to include some dying and dead areas.
Quote from: Dune on April 20, 2020, 01:44:12 PMFor speed of rendering no RT-reflection. They wanted a different spread of species at front, so here goes. Now hopefully find out how to export fibers from ZB with colors of the skin, but that seems to be pretty hard. Added a few different poses as individual objects so far.
Soft clip at 2. I still have to find out what it exactly does, though. Never altered it before.
I'm not 100% sure, but in my experience, if you increase the soft clip effect, you're sky won't be as blown out at the same time as the shadows are brighter. You may want to alter the shadows in post to get some more contrast or just darken them, but it's much easier if everything is more "evened out" for the lack of better words. This is something I've been playing more and more with lately. I've even used values up to 3 if of the scene is a little darker.
Maybe Matt can say something here. I can also try to show I another thread with some examples, but I'm moving these days, so it will have to wait a little bit.
Cottongrass is out anyway, didn't fit in that habitat.
Sjefen, thanks. I couldn't find any information what soft clip actually does (and never touched it before), but I suppose it works like a smooth step instead of hard step. I set it to 2, and I like the sky, so I won't tamper with it now. maybe do some tests in due time.
Quote from: sjefen on April 21, 2020, 06:50:07 AMI'm not 100% sure, but in my experience, if you increase the soft clip effect, you're sky won't be as blown out at the same time as the shadows are brighter.
Wow, so I have never played with this either, and it does exactly what I've tried to simulate in the horizon of atmosphere for a long time. The kinda bleached haze look which clouds meld into.
That are great results!
Quote from: WAS on April 21, 2020, 03:02:08 PMQuote from: sjefen on April 21, 2020, 06:50:07 AMI'm not 100% sure, but in my experience, if you increase the soft clip effect, you're sky won't be as blown out at the same time as the shadows are brighter.
Wow, so I have never played with this either, and it does exactly what I've tried to simulate in the horizon of atmosphere for a long time. The kinda bleached haze look which clouds meld into.
This will affect the whole image. The ground, the sky and everything. You guys probably understand that, but just to be sure ;)
Anyway..... I strongly recommend giving this some more try in different scenes. It's not long ago I found this and started to test a little bit and it helps out allot. Especially if you have some areas that are very bright and some that are dark or in the shadows. That's why I suggested it for you here.
TG is endess in its possibilities, proven once again!
A part rendered at near final resolution. I need to add some debris on the ground, more species and mix the reindeer poses better. Also actually need to improve the bump or objects themselves.
Wow!
I can only repeat:
Wow!