Here's something with an extra sun, overhead at strength 0.1 and no shadows. It lightens up the darkest darks. I also have the opacity of the leaves/needles at 0.85 and a bit of reflection (0.1 at roughness 0.2), and a bit of translucency (0.2).
With no extra sun the darks were just too dark, which was especially noticable under the cart and in the shadows from the bush there.
I have to say, I'm still not convinced by the "no shadows sun" method. It looks a bit flat to me. At the moment I'm rendering a little hollow hemisphere test file for Paul's image. I'll post it, when it's finished.
Maybe you already took a look in Paul's thread. I tested the methods, and to my taste the hemisphere method gives the most realistic result (as long as there is no water!!! ::) )
Oh, and by the way: a fantastic image!!!!! I love it! ;D
Thanks, and I did take a look and you convinced me of the hemisphere method, but still; I'm very impatient, so don't like rendertimes to be any longer than needed. Maybe I'll test a part of this scene with the luminous globe, and without extra sun, to check out differences.
What I do use sometimes is an invisible card (luminous of just white or a bit reflective) to light up areas that I find too dark, locally. And very subtly.
Btw. the rockwall on the right bugs me. I don't like it, so I used some local extra definition (by projected SSS, and vdisp, so I didn't have to use a compute terrain), but it's not to my liking yet.
Some extra tests. A luminous sphere indeed takes rather much longer and is somewhat more grainy, so my preference still goes out to a slight extra top sun. I wonder, btw what the size of that sun would do. Does it, like a light source decrease in strength with bigger size? If it's large enough, it could act as a 'global' light... perhaps. Testing ahead....
The image is really gorgeous ! Nice composition ! As for the trials, both methods seem to give acceptable results and really cannot make up my mind as to which one is the better, will leave that to experts ! Think I will continue to consider both methods when some spots are too dark and the trial renders will determine which one is best for which image !
The execution on these images is beautiful. Re: the rock wall on the right, would the grassy tufts tend to be pointed a little more straight up and down in real life?
Thanks guys. I just rotated the grass less, rendering now, so I'll see if that's better. I tend to have them rotated with slope more than default, as I don't want tufts to grow into rock. If I were to make this perfect I would add more species and varieties; now it's just 3 trees, 2 shrub and 1 grass.
Here are 2 examples with an extra sun at a size of a million (whatever that means; meters?), without and with soft shadows.
I could imagine the sun's size affects the softness of the shadow? In your examples there is not much difference I'd say. Maybe a smaller size?
Differences are quite minimal indeed, but I have had with this one for now. I may test it again with a different setup, so will keep it in mind.
I just thought, I'd test it.
When I wrote the last post I may have thought of light sources. So... where do I change the sun's size??? ??? Visible disc/Angular diameter?
Yes, that's the one I used. Disc needn't be visible, I'd say. Curious what you'll find....
I just did a test. Didn't make much of a difference in my triesto the other ones... ???
Thought so too. Now another thing that came to mind was a huge lightsource in the scene, I'll test that out soon. Might be weird...
The problem with adding an extra sun and disabling its shadows is you destroy the contact shadows that PT gives you. It's not so bad if you keep shadows enabled.
Another idea you could try is using two atmospheres: A primary atmosphere with secondary disabled and a secondary atmosphere with primary disabled. You can brighten the colours on the second atmosphere to force brighter sky-light.
... Having said that, the most natural result would probably come from not doing any of that and just increasing the exposure. If the sun is too bright on their faces, could you could give them a semi-transparent sun shade like they do on a TV or film set?
Thanks for chiming in Matt. Neat idea, and I remember something similar from doing with RT as well years ago, but then using an ambient an a GI. I'll try that. It is actually comparable with an invisible sphere, and might take less time. We'll see. Maybe less grainy too.
And you are right about the exposure. In photography it's also not always easy to get darks and lights in balance, and (nice) darkroom work was necessary. The HDR filter works pretty nice too, done carefully.
My guys (and girls) already have an adjustable tan 8)