Another boat scene, I'm afraid. The good news is that I never get tired of modeling these historic watercraft . . . those old-timers knew how to build boats. The bad news is that you all have to keep looking at them. :)
This is a bateau, 18th-early 19th century. I made the model for a large-scale scene for a client, in which it plays a small part. This was just meant to be a quick project to give it its day in the sun.
Wow! This is looking quite authentic to me.The love of detail in the 3 guys`clothing is wonderful.
The youngest in the middle, how his hat sits on his head...the faces and beards of the men.
"Hats off" ;D .Did I mention how much I like the texturing of the assets?
CHeers, Klaus
Fantastic!! The boat looks great! And the characters are top notch!! My only crit: the boat should be a bit wet near the water line.
The models are fantastic, realistic and rustic. What software was used to create the figures?
What an awesome scene, Steve! Very 'simple' but very effective and realistic. The way these guys look and 'look' is terrific. A tiny enhancement could be some foam where the oars have left the water, or some drips dripping off the oars.
Inspirational too, so thanks for showing :)
Top Notch!
Thanks, everyone! I'm happy with the characters. I took a few weeks off from modeling and the break was probably a good thing because it gave me a fresh start, especially with people and faces. I've learned to slow down. (I've also discovered collections online of daguerreotypes from the early 19th century that make excellent references.)
Gao Jian, the figures are modeled in Silo and ZBrush, with hair and rigging in Blender. Everything is shaded in Mixer.
QuoteMy only crit: the boat should be a bit wet near the water line.
I agree, and I tried. A reflective shader masked in Y has been applied to the lower part of the hull. A camera-projected mask applies the same shader to the oar paddles. I probably spent 2-3 hours trying different IOR, reflection, and specular roughness settings and this is the best I could achieve. The bright patches along the waterline are reflections from the water (and possibly some caustics). It might be physically correct but it sure doesn't look "wet." IOR is set to 1.33 (for water); increasing it simply made the area appear silver and metallic.
What I'd *really* like to do is reduce the roughness over this area, but afaik you can't selectively apply the roughness from a default shader -- the color always goes along for the ride. (Too bad the diffuse shader doesn't have a "Use existing colour" checkbox like the Lambert shader. That would be useful.)
The effect could be achieved in a few minutes with Mixer, which is probably what I'll do if I pick this up again.
QuoteA tiny enhancement could be some foam where the oars have left the water, or some drips dripping off the oars.
For sure. I added some procedural circular ripples beneath the oars, but they are mostly masked by the waves. Water dropping from the oars would need to be geometry. Wouldn't be too hard to add.
Actually for the "wetness" I'd say use an additional surface layer for the boat body's shader (with color disabled) which is restricted by height (a few centimeters above the water surface). Use a color adjust shader with a lower gamma than 1 to make the existing shader darker and a reflective shader with appropriate settings as child layers of the previously created surface layer, and it should work.
Ah, ok. I did all that minus the color adjust, which is probably the missing piece. Thanks.
I use the same technique for a wet 'waterline', but often find that it's barely visible anyway. There's nothing much to reflect in a way; just water (and that's even smoothed in the Path tracer), unless the wet height is pretty high and you have some distinct foam. What may (or may not) also help is to smooth out the bump in that wet area (in the said surface layer).
Yes -- at one point I applied a darker color along with the reflective shader, using a power fractal and even a solid color, and it was not noticeable. I do think the key is roughness, not color. If I have time tonight I'll edit the roughness map and see how it looks.
Quote from: sboerner on February 13, 2023, 12:31:00 PMAnother boat scene, I'm afraid. The good news is that I never get tired of modeling these historic watercraft . . . those old-timers knew how to build boats. The bad news is that you all have to keep looking at them. :)
I like historic boats, and your boat model looks great :)
So does the scene!
Thanks, WinterLight! (And welcome to the forum.)
Here is an updated version of the scene, with the roughness map edited in Mixer to add the "wet" waterline. Some reflection still added in TG, but the waterline is clearly visible now.
@Matt or
@Kevin Kipper, would it be possible to add an option to disable color in the default shader, as there is in the surface and Lambert shaders? It would be handy to be able to apply some channels (especially roughness) to a surface without bringing the color with it. Or is there already a way to do this that I am missing?
There is now water dripping from the oars. The meshes were made with Blender's fluid simulation . . . my first go at this and really just a test. I'm not completely satisfied with the result, but using better references and a little more fussing would certainly improve it. It's worth exploring . . . it shows a lot of promise and could be used in other situations as well.
Quote from: sboerner on February 17, 2023, 12:54:36 PMThanks, WinterLight! (And welcome to the forum.)
Thanks :)
I like seeing your endeavors to integrate simulations from Blender, since I'd like to add things like waterfalls to my Terragen renders... but I'm still early in my learning curve.
Wow, great!! The waterline is perfect, and the dripping water is really convincing to my taste.
Thanks, Hannes.
Btw a simple way to apply a roughness waterline in TG has been staring me right in the face. I'll try it later.
Quote from: sboerner on February 17, 2023, 12:54:36 PMThere is now water dripping from the oars....
Quote from: sboerner on February 17, 2023, 12:54:36 PMThere is now water dripping from the oars.
Hey, that's a really neat touch!
Great improvement. Very convincing now. Perhaps a bit too 'fatty' water drips, but that's nitpicking.
You could use the lambert shader as child of a no color surface shader after the default for translucency, but what for? You need the hull's color, don't you? How would you see the shader line then? I would probably try merging two shaders; default and reflective added by distribution in altitude. Or just add the reflective on surface shader with it's altitude restriction, and with smoothed, or even additional bump for more reflections.
Blenders' fluid sim; didn't think of that one, always thinking it would be way too complicated. I pulled mine out in ZBrush by hand (hardly visible in the guy on the stream edge in my recent post), but real fluids would be more interesting....
This is the simplest of all, using a solution that should have occurred to me several days ago. Oh well.
Use a distribution shader (with use Y and final position) to set up the waterline. The breakup shader is important here so you don't get an even line. This becomes the mask for the reflective shader and, inverted, is piped to the roughness function of the default shader where it is combined with the roughness map (multiplied, I think).
This is the sort of step that's better done in Terragen than earlier in the pipeline, because so much depends on the context and lighting. It's more subtle than the previous version (where the roughness was applied in Mixer) but better imho.
Done with this for now.
QuoteGreat improvement. Very convincing now. Perhaps a bit too 'fatty' water drips, but that's nitpicking.
Thanks, Ulco. About the fat drops, maybe? Some of the references I found show the oars shedding sheets of water, and the oar in the back is the animation frame where the sheet begins to break up into streams of drops. Anyway as I said this was mainly a test to see if it works. Blender's fluid simulation (like everything else with Blender these days) turned out to be much easier than I feared. Can't wait to play with it some more. Lots of possibilities.