Planetside Software Forums

Hi. Thought I'd post this here. The image is quite rough and dry looking, displacements must be a bit too harsh. Anyhoo, I love the transparency effects for the water in the new alpha!  ;D

It took just over 4 hours on a Core 2 Duo 2.2. Funny that, I also rendered it on a P4 3.2 with hyperthreading and it took over 9 hours without the trees!

Paul.

Very good.  A little more grass or working just off the shore with and around and under the trees with shrubs or grass, then this will be a nice scene. 

[edited for grammar   ;D]

Agreed.  ;) I forgot to say, this was lightnings grass pack too. Here's a bigger version. http://www.stickywhippet.com/artwork/Mojoworld/CliffsidePool.jpg (http://www.stickywhippet.com/artwork/Mojoworld/CliffsidePool.jpg) It appears a bit small on here.

Marking this one up to experience! I need to work on my lighting too. I'm sure this is way too bright, perhaps this is what is making it so dry looking.

Hey Paul,

I was just about to send you a message at renderosity if you would like to show and discuss your work over here :)

I think this is already a very good image. The shoreline surfacing and green details/spots are a nice touch and add to the transparency effects which indeed look good.
I agree with Calico about adding some more elements around and under the trees.
Another thing you might try next time is to reduce the wavescales of the water, I think they are slightly too big. The trees at the shore look nice but could use some higher renderquality-settings and the colors are a bit bland to my taste.
Other things I like about the image are the shapes of the cliffs/rocks and the line-shaped displaced along those cliffs. A very nice touch.

Martin

Cheers Martin. I think I should be posting here really anyway to get the feedback I really need to improve. I'm still learning a lot with TG2. I've only just noticed the "render quality" pull down for objects. I'll post more soon.

A bit of an update. I've added a fair bit to the image. I'm a lot happier with it now and I have a bit of a direction to head for. I need to find some more rain forest style vegitation, particularly bushes. I didn't like the trees I had in the foreground, they didn't render that well also they didn't really fit the scene. I have more work to do with lighting and texture but thought I'd better post some progress. I'm not really getting a lot of time on this so it's dragging on a bit. Oh I have to say I'm learning a lot about TG2 as I go, mostly with rendering speeds verus details. For example this render took 1 hour 29 minutes compared with the above times! And it has more stuff!  :o

The mesh featured was found on t'internet, cleaned up and subdivided for detail in modo. The vegitation at the moment is just from the free xfrog samples, lol.

Like I said, it's a wip but let me know what you guys think so far.  :P

Like the use of objects and that water looks just *gorgeous*. But it feels like the focal point and/or framing of the image is odd. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be lookign at it and it all seems a bit confusing, too many things competing for attention. I feel like I want to turn my view leftward a bit. Maybe a view from that cliff face over on the right of the image looking back to the left, more toward the sun?

- Oshyan

i don't like the pov but the rest of it is just great !

It is very special - Without wanting to offend it to you is almost anything - Your first image had a direction and showed things which you had wanted to express, this one does not want to say large thing, there is of all and then nothing at the same time! It is obviously only one very personal point of view! (question of taste!)

agree... technically i like it, i like every part i see but, i don't know what you wanted us to see... as Oshyan said, there is no focal point... change your pov and perhaps it will be a great one ;)

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure I want to change the point of view just yet. I need to get all of the elements in the image first. I'm looking for suitable trees and bushes for the image, also I have an object that will be the focus of the image but it's not quite finished yet, I'm having a bit of trouble making a golden surface look good. I should have explained, hehe. Well, we'll see what you say on the next update.

Cheers!

Another update, but I've gone as far as I want to take it. There's a lot more I could have done but the main frustration is TG2 + 32bit Vista = "out of ram very quickly". I think I'll stick to scenes with less objects for now.  ;D


Here's a 1600x600 version (http://www.stickywhippet.com/artwork/Mojoworld/SacredPlace.jpg)

It's been a big learning experience for TG2, particularly to do with rendertime verus detail. Time for something else.  :P

nice job!....anychance of a link to the Buddha? I have a Buddha model, but it is pretty lo res looking, ok for some shots but doesnty look as good as this one!

Quite different POV.  Excellent lighting!

Nice lighting. I love the blur, especially in the bright spots. It kind of adds to the fantasy feeling I got from the landscape and statue. :D


Although, I kind of wish that the fog in the background was a bit darker. I think it's detracting from the foreground, where everything is at.

a bit dark to my eyes but a very good render... very different from usual TG2 works ^^

Love the statue, hate the blur... IF you blur, blur only the lights and reflections, but don't edge blur or anything, because it takes away some of the realism.

I undersand that it directs the focus on the statue, but I like the surroundings as well and want to look at them too.

Very nice, a well composed scene. I think you successfully addressed most of the problems. The blur at the edges is kind of distracting to me, but I suppose that's a personal thing.

- Oshyan

You have some nice details in this but to my eye something looks a little skewed, it may just be the pov or the colour or density of the mist  but something is pulling me eye away from the central area which is I assume supposed tro be the area of interest.  I would loose the peripheral blur, it may even be this that's pulling me eye away from the centre.

Last update honest. It's a bit brighter and I changed a few of the dirt textures around. I also changed the statue steps color to match the surrounding stone a little better. The DOF, which I like, is now based on zdepth rather than a botched radial blur. Had to figure out how to use the distance shader properly first. I just got Depth of Field Pro 3, it's very cool. That's it now though, simpler things from now on.  :)


Here's a 1680x630 (http://www.stickywhippet.com/artwork/Mojoworld/SacredPlace.jpg) version

oooooh !
excellent !!
very very very good render !
one of my favorite TG2 render i think !

Whoooo, this DOF is Great! Amazing realism, shows best on the tree on the right.
Now THIS I like a lot! Nice forrest in the distance at the foot of the mountain.

What did you do exactly to get this DOF?

This one I like. ;D A few small changes add up to a big improvement.

The properly faked DOF is vastly better than the blanket blur on the earlier version, that just looked like a cheap filter effect used by a so called professional wedding photographer in order to justify the exorbitant fee.  >:( :D

Are we talking about what should properly be called Differential Focus where the main subject is brought into focus by setting the Aperture so that the background is out of focus?

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel     

Rezzin8, love this latest image.  This is it!

@seth93: Far too kind! shucks...  :-[

@calico: Thanks, I got darn close methinks.

@Cyber-Angel: Ummm, is it? I hope so......  ;D

@Mr_Lamppost:  :D How did you know I was a professional wedding photographer?!?

@Mohawk20: Cheers! Just a piccy below to show the rendered depth image I used for the DOF. Had problems to start with because I forgot to include the alphas for leaves so leaves would render out as flat polys. Got it sorted in the end though. The plugin I used is superb for DOF, it's Depth Of Field Generator Pro 3 (http://www.dofpro.com/) by Richard Rosenman and Martin Vicanek.

@inkydigit: Here's the Buddha (http://www.stickywhippet.com/downloads/GoldenBhudda.rar) model, I'm sure I'm allowed to distribute it, it was downloaded from 3D Cafe some years ago from the free model section. This is in TGO format with the gold and mossy shader.


Now back to ZBrush for a bit...............

Very nice techniques Paul!

Can you show the node-network of setting up the distance shader for the models? I'd like to see how you handled the leaves and everything :)
Thanks in advance and don't stick to long to ZBrush ;)

Martin

thanks for the explaination !

oh Lordy  :P lots of techniques mastered there!

monks

Thanks for the link to the DOF plugin I woill need to give it a proper look.

@Tangled-Universe: yup, it was as simple as this when I figured it out  ;D I had to do this seperately for each tree model in the scene, the other models simply linked to the distance shader node I used as a layer for the landscape. I really don't know if theres a better way of doing it. This node network thing is still a bit of a mystery to me...  ???