This was my entry for the Ashundar IotW 105 contest.
It's a bit dark, I know, but you have that with storms...
The sky looks fanastic, but the ground really needs some grass or rocks. If you want you can try this clip file for some fake grass. It renders pretty fast though it might not work for this scene. Worth a try maybe.
Oooh. Great cloud break.
yeah great sky !
Yes ! Really great atmo !
I know about the grass, will try the fake grass, after my next project.
In the mean time, here's a different postworked version of this render.
I saved as .exr, and adjusted exposure for the entry to make the area around the sun a bit brighter, but this one has less exposure and a bit of gamma correction to make it lighter.
Now you can really see I need grass in here!
Really nice work, the lighting reminds me of World in Conflict
great atmo, I agree about the grass and tress though.
I like the first one better. Sometimes, less detail is the call. You could even skip the grass and foreground detail by keeping it really dark and moody.
Otherwise, its pretty sweet, and the mood is daunting.
Quote from: moodflow on May 13, 2008, 01:59:17 PM
I like the first one better. Sometimes, less detail is the call. You could even skip the grass and foreground detail by keeping it really dark and moody.
Otherwise, its pretty sweet, and the mood is daunting.
Thanks, and I agree. That's why I entered the first one in the competition...
Been working on this a bit more.. Had problems with the procedural grass and some half-rendered buckets...
Here's the result so far. Not happy with it...
I fear I have render again with some real grass populations. Rendered at 2048x1536 took a long time.
I might wait untill I have a version without memory leak before rendering more objects.
Save this for the Beta. I love it. When those issues are fixed, this could potentially be awesome. Think about using PhotoMatrix with EXRs (or something similar) to get all of your lighting the way you want it.
It's PhotoMatix (without the 'r', it's not as in the movie!), and I allready used it a bit, but any lighter will either show the bad fake grass more, or loose the storm feeling.
Oh, yeah. Not MATRIX. :D
About the scene...then, I'd recommend doing the same thing rendered in Ambient Occulusion to see if you can mesh it with the GI render. I agree that the scene is like a stormy environment, but a little more lighting up front might help.
I still can't believe how much it looks like world in conflict, especially that last one looks like the aftermath of a nuke in the seattle missions.
Thanks...
@ Calico: Sure the foreground needs light, but right now, it looks like a brown pincushion...
I'll try rendering with real grass, but I fear for loads of renderbucket memory leaks...
I know that there is a great temptation to "Improve" but oftem what you first thought of is best. ;) ;D
True, but I first thought "I really should use real grass, but I don't have the time now, because of the contest deadline"...
So perhaps getting some grass in wouldn't be such a bad idea...
I agree.
Quote from: Mr_Lamppost on May 24, 2008, 04:43:30 PM
I know that there is a great temptation to "Improve" but oftem what you first thought of is best. ;) ;D
I like the subtle backlighting on the trees. It's got a great feel overall. Rendering with "real grass" would be nice though, and those bucket rendering problems ought to be fixed in the future. So it may indeed simply be something to wait on.
- Oshyan
Bucket problems don't show up when rendering at 1024x768, so here it is.
Grass from Lightning.
Increased the enviro light settings to 6 in order to get lighter shadows.
Adjusted the exr output in Photomatix.
I love the sun causing the clouds to glow ;D
Wow man, that atmo is really sweet :)
I see you cranked the light settings pretty much...too much to my taste, because the grass and trees lack shadows now.
Maybe you could lower your light settings back to your original 'dark' version and then add a light opposite to the sun angle and direction.
This lightsource casts no shadows or anything and strength = 0.2 - 0.4. This way you can easily control lightness of shadows without losing the natural sense of lighting.
Another nice thing to try maybe is to add some (more, if you already did) specularity to the grasses (like the patchy distribution). Some translucency will also greatly add to realism.
If you feel up to putting more and more work into this ;D
Martin
really like how the clouds are illuminated by the sun, nice work
Sun and clouds are cool.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on June 04, 2008, 05:55:37 PM
Wow man, that atmo is really sweet :)
I see you cranked the light settings pretty much...too much to my taste, because the grass and trees lack shadows now.
Maybe you could lower your light settings back to your original 'dark' version and then add a light opposite to the sun angle and direction.
This lightsource casts no shadows or anything and strength = 0.2 - 0.4. This way you can easily control lightness of shadows without losing the natural sense of lighting.
Another nice thing to try maybe is to add some (more, if you already did) specularity to the grasses (like the patchy distribution). Some translucency will also greatly add to realism.
If you feel up to putting more and more work into this ;D
Martin
I have experimanted with extra lightsources, and found that they end up less realistic than with GI / Higher Envirolight only. I'll decrease the Envirolight settings and see what happens.
Translucency is at 3 for the trees and at 2 for the grass, which is high enough. Specularuty could be an option, but I fear for increased rendertimes...
Quote from: Mohawk20 on June 05, 2008, 03:24:33 AM
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on June 04, 2008, 05:55:37 PM
Wow man, that atmo is really sweet :)
I see you cranked the light settings pretty much...too much to my taste, because the grass and trees lack shadows now.
Maybe you could lower your light settings back to your original 'dark' version and then add a light opposite to the sun angle and direction.
This lightsource casts no shadows or anything and strength = 0.2 - 0.4. This way you can easily control lightness of shadows without losing the natural sense of lighting.
Another nice thing to try maybe is to add some (more, if you already did) specularity to the grasses (like the patchy distribution). Some translucency will also greatly add to realism.
If you feel up to putting more and more work into this ;D
Martin
I have experimanted with extra lightsources, and found that they end up less realistic than with GI / Higher Envirolight only. I'll decrease the Envirolight settings and see what happens.
Translucency is at 3 for the trees and at 2 for the grass, which is high enough. Specularuty could be an option, but I fear for increased rendertimes...
Ah I see....the strongly increased translucency could also add a little to the lack of shadows.
If you use non-raytraced specular highlights then it won't add that much rendertime.
Adding additional lightsources really works well if you choose your settings carefully ;)
Okay, last version, more shadows and reflections...
Pretty good, but I would expect to see in the valley where it's all dark. But, you're finished with it. Anyway, I love the clouds and sun and this point of view.
The reflections look a little overdone on the left, but the right foreground looks great, as do the clouds.
I agree the reflectivity is now too high - I personally felt it was fine without it before. But I do think the lighting is more realistic now.
- Oshyan
Reflectivity is Default Shader Specularity at 0.1 with a roughness of 0.6...
Here is a test render with higher settings. You can see why I was happy with the end result. But I think the effect became exaggerated through tonemapping. The lower image is the original render without tonemapping.
Much better, Mohawk!!