http://www.evermotion.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=70403 (http://www.evermotion.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=70403)
looks good but i think terragen could do just as good what do you think?
Yeah, with decent models like those it can be done because in addition to the lighting they look a bit like the models in the game Skate. The lighting here is easy enough to achieve, it's only the z-depth that it may not be able to do. I'm actually trying something for that. I'll report back on that. What program is this done with?
max and vray
you could do some sort of zdepth in photoshop?
Distance shader could help with the DOF, and you could help with some nice plants and stuff Lightning...
It can be done, certainly if we would all work together.
You can indeed. Use the distance shader to make the frontground white and the background black (or vice versa if you want the focus on the background), render it and use that as a layer mask. I was just thinking you could do it in Terragen but I just tried it and you can't.
yeah i can give the renderer some plants ;D
cool, I'll start working on the lighting.
That is possible the most beautiful cg i have ever seen, good luck!
I think these kinds of images aren't possible yet. Terragen's lightingsystem for models is still no match for Vray.
It's a bit the same story like the topic about HowieFarkes (Martin Hedenstroem) who uses Carrara to render landscapes. Also there the lighting of models is way better than Terragen.
Quote from: PG on December 06, 2008, 05:46:12 PM
You can indeed. Use the distance shader to make the frontground white and the background black (or vice versa if you want the focus on the background), render it and use that as a layer mask. I was just thinking you could do it in Terragen but I just tried it and you can't.
Yes you can ;)
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=4231.msg46313#msg46313 (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=4231.msg46313#msg46313)
Hope this helps, if you need any...just let me know!
Martin
Yeah that's it. I'm not good with photoshop so I never figured out how to apply the render as a layer mask though :D
k. this is some lighting for the first, second and fourth images but if you move the suns an fiddle with the diameter of the sun you can create the effect of the others too. I'm gonna have a fiddle with the strength and some of the render settings to try to get the sunlight strong enough that it "burns" round the leaves and you get sharper contrast between the light and dark on the grass. Anything you guys can think of that'll make this right?
Edit: Forgot to post the image. duuuurgh! It's lost a bit of vibrancy because it's in JPG.
Well.... it's not just about the lighting and the dof. The shaders are also very, very important.
I think you'll need subsurface scattering for the leaves for example, which is not possible yet.
- Terje
And radiosity is probably very important too
Isn't the lambert shader capable of faking that. There's a image someone did ages ago with a lambert shader to fake transparency in the lake object.
Yes.... it can fake it, but it doesn't look as good as the real thing.
Quote from: SpacemanNZ on December 07, 2008, 10:17:24 PM
And radiosity is probably very important too
I don't really understand what radiosity is, but I always thought it was the same as Global Illumination.
It's just another way of solving it. Isn't it?
- Terje
Quote from: sjefen on December 08, 2008, 10:36:45 AM
Yes.... it can fake it, but it doesn't look as good as the real thing.
Quote from: SpacemanNZ on December 07, 2008, 10:17:24 PM
And radiosity is probably very important too
I don't really understand what radiosity is, but I always thought it was the same as Global Illumination.
It's just another way of solving it. Isn't it?
- Terje
Yes indeed, it is a type of GI, only another algorithm.
It should be quite easy to implement in the TG2-renderer, but it will probably very very slow.
Like you I think these renders indeed could benefit from subsurface-scattering or maybe of clever usage of the Lambert shader like PG said.
@PG: I can't find the image you refer to, it wasn't very long time ago, but if I remember correctly it was done by adding a reflective shader layer beneath the waterplane.
You can try faking radiosity with experimenting with the colour of light that is reflected from surfaces. For example make specular colour from leafs a bit green and from the wall a bit gray etc.
the plant models in tthose images look spectacular :o
Ahh i see ;D
Well, took some time to see if I could improve the lighting on models in TG.
I used a mixture of GI, AO and fill lights for this (AO and fill lights are very soft/weak) so the main effect is still GI (strength on surfaces= 2.5 e.g.)
Rendersettings were: detail 0.8, AA 8, GI 1/1, prepass on and cubic B-spline with bloom.
The leaves have a translucency of ~12. Tried very high reflectionvalues with AA bloom settings to get that diffuse look. Also added some haze to add to this effect which completely failed...lol
Looks ok though in overall, but not any better than this: http://img41.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=29104_TU-A-Brand-New-Day_122_877lo.jpg (http://img41.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=29104_TU-A-Brand-New-Day_122_877lo.jpg)
Shall look if I can come up with another approach.
Martin
The approach is a team-question. Take someone who is perfect in setting up a scene, another person who is a magician on shaders. Get somebody who will do the atmospheres - and last not least, get a couple of people for setting up the lighting.
I doubt that a single sun with GI will do within reasonable rendertimes. You'll need fill-lights, spots etc. -TU is on a very good way. But he'll need some help.
My 5 cents,
Volker
Quote from: sjefen on December 08, 2008, 10:36:45 AM
Quote from: SpacemanNZ on December 07, 2008, 10:17:24 PM
And radiosity is probably very important too
I don't really understand what radiosity is, but I always thought it was the same as Global Illumination.
It's just another way of solving it. Isn't it?
Pretty much, yes. Everyone wants to call it something different, and terminology is confused all the time. Global illumination in TG is just called... Global Illumination. The "radiosity" algorithm is not really a practical algorithm for this kind of scene.
Matt
Radiosity's normally for small indoor scenes with sharp contrast between light and shadow. Normal illumination creates very hard edged shadows whereas radiosity allows for softer shadows and allows colour of surfaces to be scattered to nearby surfaces. Matt's right, it won't work properly here.
@Volker: Don't know if you were reffering to my method but I used 2 suns with their visible disc turned off and diameter cranked up to have the light more widely spread while not creating a grainy effect from haze. GI was set to 0
Quote from: PG on December 10, 2008, 06:10:47 AM
Radiosity's normally for small indoor scenes with sharp contrast between light and shadow. Normal illumination creates very hard edged shadows whereas radiosity allows for softer shadows and allows colour of surfaces to be scattered to nearby surfaces. Matt's right, it won't work properly here.
@Volker: Don't know if you were reffering to my method but I used 2 suns with their visible disc turned off and diameter cranked up to have the light more widely spread while not creating a grainy effect from haze. GI was set to 0
I might try that to see if it makes a difference. Why did you turn off GI? And how much did you cranck up the diameter, to about 50 or so?
Martin
renders quicker :D let's see sun diameter...nope. 19.5 and 15
Radiosity is one way to approximate global illumination. Terragen uses another. They are both trying to achieve (or approximate) the same goal - i.e. realistic global illumination. Radiosity actually lacks the ability to simulate some important aspects of global illumination, though. It only considers diffuse (Lambert) reflections. The reason I said Radiosity is not appropriate for this kind of scene is because there's a lot more than Lambertian surfaces in it, and in general there are better global illumination algorithms than Radiosity, although Radiosity is *possibly* still worth considering for some architectural visualisations where view-dependent detail in your global illumination is not so important and if you only have diffuse (Lambertian reflectance) surfaces. But I think you would only want to use it if the geometry were not very complex. There really aren't any advantages that I can think of.
What's confusing is that Vue calls one of its global illumination modes "global radiosity", but I don't think it uses the actual "Radiosity" algorithm.
Very interesting Matt.
About Vue - GR really looks like radiosity, considering how colours from surfaces are able to blend on others and the patterns they make if there are too few samples.
Is there any source for in-deep explanation of GI methods floating somewhere over the internet? I'd like to read something about it (other than Wikipedia).
There's some more here. But I'm not sure if it's all radiosity or not. http://www.gamedev.net/reference/list.asp?categoryid=40#180
Very interesting reading. Thank you very much indeed :)
Haha! This line is great! ...
QuoteConsider a simple room with only four walls, a ceiling and a floor. Can you see it in your mind's eye? You better not be able to; I haven't specified a light source yet. :-)
Great information page, cheers!
Quote from: PorcupineFloyd on December 11, 2008, 03:56:41 AM
Very interesting Matt.
About Vue - GR really looks like radiosity, considering how colours from surfaces are able to blend on others and the patterns they make if there are too few samples.
Is there any source for in-deep explanation of GI methods floating somewhere over the internet? I'd like to read something about it (other than Wikipedia).
Color bleeding between surfaces is not an effect unique to Radiosity. It is something that should be present in any well-implemented GI algorithm, and is possible in TG2 with sufficiently high settings and strong colors in the scene. What you're seeing at the edges of some of the leaves in the example shots appears to be a simulated glow and/or chromatic abberation, which is really a lens artifact, and something TG does not simulate (nor do I think it necessarily should). Translucency is the other major effect, which TG2 can handle fairly well already. Subsurface scattering isn't really that necessary because the leaves are so thing, there is little need to simulate complex inner scattering.
- Oshyan
Thanks for making it clear.
I guess that my confusion came from experience with Vue's different approach to lightning computation as in Vue Global Illumination is a different thing than Global Radiosity.
So it seems that in case of Vue it's basically a marketing approach by having two GI types and using this clue word "radiosity" to mark something ultimately powerful and neat.
By talking about colour bleeding in TG and settings required to achieve it - do you mean only those settings in enviro light settings?
I was also doing some experimenting with slightly altering specular reflections colour on leafs with also subtle but positive effect.
Will we still be getting subsurface scattering at some point in future as certain natural phenomena such as certain rock types and ice require it to be present if they are going to look realistic, effects that are difficult if not impossible with out subsurface scattering?
;D
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
Quote from: Cyber-Angel on December 16, 2008, 08:54:57 AM
Will we still be getting subsurface scattering at some point in future as certain natural phenomena such as certain rock types and ice require it to be present if they are going to look realistic, effects that are difficult if not impossible with out subsurface scattering?
;D
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
Hopefully yes, although not with the coming release of TG2. It would have to be in a later update. It simply needs too much additional development to be stable and useful to release it at this time.
- Oshyan