Originally inspired by darthvader's Angel Light (see http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6072.0 ), I went hunting for rays, and here's what I caught so far...
Cool! This must have took ages to render, or not? I like the detailed shadows in the clouds, well done!
Martin
Thanks Martin. It did take a while. The original image is 25 33% larger, and I had to render it in 4 crops which took about 20 hours altogether (your advice on ray detail region settings came in handy :) but there was still some seaming to take care of.) The clouds are FrankB's Cumulus Humilis.
Oooh. That seed's a keeper.
Looking good! If you want a more defined light shaft would suggest increasing the sun's power and the haze density in the atmosphere. The unfortunate side effect will be an increase in render time :-[ but I think the results may be worth the wait. I also think it would be sweet to have a single tree or other object directly in the beam of light, keep the good work coming :)
Thanks for the suggestions darthvader - the haze is already over 3, and the sun power at 6, so I'm not sure whether I want to push it any further, as it might bleach out the details in the cloud. I was thinking about putting some trees in the patches of light - I might be able to get away with doing that in just one crop.
nice one indeed!
Just a tip: you can increase the relative brightness of the ray by slightly decreasing the ambient color of the atmosphere. Try -0.2 to -0.3 in a crop and see what happens.
Cheers,
Frank
Oh, good! Make the ground a little more interesting texture-wise. For a second, I was thinking, "Well, the sun won't be there when he renders again...uh..." Wake up check. ;D
Wow! impressive.
@FrankB - I did a couple of tests using your tip, and there was a slight improvement in the ray, but unfortunately, the cost in added render time makes it too expensive for this particular image.
@Calico - I hear what you're saying re the texture; however, I want to keep the focus mainly on the clouds, so I think I may simply put down a population of trees. Walli's new pine is the main candidate :)
Dominic, I am surprised that it adds render time. It should not, unless you had to compensate for grain with more samples. This is just a color adjustment and does not require any additional computing.
Cheers
Frank
Well, it more than doubled render time - admittedly on a scaled down version. Go figure!
Here is the next version, with some trees and surfacing, and passed through Photomatix to try to bring out some details in the shadows.
It looks cool, but for the supersaturation of the distant field. Suggestion - run it through Photomatix just for the lit areas and a small amount of shadow. Then, in Photoshop or Paint.NET or Gimp (or whatever), do a slight burn-in of the shadow areas. The best way to do this is to add a layer that is grey-scaled and do your burning on it. Then you can be more selective and not so dramatic with the light fill-in.
Thanks for the comment calico. Not sure which area you see as supersaturated - do you mean the bit where the ray of light hits the ground?. Also, your instructions re burning in the shadows are a bit too brief for my poor comprehension/image editing skill-set. Can you suggest an online resource that might spell it out a bit more? Thanks!
calico is right in that the areas where the sun hits the ground are strangely colors. I see very bright and very saturated green, and splotches of very bright and saturated red.
can you see that, too?
I think the saturation is partly the result of colour choice in the shaders, partly the result of the intensity of the ray, and partly the result of Photomatix processing. Obviously, any one of the three can be adjusted, and I think I will definitely tone down the red. However, I wonder whether this saturation is after all so unrealistic, as nature herself can surprise us in unusual lighting conditions, such as here when most of the rest of the scene is effectively monochrome.
A couple of ways I know are good to do this -
Maybe the best one - use the selection tool to select the areas you don't want to change, select Invert Selection and then adjust the Levels slightly.
The way to do this with the burn tool would be to do this -
1. Add a new layer on top of the original.
2. Choose Overlay as the blending option.
3. Do all of your burning set at a low percentage but on top of this new layer.
A combination of both of these would probably work best.
Quote from: domdib on May 26, 2009, 08:57:11 AM
Thanks for the comment calico. Not sure which area you see as supersaturated - do you mean the bit where the ray of light hits the ground?. Also, your instructions re burning in the shadows are a bit too brief for my poor comprehension/image editing skill-set. Can you suggest an online resource that might spell it out a bit more? Thanks!
Thanks again calico. I will probably, as I mentioned in the last post, desaturate the red in the scene itself. That, by itself, might tone down the green, as being complementaries, the contrast will be reduced.
Here is the latest version. Desaturated the soil; added a heightfield erode and a displacement surface layer. Am beginning to run out of things to tweak. Any suggestions?
Come on guys, throw me a bone! Does no-one have any thoughts on how I could improve it?
Are you using ambient occlusion? Try making the surface strength 1.3. Also changing the fake internal scattering of the clouds may make them glow more; increase that by 0.2. The clouds edge sharpness might be too high. Lastly, add some tight grass objects. The object scales should probably be 3 greater than the smallest scale for the largest scale.
Quote from: njeneb on June 12, 2009, 05:12:24 AM
Are you using ambient occlusion? Try making the surface strength 1.3. Also changing the fake internal scattering of the clouds may make them glow more; increase that by 0.2. The clouds edge sharpness might be too high. Lastly, add some tight grass objects. The object scales should probably be 3 greater than the smallest scale for the largest scale.
I would say these are some nice tips for the start :) I always wondered when I looked at your picture about how one perhaps could achieve a more defined ray but I had no idea... what lighting do you use, global illumination, ambient occlusion or none? I always noticed very different results changing among the 3 possibilities. Don't know if this helps... :-[
I have the best luck increasing the atmospheres haze density. Sometimes it is necessary to increase the sun light strength. Crank the cloud samples up to 1. I have been using 128 for the atmosphere samples, it defaults at 16. Anything more than 128 really makes for longer renders.
I have only just started messing around with ambient occlusion. All the god rays in my pics use global illumination.
Thanks for your suggestions. My cloud samples are already at 266 (quality 2+) and atmo at 128, sun strength at 6 and haze density at 3.2, which are quite extreme. So there isn't much scope for change there. I can probably get a slightly more defined ray if I process this through Photomatix - this image is just a straight jpg at 0 exposure.
EDIT: I'm not too worried about the clouds and ray in general - more the terrain.
Using GI for the Environmental light, which is cranked up pretty high too (on surfaces only - mmm, maybe I'll try it in the atmosphere) EDIT: no, doesn't help the ray.
I'm not sure that adding grass objects is an option, as the nearest foreground is still quite some distance from the camera. I dismissed fake stones for the same reason - but maybe it's worth a shot.
Even from this distance to the hillsides, the grass objects will add texture. Especially if the smallest and largest scale sizes are exaggerated.
Dominic, I have visitied this thread a couple times now, and I was trying to come up with some tips on how to improve the image further, and help with improving the beam and quality issues, but I could not think of much. Now I think I know why. Your entire scene is really really demanding for TG2. It's going to be very difficult to get out much more than this. One suggestion would be reducing the exposure much when you load the exr, and increase shadow highlights in post, but the real problem is the difficult scene itself.
If you still want to keep at it, I would try a different terrain, that allows the viewer to see much farther. The new terrain should also have much more smaller terrain features, to create the impression of big scale. A couple of known objects (besides the trees) will also help to understand the scale, by e.g. adding a house, a road, a car, whatever.
IF you are going to try a different terrain, my tip wold be to build it under a plain blue sky, so that you have much faster test renders, and can attend to terrain and vegetation distribution detail easier during the creation process.
Best regards,
Frank
I'd be tempted to crop into this, so that you have a diagonal from top left to bottom right, and not worry too much about the details in the shadows, infact the silhouettes would be more interesting. I think you could get this by cranking an exr in post.
Have you thought about shifting the terrain with a transform shader, so that the mountain peak get's the light? It would give you more focal area to concentrate and work on.
Frank - thanks for this very thoughtful response. A lot to chew on.
Hetzen - I guess I was focusing more on the details in the shadows because the NWDA contest is about realism, and I was trying to find ways to up the realism in the terrain - but as Frank points out, this might be a losing battle given the lighting conditions and POV.
I wouldn't give up on this at all. You can still fake this to make it believable. Instead of sunlight, make it moon lit. All you need do is change the sky colour, and get the terrain to move where you can put in some interesting, but focused accents. At the moment your light hitting the terrain isn't defining a shape. Reality is what the viewer wants to believe.
What you have done here, is worked on and demonstrated to all of us what the complications of working on low lit scenes in TG are so far. What ever you decide to do with this, I think will be an excellent lesson to all of us in atmosphere/extra lighting/GI/AO settings.
Thanks Hetzen for your suggestions. In one sense, I have no intention of giving up on the scene, as I like the result already, even if it lacks scope for development into a render where realism is evident at every scale. I like to try to milk as much as possible from a scene, and reducing the cloud coverage, for example, also gives a result worth further improvement (see below). I think I need to clarify something about the competition rules with Frank via personal communication before I decide which way I'm going to proceed.