Hi All,
Here's my latest render... just finished then HDR Merged in photoshop. On a MacBook Pro 2.53 intel core duo, 4GB RAM, took 5.5 hours, 0.7375 Quality, 5 antialiasing, GI 2,2,8. It uses mainly Walli's grass cover and Pines.... Thanks Walli for those.
It's still a WIP as I'm likely to be tweaking it for ages. Comments welcome.
Cheers, Simon.
Great plant placement and lighting!
Very realistic...
Loving it, very nice work. For your final image I would suggest increasing the atmosphere settings to reduce a bit of the grain, and increase your AA to 10 or higher as this will really help the grasses in the foreground.
Very nice work! I actually kind of like the grain in the atmosphere, though it could be reduced a bit (I just would not worry about eliminating it entirely). The grasses look great in this lighting. I agree with Ryan that more AA would be good though.
- Oshyan
Great, especially the foreground looks like a photo.
DJ
Hi Guys...
Thanks for all the comments, I'm gonna re-render it with some higher samples (I'm doing one now with different lighting just to see. Although the clouds are looking a bit wrong (hard)... I'll post) and AA (thanks RAcher).
Thanks Oshyan about the noise... I feel it gives a bit of realism like taken from an SLR with a high iso. (Although this will come down when rendered with a higher AA)
I spent quite a while doing the grass populations... using painted shaders (I love these things) and lighting (Thanks Mohawk20 and DJ).
I see more renders coming on!
cheers, Simon.
This is very well composed! Lightning and the populations are absolutely fantastic! :o
Very good for a WIP :) What exactly did you do with HDR in Photoshop?
Thanks... @ MacGyver, In Photoshop I created 3 shots at 2 EV stops difference, then went to automate and Merge HDR, Tweaked the settings a tad and that was the result. I did take it into Photmatix, but Photoshop gave a more realistic look, which I was after. ;D
Ah ok, thank you :)
Very nice render, Congratulations!
Thierry
OMG. This looks real. VERY nice.
That, my friend, is one great render! :o
good composition and good render
Hi Everyone... another test render, slightly different lighting. Still working on it. I am going to try and paint shade out the clouds above the trees on the left, around the sun... and I'm not sure about the bluebells either.
I really like this scene, I like the "power" of the light
Beautiful. Very realistic render.
- Terje
I like the bluebells. Leave them in.
Cheers,
Frank
most excellent!
WOW, this is a very nice scene. Lighting is superb
:o Very realistic ! Well done !
Thanks again everyone for the comments and Thanks Walli, it wouldn't have been possible to achieve such realism without your top quality models.
Just a thought.... is it too late to say this could be a NWDA Comp submission?
Wow! Great image! :o
Love the shadow of the tree!
Hi All... Another test render.
Cheers, Simon.
The tree shadows are exceptionally good - beautiful shot! Does it require soft shadows turned on?
And great lighting! Very realistic overall!
Great work, really like it.
Since you still have quite some time to go you could render this at the maximum allowed size and also with improved settings.
The shadows of the trees and the atmosphere in general in some places are still grainy.
I can easily imagine how smooth and supercrisp this image would look with increase atmo samples and higher overall quality settings like a tad more detail, AA and GI 2/4 or something.
What were your settings?
Hi Martin (TU)
Thanks for the comments... and indeed I will be rendering this at super high quality for the comp. I think the setting were (I'm at work, so guessing): Quality .9, AA 9, GI 2,2, Atmos Samples 64. I'll probably double the samples and whack everything up a notch. And I'll give your GI settings a whirl. This is fun.... ;D
Cheers, Simon.
increase atmo sample maaaan ! this render is very good, you did a good light on this one
Seth... The Atmo sample will go up.... I promise. ;) I just didn't want the week long render time on a test render. (Even if they are HQ tests). I am now quite happy with the lighting (almost). I might want a little more detail to show on the tree trunks (maybe a small fill light? anyone?)... cheers, Simon.
I, personnally, won't touch this light, but you can try a little AO if you want ;)
Quote from: Seth on May 29, 2009, 11:13:07 AM
I, personnally, won't touch this light, but you can try a little AO if you want ;)
First I would test increasing the GI. Frank once kind of learned me that increasing sample quality already helps a lot. Therefore I suggested the GI @ 2/4.
If this still doesn't give the desired level of detail on the bark in the shadows I would indeed add an extra enviro light set to AO.
However, adding AO right away without increasing GI sample quality might give faster renders.
So you have some testing to go it seems ;) lol
Thanks for the suggestions Guys... I'll be giving this a go and I'll keep you posted.
Cheers, Simon.
Still messing around with settings and what not.... Still adjusting the pov since resizing it for the comp and lost the sun as it was, but looks alright....ish.
cheers, Simon
Looks good, though the clouds might be a bit smaller, as these distract a bit.
Did you render it the size you posted it, or did you render bigger? I'd like to see this bigger...
Hi Mohawk20, no I didn't... it's just a test. I'm still trying to get the sun right again, it's really hard without wireframe. And I'll make the clouds a tad smaller... ;)
I have enjoyed watching your work progress. I think it's great.
Quote from: littlecannon on June 03, 2009, 05:44:58 PM
[...]I'm still trying to get the sun right again, it's really hard without wireframe[...]
You should see a tiny cross of lines which represents the sun, in case that helps. Ah, I guess you knew already :-[
Thanks njeneb and MacGyver... I do know about the cross hairs for moving the sun... the issue lies with placing the sun accurately between branches and leaves. I have to move the sun a tad and hit render (crop render) and so on until the sun is in the correct place. I have a new one rendering at the moment at home on my macbook pro (I'm certainly getting my monies worth from this computer).... but this will probably be a couple of days. And Mohawk20 this is at full competition size, so the detail should be good. I'll keep you posted.
Cheers,
Simon.
This is starting to look amazing. I really like the clouds now. Its getting close to photo-real.
I agree with Moodflow - this is so realistic looking. Good lighting. A little more leaf color variety and leaf translucent diversity (to see through some of the leaves) would be perfect.
That's funny.. I disagree with others, imho the first one (from original post) was the best one (best light, pov, clouds..) :-\
Quote from: SpaceMaker on June 04, 2009, 10:07:09 AM
That's funny.. I disagree with others, imho the first one (from original post) was the best one (best light, pov, clouds..) :-\
I think we can agree on that one ;) I like the others as well but somehow the first one intrigued me the most. No offense. :)
matter of taste... the flowers on the ground were not present on the first one... and they add very good colour spots...
Ipersonnally prefer the third shot... but you should not listen to others taste as YOU are the creator of this render ;)
Quote from: Seth on June 04, 2009, 01:26:30 PM
[...] but you should not listen to others taste as YOU are the creator of this render ;)
Of course! :) The personal touch is what makes good renders outstanding :D
Quote from: Seth on June 04, 2009, 01:26:30 PM
but you should not listen to others taste as YOU are the creator of this render ;)
;D Yeah.... but think of the combo of everyone's input, which is deffinitely a great help... Thanks.
Simon.
Quote from: littlecannon on June 04, 2009, 02:16:09 PM
but think of the combo of everyone's input
disagree !
Like I already said before, quoting The Great Dirty Harry : "Opinions are like assholes; everybody has one." ;)
Hahaha..... I am thinking about the tech help more than composition. And I'm glad people like what I have come up with. ;D
tech advices are great, taste critics are "useless" (not really, the word is too strong) because they make you try to please people and not to please you and your idea of the render you're doing :)
Spot on... everyone is entitled to my opinion. ::)
Very, very very beautiful. photoreal - congratulations
Hi guys after 67 hours of rendering... I have another pic.
Great improvement over the last image concerning the lighting! :)
Still a little grain in the upper lower left of the trees though but that's Terragen's problem :-\
Which render settings did you use?
Great clouds! I like where this has come, though I didn't think the initial image needed a lot of improvement anyways... ;)
Thanks all, this is nearly there now. And I might render it again, with higher atmo samples. ;D
The lighting and colours are very natural indeed - as you suggest more atmo samples, and maybe a little less AA?
I notice that some of the leaves/needles on the trees and near-fully transparent...
Quote from: EoinArmstrong on June 10, 2009, 06:37:06 AM
I notice that some of the leaves/needles on the trees and near-fully transparent...
Thanks for the comments, Yeah, I was messing about with the translucency setting and went a bit too far. other than that, I'm quite happy with it.
I think this contest is going to very difficult for the judges. There are so many creating really stunning work, it's wonderful!
its looking wonderful!
it makes me want to go hiking.
Quote from: njeneb on June 10, 2009, 08:00:30 AM
I think this contest is going to very difficult for the judges. There are so many creating really stunning work, it's wonderful!
I wouldn't want to be one of the judges... in this respekt, I'm a bit Monk-ish, so deciding what image is best would be pure horror ;D
Quote from: MacGyver on June 10, 2009, 12:09:57 PM
Quote from: njeneb on June 10, 2009, 08:00:30 AM
I think this contest is going to very difficult for the judges. There are so many creating really stunning work, it's wonderful!
I wouldn't want to be one of the judges... in this respekt, I'm a bit Monk-ish, so deciding what image is best would be pure horror ;D
we thought we'd throw dice. No? ;D
LMAO ;D
Yeees! Do it! ;)
Hi All.... After many days/weeks of tinkering, rendering and crying (Flatmate turned macbook off after 70 odd hours of rendering... what joy) I am pleased to present my final render for the NWDA competition. This render took 45.09 hours on Mac Pro, Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 2.26 GHz, Number Of Processors: 2, Total Number Of Cores: 8, L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB, L3 Cache (per processor): 8 MB, Memory: 6 GB with the following settings:
Pixel Filter = Catmull-Rom (Sharp)
image_width = "1680"
lock_aspect_ratio = "1"
image_height = "1050"
image_aspect_ratio = "1.6"
pixel_aspect_ratio = "1"
camera = "Render Camera"
surfaces_visible = "1"
atmosphere_visible = "1"
do_shadows = "1"
detail = "0.9375"
anti-aliasing = "8"
GI_relative_detail = "2"
GI_sample_quality = "4"
GI_blur_radius = "8"
supersample_prepass = "1"
GI_surface_details = "1"
I have had to resize this and jpeg it up just to make it small enough to post here, so excuse the bad quality. Frank will get the all singing, all dancing version mailed to NWDA.
Thanks to everyone for C+C and suggestions.
Cheers, Simon.
Hi
very, very nice "Foto"!
ciao
naoo
Congratulations - very convincing.
Very good work here Simon!
I checked our e-mail, but didn't see the "all singing, all dancing version"...can't wait to see it :)
There's something I'd like to point out about the rendersettings; you didn't had to render it with GI surface details enabled.
Chance is very little that it does contribute to the quality. Only thing I know is that it can contribute to small scale displacements and very fine detail. Although you have grasses there's no direct need for GI surface detail. The grasses are still relatively "big". The only contribution is rendertime :) Without it rendertime would be half, at most.
So for future projects you might disable that function and increase the AA for instance.
AA 8 is good, but AA 10-12 can look quite better.
For example check on of Seth's latest works here: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6864.msg73040#msg73040 (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6864.msg73040#msg73040)
Although the trees are in the distance they still look smooth and detailed. This was rendered with AA12 if I remember correctly.
So this is just a little remark/thoughts on it.
Congrats with this fine piece of work!
Cheers,
Martin
Hi Martin, Thanks for the comments... The bigger version is 2.7MB and 1680x1050. There is no way on earth I can get this down to 250kb without it looking like it's made out of Lego with a Ready Brek Glow around it. So as I asked in the NWDA thread... can I send you the Good version and then a smaller version for the site gallery?
Thanks, Simon.
Yes, please send both for just now...I'll speak to Frank and the others about this.
Martin
Thanks Martin. I'll have to send it in the morning as i have left my USB key at work... ;D
cheers, Simon.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on July 02, 2009, 01:28:16 PM
Yes, please send both for just now...I'll speak to Frank and the others about this.
Martin
So does this mean we All should send our large images in all their Glory? LOL
Wasn't going to say anymore but couldn't help myself. ;D
hahahaha..... ;D
lol Jay !
Brilliant image. Shame about the noise. :P
Corel Paint X2 has a filter which helps remove noise. GIMP has one that is similar. The only problem is, is smooths out the image. This causes a loss of definition.
There isn't that much noise on the original... it's mainly due to compression. The loss of detail is a problem and would be worse with noise reduction as njeneb suggests. It's mainly due to the complex detail, making the file quite big. To get the full size down to 250kb was impossible even at the lowest quality setting of 1 it was 340kb or so. This came down a bit if I exported for web through Photoshop, but looked terrible, so I had to resize the image down a bit for the competition.
Thanks for everyone's comments, it's in the NWDA comp gallery now, though sadly not in all it's glory.
Jay... your entry has some damn nice looking grass going on in there. Is that a common yarrow in there too? where is it from? It really sets the image off nicely.
Cheers, Simon.
There's a larger copy of the image on Ashunder now.
edit: Link might be useful... http://www.terragen.org/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-5964
Thanks, Simon.
I looked at the full size. It is really stunning!