Hi all. A little background to this render. I was watching a documentary on the TV about a bunch of prisoners in California (I think) who get the opportunity to work as volunteer Fire fighters as part of their sentence, mainly doing things like brush and tree clearance to make fire breaks etc for the forest fires. The camera crew went out with them on their first shout, which was at night. The got out of their transport a mile or so away from the fire front, which was behind a load of hills, heading towards a load of houses. The camera panned round and there was the most wonderful shot of the light from this huge forest fire hidden behind the nearest ridge.
That was the inspiration for this render. I know you are all going to think I'm mad, but I did have a spare old server that I had reconfigured as a PC, so I could leave it running, AND I had to have ray tracing on everything to stop the Light Sources used for the fire light from shining through the landscape so this did add hugely to the render time of....
Wait for it.... wait for it.....
669 hours, 58 mins :o :o :o :o :o
I don't think it was worth it, but I was damned if I was going to stop the bugger after it got past the 100 hour mark. I'd have pedaled a bike hooked up to a dynamo if I had to just though the thing could finish ;D A matter of principal.... so there!
Anyway, C&C (apart from the "you've got to be mad, 700 hour render" etc) welcome. Just some curve and levels correction in Corel Photopaint. Also this may look different on different monitors, being so dark???
Miles
Well, its a bit grainy, maybe up the atmo and cloud samples a tad, shouldn't add too much to the render time (NOT) :) lol
Great idea and execution though, bring on those 16core 24Ghz rigs lol
Richard
I know, I was a bit hacked off with the grain. I did have the 2 clouds and the Atmo set to 100 samples each. If I knocked that up to a non-grainy level I'd be drawing my pension before the damn thing finished ;D ;D ;D
Miles
The grain makes it look like a very atmospheric painting - I like it!
It may be that the cloud density is to eat. It's a really good experiment. I wish my experiments were half as interesting. Sorry about the long render time. You must be like me in stubbornness. I am determined to get my Blender model of a sphinx done before I continue the Desert Temple project.
Good image so realistic...
Sorry for the Month Render...
It really captures the look of a big forest fire... well done. I bet you're almost gutted it didn't take 2 minutes longer... (670hours). It's a shame about the grain... but I can't imagine you're going to render it again at higher settings!
To bad about the grain (and the render time), but the image looks awesome! I sure wouldn't want to be there!
Ta all for the comments. I had no intention of mucking around with any settings and re-rendering.... madness I can cope with, total insanity is another thing entirely ;D ;D ;D aymenk2003, you are quite right, I hadn't worked it out but it is near enough a month long render >:( Curse you, lights shining through the terrain *shakes fist*
littlecannon, yeah, I was a bit miffed at the missing 2 mins, but this was far outweiged by the fact that the damn thing had finally finished ;D
I'm now going to go away and lie down in a dark cave somewhere in Wales for the next few weeks to recover....
Miles
I still think this was worth the render time. It looks cool. I am sure that you have picked up more knowledge for making it.
I think it was worth it, very nice piece, and different.
good colours, not too dark for me but the bubbelish look of the "clouds" is a bit odd to my eyes.
but as you stated, I do not think this render worth the 670 hours rendering :(
I like the colours, looks very surreal to me. The grain adds to that touch imho. And now for the fullscreen version :P I once had a render that ran 1/10 the time...
Insane ;D
I think there's a lesson to this one Mr.Miley. Great concept. Good experiment. And the results proove that this is not the way to do this sort of image.
Ghehe, you're a crazy dude indeed ;D
In case you ever run into the same problem and don't mind ultra-accuracy: 1st only render the sky (disable render surfaces in the render-node) without raytracing and then 2nd render the terrain (atmo disabled in render-node). Fire up photoshop and it would be "just" around 100 hours :p
Ta for all the extra comments. Much appreciated ;D
TU, I had thought about this, and it would have probably halved the render time, as the terrain took ages to render in itself, but by the time i realised that it was going to take an insane amount of time it had become a matter of principal ::) More fool me ;D
Hetzen, quite right, though in my defense, if the lights didn't shine through the terrain, I wouldn't have had to go through this >:( Fixing that added about 400 hours to the render
Seth, see above ;D I don't think it was worth the render time either. Problem was that it was taking 10 hours or so for a tiny crop render at lowish quality. Now I have patience, but not THAT much :D
Miles ;D
When I began raytracing in 1987, I input the data for a chrome chair by hand. It had to be drawn on graph paper first. The chair had 280 vertices; it was quite simple. The render took 6 days at 320 x 200. This was using a raytracer which eventually was released as Sculpt 3D.
Patience is everything...
Quote from: mr-miley on July 28, 2009, 04:00:25 AM
TU, I had thought about this, and it would have probably halved the render time, as the terrain took ages to render in itself, but by the time i realised that it was going to take an insane amount of time it had become a matter of principal ::) More fool me ;D
Hetzen, quite right, though in my defense, if the lights didn't shine through the terrain, I wouldn't have had to go through this >:( Fixing that added about 400 hours to the render
I'm 100% sure it would reduce the rendertime way more than a half. You had raytraced atmo
and clouds as well if I'm correct. Disabling raytracing in atmo alone reduces rendertime often by a factor of ~3-4.
Anyhow, doesn't matter, you learned your lesson ;D I must admit I sometimes also let something render a bit longer than necessary and then I also have a kind of principle of letting it finish, despite the rendertime. But not for almost 700 hours :P lol
Quote from: njeneb on July 28, 2009, 08:13:06 AM
When I began raytracing in 1987, I input the data for a chrome chair by hand. It had to be drawn on graph paper first. The chair had 280 vertices; it was quite simple. The render took 6 days at 320 x 200. This was using a raytracer which eventually was released as Sculpt 3D.
Patience is everything...
I'm pretty sure I was Breaking and doing graffiti in 1987 ::)...