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General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: Mor on March 07, 2010, 08:52:41 AM

Title: Forest
Post by: Mor on March 07, 2010, 08:52:41 AM
Insipred by recent images with plenty of plant populations I also tried mine. First renders crashed and I had to remove some populations and more carefully limit population areas.

Objects used:
- Birch tree from terragen.org
- All 3 versions of generic pines by Marc Gebhart
- 3 different bushes from Mr. Lamppost's basic bush pack
- 3 different grasses from Mr. Lamppost's basic grass pack
- Grass01_1, Grass01_2 and Grass01_3 (Not sure if these are Walli's?)
-Walli's DNW-flower

With 0.7 detail and AA 6 1920x1080 took little under 5 hours to render.

(http://www.melnworld.com/forest.jpg)
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Henry Blewer on March 07, 2010, 09:00:45 AM
Very lush! I like this. I also have trouble with populations getting too large. More memory and faster CPU's please!
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Dune on March 08, 2010, 03:04:46 AM
You woudn't need the grass (e.g.) to cover the whole area. Replace it by displacement/color in the distance, or use a painted shader to paint where you really need it. Also check the 'camera/pov thing' to keep pops within the viewing angle. That saves a number of instances. But perhaps you know these things and really need more memory indeed.
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Viktim on March 08, 2010, 04:10:55 AM
It looks very good! especially the grass.
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: inkydigit on March 08, 2010, 05:19:08 AM
a lush,verdant scene, well done!
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Mor on March 08, 2010, 10:24:06 AM
Thanks for comments again! I'm currently running TG2 on 1.9Ghz intel core 2 duo, 4Gb ram and win xp. This image was mostly a test how many populations my system is able to handle.
I made some changes to the grasses and in the end of render I noticed that the grass patches didn't render at all and found out that I had accidentally deleted their blend shader and use blendshader was checked :) But after all I think this is more natural looking now.

(http://www.melnworld.com/forest2.jpg)
(You can see full size version by right clicking the image and selecting show image)
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: sjefen on March 08, 2010, 04:55:43 PM
Hi Mor,

I think the image is really good and natural looking, but there is one thing bothering me. I think the shadow areas are to dark for a bright sunny day like this. May I ask what are your GI settings are?

- Terje
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: inkydigit on March 09, 2010, 05:30:37 AM
very nice update, agree with sjefen about the shadows/GI
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Hannes on March 09, 2010, 05:47:45 AM
Beautiful. Maybe the overall blueish color is a little bit too dominating?
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Kadri on March 09, 2010, 06:17:28 AM

Nice image , Mor  :)
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Mor on March 09, 2010, 07:18:56 AM
Thanks for commenting! GI settings were 2,2,8, i.e. default. I agree with the darkness of the shadows now as you mention it, I didn't pay attention to it before. I'll try different settings to improve the lighting (any suggestions or tips?). I think I also found the reason why this image crashed few times. There was one 0 too much on one population size, so it caused huge amount of instances  8) I optimized the population areas to be as small as possible and tested rendering it with 1280x780 and it took only 1.5h. I'll continue tweaking this and post update if I get improvements done.
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: sjefen on March 09, 2010, 10:08:18 AM
I don't think this is the "correct" solution, but if you try increasing the "Strength on surface" in the Enviro light and see what happens.

- Terje
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: dandelO on March 09, 2010, 02:17:45 PM
I think the second one is just lovely. Well done, very nice!
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Gannaingh on March 09, 2010, 02:43:58 PM
The second one makes me want to go outside and run around in the forest!
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: choronr on March 09, 2010, 05:02:04 PM
From the start; and, your latest revision, you've got some beautiful work going on here. I would suggest you reduce the blue sky density; and, maybe increase the decay a bit. Also, maybe elevating the sun a few degrees.
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: dandelO on March 09, 2010, 05:11:59 PM
QuoteI would suggest you reduce the blue sky density; and, maybe increase the decay a bit.

You'd need to alter the 'blue sky density colour'(make it less of a saturated blue), in the tweaks tab for this because, raising the decay would also raise the blue sky density.

Regardless of this, I like the atmosphere in this render as it is, very rich.
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Mor on March 10, 2010, 02:52:30 PM
Thanks fot good tips and suggestions. I tested many things and for this render I changed sun heading and altitude a bit, removed some trees behind camera that cast shadows, increased strenght on surfaces from 1 to 2 and added some clouds. Oh and added some more vegetation :D I'm happy with this image now and consider this version final.

(http://www.melnworld.com/forest3.jpg)

Edit: again right clicking and selecting show image will show it in full 1920x1280 size. Or click here (http://www.melnworld.com/forest3.jpg) :)
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: choronr on March 10, 2010, 06:53:41 PM
You've nailed it; absolutely beautiful work! I need to try something like this soon.
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Henry Blewer on March 10, 2010, 09:19:25 PM
Wonderful work! I like this very much.
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Hannes on March 11, 2010, 07:39:18 AM
Fantastic. I'd love to see a higher resolution!
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: inkydigit on March 11, 2010, 07:55:54 AM
agree with Bob and Hannes...awesome!!!
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Tangled-Universe on March 11, 2010, 08:10:07 AM
I followed this one from the beginning and I think it turned out very nice!
It would be fun to see some more shots of this scene, there're probably enough nice POV's from normal height as well as from below or above...?
Great work!

Martin
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Mor on March 11, 2010, 08:32:20 AM
Thank you very much for your kind words :) I could make few more shots on different POV's as this renders rather quickly. The latest version (1920x1280) took only little over 5 hours with 0.7 quality, AA 6 and GI 2,2,8
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Tangled-Universe on March 11, 2010, 08:44:05 AM
As I said; looking forward to see more.

If you'd like to have a bit more detail in the shadows you might try a secondary enviro light set to ambient occlusion.
Then set the strength and color in atmo to 0 and strength and color on surfaces to something like ~0.4.

Another way is to increase the exposure in your rendercamera. Then you can add as much contrast as you would like in post.

If you're very handy with Photoshop in combo with EXR you can do it anyway, but personally I find that difficult somehow.
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Dune on March 12, 2010, 03:09:21 AM
Very nice result, indeed. One small point: the bark of the large tree is not tiled right. And to get some variation in the quite monotonous, repetitive bark texture of (most) 3D trees, you might want to add a small scale power fractal in the color function of the default, and/or underneath it (just one color, no displacement).

---Dune
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Mor on March 12, 2010, 07:24:39 AM
Thanks for the tips. I'll try them. I have currently renders with different POV's under work and will post 3 or 4 new images as soon as I get them all rendered :)
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Mor on March 13, 2010, 02:56:00 AM
Here comes the set of images (1280x720) with different POV's:

Climbing at pine:
(http://www.melnworld.com/pine_climbing.jpg)
Same set up as the original version, except added lightsource to the same position as render camera to get the pine better illuminated.

Relaxing in the afternoon sun:
(http://www.melnworld.com/afternoon_sun.jpg)
Sun heading and altitude changed, otherwise exactly the same as orignal.

Morning mist:
(http://www.melnworld.com/misty_morning.jpg)
Sun heading and altitude changed, mist added and increased haze density.


For some reason fourth image with only POV changed doesn't render, but keeps giving a lot of following errors:
An unknown error occurred in trBucketRender::RenderMore() ray-traced pass
An unknown error occurred in TraceRay
An unknown error occurred in a render thread
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Gforce on March 13, 2010, 12:19:04 PM
All of those renders look quite nice. The last one is my favorite of the three.
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Tangled-Universe on March 13, 2010, 01:25:46 PM
Looking very good, all 3! The first two are screaming for a DOF :)

About the errors: check your memory consumption of the render, it's probably a memory issue.
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: bla bla 2 on March 13, 2010, 02:33:13 PM
c'est jolie j'aime bien la dernière image.  :)
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: dandelO on March 13, 2010, 04:30:25 PM
I love the pine needles close-up in the first of the 3 new ones, really nice. I agree, DOF processing would be great in those...
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: FrankB on March 14, 2010, 10:39:33 AM
not so sure about the first 2, but the last one stands out with its believable atmosphere and lighting.

Cheers,
Frank
Title: Re: Forest
Post by: Mor on March 31, 2010, 06:36:31 AM
Oh, I forgot to answer here :) Thanks again guys! When I get again more time I'll return to these and try some DOF (already read the tutorials) :D