A project I'm working on; a Dutch medieval city in winter, based on archeology data. A heck of a lot of work to make all the buildings, these are just 1.5 street, the whole center and wharfs still to come. I'm running into memory problems already, probably the buildings are too detailed. So, I will pull up whole lowpoly blocks in Lightwave, and reduce texture sizes for the more distant houses. And of course there's snow to come on the roofs... This took 1.5 hours at detail 0.5 and AA4 for 2000x1000px.
This project takes up so much time, that I'm probably not in the game for the animation contest, but alas.
---Dune
why, you could use this scene as a submission, for example. Or one of your previous ones. If there's one guy on this board who has a wealth of interesting scenes already falling out his pockets, it's you ;)
This is really nice, I like it. Can't wait to see snow on the roofs. It is definitely worth the time spent.
Ulco, you are a Master at this. It may be necessary to render the scene/s using clip renders. Or perhaps the 64 bit version will be ready soon. This would solve the RAM difficulty.
Love the ornamental gardens! Superb work as usual.
Holy Shrek! Looks like you solved your tree placement issues. Great building models as well.
And I agree with Frank, a flyover of one of your terrains would be very intriguing...
Thanks, guys, I´m overwhelmed by your compassion. ;D
If possible I would like to use another commission I´m working on (the Garden of Eternity with labyrinth), but have to ask permission, and hopefully finish it in time (also going away for a couple of weeks in between). Thát would make a great animation...
Another great scene, Ulco, very, very nice, as we've all come to expect from you. Lovely! :)
I think my memory concerns are over, halved all texture jpg's, replaced the roofs by some snowed roofs, so I could loose the extra nodes to get snow on the roofs, and also found that the only tree still had a bark texture of 10MB, which is now some 50kB. I filled half the city with what houses I had, but for variation I'd have to make some more. Just rendered a crop of a total of 4000x2000px, still without soft shadows and low clouds to see how it went. It went quite ok. Will be updated...
By the way, I have permission to use the Garden of Eternity for the contest, so I'll give it some priority. Hope I make it in time...
It's coming on nicely. The only thing I see odd is the boats. If you defined the canal more they would not seem to be sitting on the ground.
It was the Little Ice Age in that period, so everything is frozen (but no penguins). Two boats actually are sitting on land, it will be a line of wharfs right there (beams, sheds, rubbbish, etc). But it might be nice to have a little open water here and there... some medieval skaters on the ice... lots to do.
I read about that 'ice age'. A curious time.
An update on this project. Reduced from 2000x1000 which took 36 minutes. Built some more 'houseblocks', and tried to keep files as low as possible. I think there are about 30+ object (copies) or so, all manually placed. Right now another one is running, this time with soft shadows on, but it's using 2.65 GB already. I need to roll out a picture of 5000x2500 at least, later on... ???
Now I need to make some statues for in the park. Dirt, planks, carts, people and so on need to liven up the empty city, but I guess that'll be a Photoshop job.
looks fantastic, some smoke for the chimneys also, I guess?
Great work!bravo!
Looking great!
A 'little' update on my winter town. I made some more boats, some other houses and the 'ophaalbrug' (bridge). Still needs a lot of work, but I'm getting there.
I think the patchy snow on the roofs works well except with the house in the immediate foreground, where it's close enough to expect to see some displacement.
Nice progress :)
Dune i looked to some "ophaalbrug"' photos on google but i couldn't make my mind. Does it look a little too narrow (for the boats ) or is it OK?
I think you may be right about the cloud quality affecting the shadows for them. It may also be the atmosphere quality. This is coming along very nicely.
I am not sure how to get the snow to drift up against the houses. I think an image map for a power fractal may work. The image map to control the location and the power fractal for the displacement.
QuoteDoes it look a little too narrow (for the boats ) or is it OK?
It is OK, but only just!
:)
@Henry: I changed atmo quality to 64, and it's better now. I have to be very careful though with what I all put in, as it's a very heavy burden for my cpu/memory. Without preallocating memory, it crashed yesterday. With allocating it rendered fine at 2000px wide. There are maybe 60-70 objects plus one pop of trees. And I need to make this a big one (5000px wide). I hope it'll work out. I repainted all the image maps, with a tiny edge of snow at the wall bases.
@Domdib: You're right, I have to do that.
Maybe rendering the image in sections (crops) would help with the memory issue. I have found that reassembling a large image using Corel Paint does not leave color issue from one crop to the next. I overlap the crops at the edges. I use horizontal render crops also, instead of vertical sections.
Yes, that might be what I have to do if it fails; crop. But for now it is going well at 2200 px wide. And quite fast at that: 1 hour at detail 0.5 and AA 4. No GI, but three extra lights. If I save as BMP or TIFF I can easily put them over each other with a little soft edge in PS. By the way; there are 109 objects!
It's really quite beautiful.
One other thing - I see you're already intending to work on the smoke from the chimneys - perhaps a little browner??
But overall, it's a wonderful render.
I finalized my Winter Town. Due to copyright restrictions I can't show him here in all glory, but here's some crops. I only painted in some people and wood near the wharfs, some extra smoke, and the antique cart, the rest is TG. Suffice to say that I am very happy with this great piece of software. Heep heep hooray!
---Dune
crop 1 and 2
Your crops are nice too , Dune :D
Man, you have PATIENCE! Splendid results. I hope they pay well :)
Fabulous work.
Masterpiece, Ulco. AGAIN! :)
Unbelievable amount of detail in this render, I'm amazed.
Respect!
Frank
QuoteI hope they pay well
Not all the hours I spent, I'm afraid, but it's been fun and a good lesson (in patience). And now I have these objects already at hand for another image.
@Frank: Thanks.
Fantastic! I really love images I can look at for a long time discovering lots of details.
Judging by the detail here and your patience, your home must be spectacular. Your work is one of a kind!
Which one of my homes are you referring to? ;)
Quote from: Dune on July 30, 2010, 02:57:22 AM
Which one of my homes are you referring to? ;)
Your main dwelling.
I was only joking... I only have one, but you're right, my house looks fine. I like things to be beautiful. Not expensive, but fitting well together, no ugly distractions. Esthetically balanced so to speak.
Quote from: Dune on July 30, 2010, 03:07:59 AM
I was only joking... I only have one, but you're right, my house looks fine. I like things to be beautiful. Not expensive, but fitting well together, no ugly distractions. Esthetically balanced so to speak.
Me too - an incurable neat freak; my daughter says I'm excessive compulsive. My daughter-in-law asked if I do feng schay whatever the hell that is.
Quote from: choronr on July 30, 2010, 03:15:40 AM
... My daughter-in-law asked if I do feng schay whatever the hell that is.
Hehe, haha, very nice Bob :-)
Feng Shui - Nothing you need to know, so forget about it :-)
Cheers,
Frank
Quote from: FrankB on July 30, 2010, 04:49:31 AM
...
Feng Shui - Nothing you need to know, so forget about it :-)
...
So true ! Money , time and mind traps ;) :D
For anyone interested; this render, and two more Terragen renders are featured in a Dutch artbook about the city of Vlaardingen, entitled 'Het Groot Vlaardings Prentenboek': http://www.deweekkrant.nl/artikel/2010/november/24/geschiedenis_in_oude_beelden (http://www.deweekkrant.nl/artikel/2010/november/24/geschiedenis_in_oude_beelden). Published big, so I'm really pleased.
Congratulations Ulco!
I really like the fact that you're clearly appreciated and referenced for the work on this book :)
Cheers,
Martin
congrats Ulco...a fascinating journey, I would love to see the book...
Adding to those congratulations.
Hope you got a free copy of the book too!