I got a commission to make a medieval city for an enlargement (7.5x2m) in a public garage (EDIT: underground parking lot), so I'm off the street for a while ;D First of all, I will have to make about 60 or so houses in different styles, most of them quite 'ordinary' medieval, some of them quite special and elaborate. Lot of work (which probably won't pay itself back), but here's the first.
Fortunately they don't have to be that precise, or I should have taken a year to produce them. But these citu generators won't be good enough, as the street plans and houses are a bit specific. So, if anyone has some spare medieval houses, barns, or farms, I'd be much obliged. Perhaps some trade...
I changed the roofs a little after this render, but you get the idea.
I'll post my progress now and again.
this looks really great Ulco,
if I was in any way proficient in modeling I would gladly help...alas, I can only offer enthusiastic encouragement!
sounds like a cool project...hopefully you will have time enough to share your progress...
proost!
J
Quote from: inkydigit on December 04, 2011, 03:17:44 PM
this looks really great Ulco,
if I was in any way proficient in modeling I would gladly help...alas, I can only offer enthusiastic encouragement!
sounds like a cool project...hopefully you will have time enough to share your progress...
proost!
J
+1
Oh I very much hope you can share your work here on this project. Should be great.
One idea would be to look around the Google 3D Warehouse and contact some of the creators to see whether you could use their models. There's a wealth of content and a lot of it is not high detail, so possibly quite right for this project.
Intresting project! And looking great so far. Btw in what program do you model?
I don't know if this will help or not...........he has free as well as commercial models.
http://rodluc2001.blogspot.com/ (http://rodluc2001.blogspot.com/)
That link you gave me is fantastic, thanks! I contacted him to ask what he would charge to do a certain building, as my skills are not that good. Here's an example of the first few houses I made. Done in Lightwave. I have to take into account that the scene will have more than a hundred houses (see real model), along with bushes, trees, and whatnot, and I still have to render it really big. So I can't use really highpoly houses, unless at the foreground. It's quite a task I've set myself, and hope to get it done without too many sleepless nights.
I strive for the use of a few generic textures that I can call in Terragen, not use image maps for each building. So TG wouldn't have to load too many image maps. Then make them different from each other by using additional procedural colors. I don't know yet what my i7 16 gig can handle, but I don't want to overdo it.
I looked at google warehouse too, thanks.
Dune I love following your work in progress threads.
I already like your buildings better than the models in the diorama.
Yeah, Luc is a great source for models and he has textures as well. Should be just a matter of working things out with him. This is going to be quite a challenge in terms of what TG can handle. Will be interesting for sure.
Ulco, maybe Dandelo's Mega wood Floor Shader could be useful (as a basis) for some procedural textures?
Thanks, Frank. Indeed, maybe I will replace some image maps by procedural, as most textures will be in the distance and not every grain will be visible after all. My main concern is that the buildings will not all look the same, so I definitely throw some global dirt across the city. But in fact all buildings are reddish brick, and the fancy whitewashed parts I tried, are not permitted :(
Working on the maps now (this is an all layer screendump with some questions I had for the historian), and building houses.... it'll take while before it gets interesting.
One of the houses, but not finished yet. Kept it fairly lowpoly.
Is anyone familiar with Lightwave? I've messed up something and don't know what. Changed some items in the building, remapped some things, but now the maps get distorted when I open the lwo or obj in Poseray. Does it have to do with welding/unwelding? Please help (although it's not TG)!!
What kind of mapping did you use. UV can cause distortion on planes which do not run along an axis. The roof tilts 'out of plane'. Try just using and x or y axis mapping.
I used atlas mapping which worked well in the first version of this object, but then I changed some things, and it got distorted. So it hasn't got to do with the kind of mapping, just (I guess) with the way points are welded or not. Maybe I should unweld all points, weld the uv's, then merge the points again. Something like that.
Got it fixed. Some things need changing, but here's another testrender.
Another problem: when I apply bump in TG, one or two of the polygons get dark. Any idea what may cause this? I hauled it (both as lwo and exported obj) through Poseray, and welded the vertices, but that doesn't make any difference.
Quote from: Dune on December 13, 2011, 10:24:12 AM
Another problem: when I apply bump in TG, one or two of the polygons get dark. Any idea what may cause this? I hauled it (both as lwo and exported obj) through Poseray, and welded the vertices, but that doesn't make any difference.
I have had these issues before...but was not able to fix...I eventually gave up...
:(
Ulco , can you share the object here to see closer to the problem?
Only one problematic part is enough it doesn't have to be the complete object.
I am curious too what the problem is :)
Traditionally, Dune, those black polys would be the sign of reversed normals. I think if you have the double sided poly ticked in the object panel, certainly with procedurals it makes no difference which way the normals face. Jpegs and bump may be different.
Sorry I can't be of more help, though I can take a look at the model if you need. Im interested to see the result of this render, its a direction TG should be going in.
I've got the same problem in a small lowpoly wall. Attached are the tgo, if anyone needs the lwo or obj to check out, please yell. I have to zip them first. You only have to attach a stone texture.
Hmmm...if these were to be reversed normals/faces then the texture should have been applied to the other side of that face and that's not the case here it seems. It's just being rendered very dark.
What I wonder is if it has anything to do with the size of the polygons. I can imagine that with RTO the value for every polygon is being calculated and since it's a very big polygon it might be an inaccuracy which makes the entire polygon look different from the other in terms of lighting.
How does it look when you add more subdivisions to the model or render it without RTO?
Hi,
I had a look at the arch model and using smooth shaded preview mode that dark area in the render shows up as being different. Opposite to the other parts in fact. I would say something isn't right with the normals there.
Regards,
Jo
Thanks for commenting on this, guys. I'll haul it thru Poseray another time and recalculate normals. See if that helps. Lightwave is 'famous' for not having good UV mapping, so I might have to consider another app. ZBrush is more for 'round things', so I need something for buildings that is not too complicated (like Blender is).
Anyway, apart form the houses, here's a first view test.
ZBrush was only for round things, but the shadowbox modeling tool allows for relatively easy hardsurface modeling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEZ0VGKg-lg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEZ0VGKg-lg)
Sent you a PM Dune.
Quite possible for your purposes (ie just buildings atm) Google sketchup might be worth looking into. Its relatively cheap, has a huge user base and is designed for adding buildings to scenery.
Cheers
Richard
Yeah that's a great tip indeed....even I understood Google Sketchup ;)
That's interesting, Martin. I did check out the ZBrush homepage several times to find out if it's good for me. I think it is... Google sketchup might be too 'simple' for more elaborate buildings, I'm not sure.
My advice would be not to use Sketchup. Its like a microwave meal- you don't really know what's in it (geometry analogy). ZB would do it or wings or metasequoia at the cheap end and I see gret things happening with voidworld
I can confirm that it is reversed normals. 5 tris to be precise. I exported the mesh as lwo and checked. I would have thought Poseray would have sorted it.
I'll check it in LW for reversed normals. I can imagine that, as just this morning I though it might have to do with the subtract method I used to get holes in the wall. I might need to reverse the polys before subtracting, or use adding and then deleting stuff I don't need. LW usually works fine for me, but I have to sort out these silly mistakes and get the fastest and best method to make windows or porches in a wall.
As far as I can tell, it seems that exporting from LW automatically makes an obj with tripled polys. But not all of them get exported 'right'. I tripled manually in LW, and the problem is gone! Thanks for your help, guys!
I learned another trick yesterday; first map the walls, then cut out the windows and doors and map those. Still tediously working on buildings, and I have to work on the terrain as well.
I haven't even started on the lighting, but just making houses and bridges and all sorts of medieval stuff.
The lighting 'out of the box' works well for many scenes. This will look better after the 'Ulco Touches' are applied. Nice test renders!
very interesting to see this all come together piece by piece :)
this looks like a massive project!
It is! I hope to have it done by the deadline of end February. Still building, but I have a good workflow now, no more mistakes, got it all under control. A pity I have to keep the buildings as low in MB's as possible to be able to run the run render without problems with all these houses. I can always work on them later for more polys (like window sills, drain pipes and rounded rooftops).
Luca Rodolfi was so kind to build a quite complicated house, but it's no use to me, unfortunately, as it's heavy and not quite correct (for my purpose). Doing it myself right now.
I bumped into some of Luca's models yesterday, and some of them have an extraordinry poly count. I'm guessing there is some repetition in the textures (stone, roof tiles) that can be doubled up on various buildings?
Is it possible to add a low coverage surface layer, after the default shader to introduce some variation?
I don't know about his other models, but for variation you can add a color fractal (just default would do, only make the size very small, like 0.1/1/0.01), and feed this into the color input of the default shader where the image textures are called. Or attach a surface shader between the default and the part, and blend this by such a PF. You can add color/displacement (be careful) there, whatever you like. For world scale, add a transform shader after the PF and set to world scale.
I really like following this work! Very inspiring! Thank you for that, Dune!
I have started to place some 15 buildings and test render, but already find it's going to 3 GB memory use. I want to keep that as low as possible, due to the fact that that there are some 75 buildings more to come (if not more), and maybe more trees and mist/clouds and such.
So I thought to make a series of default shaders, importing all standard textures needed (20 or so). Then shedding the internal default shaders from the objects' parts, and replacing them by linking to the 'default default shaders'. My only concern is now (haven't tested it yet) that as soon as I close and reopen, the links will be gone. Anyone for suggestions about how best to tackle this?
You won't lose the shader connections when you save and close. Node connections are attributes of the project. The only time objects have default connections created is when they are very first loaded by you into a project.
Since you will render one huge still of this you ultimately may consider, if other things don't work out, to split the entire scene vertically in 2 or 3 tgd files and render those out separately. Each tgd will only contain the visible models with a slight overlap between sections.
Thanks, guys. I just tested it and (of course) you are right, Matt. The only thing that doesn't work is copypaste an object with the new defaults linked, so I have to relink every copy. So for houses that I still have to make, I will keep things as simple as possible (just a few parts), if they are not entirely visible anyway.
@Martin: I considered that, but I hope (indeed) to get away with it, as I would like to be able to render more views or even an animation.
Quote from: Dune on December 30, 2011, 07:19:56 AM
Thanks, guys. I just tested it and (of course) you are right, Matt. The only thing that doesn't work is copypaste an object with the new defaults linked, so I have to relink every copy. So for houses that I still have to make, I will keep things as simple as possible (just a few parts), if they are not entirely visible anyway.
If you have to do this for many models, you'll probably save time using find-and-replace in a text editor.
Thanks Matt. I considered that, but not all models having a 'stone' part use the same texture. And if I keep the 'old' defaults inside the object to find and replace by the new ones, they will probably stay there, but unlinked and will be loaded anyway.
I could of course change all parts' names to the texture they need.... but on the other hand, I still have 2 months...
Still building houses (about 40 done), but also started putting them in place. Still a lot to do. I also need to look what bushes and scrub to use.
looking good
Final gonna be in B&W? That should relieve some of the texturing issues, no? Love that church in the trees.
No, not definitely. But they might want to go for an old-fashioned sepia look. Some post scratches and stains would give it a look that might persuade people that there were actually camera's in the Middle Ages ;)
Can I ask what period in the Middle Ages this is, even if by approximation? From what I can see of the architecture it looks to be form the late Fourteenth Century with elements form an earlier period perhaps middle thirteenth century as well, but predominantly late Fourteenth Century.
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
I have photos of a 'real' smallscale city at my disposal, which has the basic houses in simple carton, paper and other stuff, and some old drawings. From that I am supposed to make something that is around 1600-1700, so very late actually. Due to the amount I get paid and the time I can spend on this before deadline, the houses cannot be very elaborate unfortunately. After this I will probably make some really fine medieval houses (at least attempt to). These are simple, and only to be viewed from a distance. And the historian isn't providing me with all the details I need of the particular houses, so it's a lot of guess work.
I made some really lowpoly people to lessen the streets emptiness, and will probably mask the roadsides (along the houses) and add some populations of crates, tables and heaps of 'stuff'.
This is looking impressive already. The low poly people will work well; they'll help with the sense of scale.
Test 14, but the streets aren't complete yet. On the right side of this view there will be twice as much streets, a castle and two churches I still have to make. At detail 0.5 AA 4 and GI 2/2 this took an hour.
these last few are excellent, especially the misty ones!!
:o
Looks nice already :)
Some more testing with higher settings...
And one more. 24 minutes render :o
Or a you find the people ?
24 minutes on the last one? That looks more like a 5-hour render to me (ok, on MY system). Looks great though. Still a bit smallish in size, I'd expect more houses/outbuildings strewn about on the periphery, but your vegetation distribution is great. If your final render(s) will be from a greater distance then you probably won't have to worry about the masks for streams and roads but if you are staying this close there's probably still some work left on that ( those sharp 90 degree turns for example). Love the people!
They're just very plain low poly chunks, but suit their purpose in the final view, which will be from a much larger distance to cover the whole city. A bit from above, so distant fields and stuff won't be visible anyway.
24 mins on an i7 with 16GB memory (AA8 1/16 samples, 0.1 threshold, detail 0.6). I kept the memory load as small as possible by using the same textures (30 or so) all over again in every building. And there's no compute terrain, threw that out, as it's quite flat anyway. This is the first time I do something as elaborate as this, so it's experimenting sometimes. I might want to try doing this without RT, see what it does to the buildings (more roughness in their structures, which would suit a 17th century look).
Dune, you rock! Checking out that human right now...
This is a great topic for everyone to see how to tackle tough problems when creating complex scenes :)
I think you made some smart choices so far.
Considering the 24 minute rendertime for such a resolution it won't take too long to render the final.
You already decided what resolution it will be?
If you feel up to rendering for 24 hours you may be able to render it @15k resolution with good settings.
I think the photorealism of that when it's printed out will be nothing short of amazing :)
Only problem is RAM. How much is the consumption now?
RAM is still under 2gig, so very low. I don't know about final settings yet. The bigger and more detailed I make it, the more details I have to put in the houses and fields as well. And it's a heck of a job already. Especially making all the quite specific houses. So actually I hope to keep it a bit hazy by all the smoke fires, and a low sun. To obscure less than high quality stuff, and make it dramatic and 'Medieval'.
'Crowding' the streets with stuff like boxes, tables, gates, people, dogs, carts, fences, crates, sacks, cattle is what I dread most. I will probably have to paint some of that in by hand where necessary. That would be easier than putting it all in as objects (whether single or as populations).
I very like test 18. Beautifull and great work!
Wow, that's an impressive amount of work!!
Made some more houses and churches, but still got some problems texturing. Got it right using Poseray, finally, but I still have to get to grips with Lightwave >:( :-[ :-\
Coming along nicelly Dune
Wow - the layout is remarkable. Beautifully done!
This is really coming along well look forward to the final pics.
The major part is still to come; the castle. Part of that is an escarpment (?) with an entrance. Tested here, but hard to get a simple tunnel. For simplicity (and time) sake I will probably just simply break the escarpment and clone the grass over the entrance in post. It'll be very small in the image anyway.
I've just tried to use the simple shape shader to create a tunnel but without succes. :(
I first made the escarpment, then used 2 painted shaders to first level the escarpment back to zero in the entrance, then a second to move a part X-wise (redirect+displacement shaders) behind the bars. It's not perfect, I admit.
Hi Ulco, the last render looks awesome!
I would say embankment maybe, rather than escarpment?
Looks very much like part of a 'fosse' part of the 'bailey' from a 'motte and bailey' castle...
:)
Thanks, Inky.
Two more tests while I'm busy building and placing objects. I have to change the masks so that the grass (which seems to lighten up >:( ) doesn't poke from under the houses. I will also place items such as recently made pile of casks and tables where you'll see them, not everywhere. At least not for this one image I have to make. Too much work. I did make some graves (beside the church), but doubt if they'll be visible.
The wall in the last image, is that procedural or an object?
Great progress, btw. This is a huge job.
lovely light and nice atmo too :)
It's an object.
A few more tests. Staying just under 5GB memory use at 4500 px wide, AA8 1/16 detail 0.65. Only 42 minutes to render these. I had to compress severeley though to get under 512kB.
I have a problem with the strange banding that's rendered in some walls. And I have the idea that if I load another object some older internal links are severed, hence some black houses. A lot of node titles are changed while doing that, with a 'TEMP STRING' line that disappears later. Although I might have forgotten to link them to their texture files...
another one
And a nice one at last ;)
It's been great watching this thread and following your progress. The views from above look really good. The sunset view seems to have an overly flat horizon. Probably normal for this area of the world, but a little variation (trees, distant villages, hills) would help break it up a bit.
Fantastic work!
Quote from: Dune on January 29, 2012, 01:23:55 PM
I have a problem with the strange banding that's rendered in some walls.
The banding comes about when repeatitive iterations of a single image are viewed at reduced size. Looking at the attached graphic, the square image of bricks (1) is used over and over to come up with image (2). When (2) is reduced in size, the result is what you see in image (3). If you resize the graphic downward, the banding in (2) will sort of jump out at you.
The banding issue may resolve itself depending on what size your final image will be. It can be fixed manually, but it's a major P.I.T.A.
Agreed, the banding looks like a tiled texture issue. I assume you didn't mean for them to be tiled in the first place, but if you did you'll have to either make better, more seamless tiles, or add some additional layers to break up the tiling.
Sunset looks quite nice, but with trees/fields/something in the background it would certainly look more natural. Not sure if the plan is to add that stuff later, or if this is just how the area actually is (in which case artistic license might be nice, but not possible for this particular client).
- Oshyan
Thanks guys, I thought as much. The walls are not that tiled, max 2-3 times on one wall, and they're seamless alright. Perhaps the same tile, but slightly shifted or horizontally mirrored, added and blended by a 'world' PF would help. I'll test that maybe. The final size will be a lot bigger (10.000px wide), so it might not be necessary.
And the horizon is empty because the client needs a top down view of only the city and immediate surroundings. No need to fill it up, maybe later. I was just playing about ;)
Right now my main concern is to fill the city with all these houses (only 3/4 done) and then make the light, fields and surroundings as photo-realistic as possible. I think the 'ditches' and sides of the 'gracht' (canal) need some work, for instance.
Any other suggestions are most welcome!
Another test. Some minor post cloning and brushing, I admit.
Enormous amount of work,impressive.
Just out of curiosity is the window of the church postwork or
plain texture?
Keep going,J.
Texture, not even bumpmapped for simplicity sake. They are only viewed from a distance, that's why. For renders such as this I may have to make a bumpmap. Easy enough.
It's great fun playing with these buildings.....
Just cool all over - I really love this stuff :D
More and more impressive. Can I go there when you're done?
Go where? If you mean the final 7x2m print, yes, you can. City of Zevenaar, near Arnhem, Netherlands. Underground parking lot in the center. Should be there at the end of March (they hope).
Meanwhile playing with the houses.... Matterhorn MiniVillage; home of the Lord, the old Miller and the Mountaineer and his two concubines, here seen waiting for the return of mountaineer from his third climbing endeavor, of which he will not return, due to the fact that the jealous Lord shot him in the back while rounding the church on his way up. ;D
Love this one Ulco. I like the way the wall is a bit decrepit on the out-building. Perhaps the roof should sag a little. Depends on available memory...
Ca rend bien. ;)
next test... I increased the refraction index of the windows to 2.4 to get a better reflection, but I think it is a bit too much.
As a matter of fact it is too bad that I had to make the houses so low poly. In renders as close as this, it's visible. But time is running out >:(
next test.. of a bridge leading up to the castle that I still have to make. The bridge might need some extra beams here and there...
Oh, this last one is particularly nice. What a treat!
I like the latest ones a lot! I am very pleased to see this evolving! Great progress and for sure we will all see an astonishing grand finale! ;D
Last image is definately pleasing to look at . This is very, very well done!
Wow...the bridge is just awesome.
Thanks, guys. I've learned a lot since a year ago, when I started building buildings (thanks again, Henry). The main 'problem' is now that I'm getting bored putting all the houses at the right place. There are about 240 of them, still 40 to go or so. I don't have time to build them all as separate items (nor am I paid well enough to do so ::) ), so there's a lot of copy/paste work, and rewire their dependencies. And I need to do some real oil painting in between at the same time...
Some latest items...
The wagon model is just perfect. The buildings textures look great also. I wish you could use higher poly count buildings.
Church and wagon are awesome!
Love the bridge pic
You will have a nice base of objects for your other renders too because of this project Ulco :)
Getting into the final stages. I still need to get the information for the castle, but the rest of the town is quite ok now. I can't get the whole thing here in good quality, so you'll have to do with a low quality jpg and a good quality crop. Final render will be 4-6 times this size, which I think is good enough for a billboard (which normally print at around 30dpi I found out, sometimes even less).
If there's anything you guys think can be better, please tell me.
By the way, this one rendered in an hour at detail 0.6 AA8, and remained just under 5GB memory use.
+crop
Splendid Ulco :) Such a cool project, really!
5 GB already and final resolution is >20k horizontal?
If so you'd require a clever strategy for final render, perhaps splitting it into several pieces and leaving out objects and such for example.
Do you already have an idea on how you're going to do it?
Cheers,
Martin
Veeeery nice, Ulco :)
About the only thing that comes to my mind is some small scale displacement in the land. I know this is the flatlands, so hills are probably out of the question, but what about some small (not more than a couple of meters) tall piles of dirt, possibly overgrown. I'd expect those particularly on the periphery of the town (maybe old construction material hauled out or from agricultural activity). For some reason these wholly flat areas seem a bit unnatural, even from this perspective.
But if you say it won't be noticeable I'll buy that. It's an awesome job already. I hope you'll go out there and take some pictures once it's installed so we can get an idea of its actual size.
Cant wait to see the the final of everything.
Quote5 GB already and final resolution is >20k horizontal?
I'm not sure how big I need this thing to be a decent image on 7x2m. I found that billboards are usually printed at 30dpi or even less. You won't stand very close after all, and even 72dpi of a pc-screen looks very crisp. So even if I run it at 50 dpi, it's 2 pixels per mm, which for 7000mm would be 14000 wide. Do any of you guys know how much memory will be used if you increase size 6x from 4200x1200 to 12600x3600? Will that be 6x as high as well? I might go for 10000 wide after all, which IMO would be quite sufficient.
It's not 6 times higher, but 9 times ;)
Honestly I don't dare to say, I'm sorry.
I expect it to use at least 3x as much memory, but that's a wild guess really.
It depends on so many things like render detail and GI settings.
There are 2 things you could try, if you have the time:
1) I don't know if it will represent it very well, but you may consider rendering some crops of the current resolution vs the final resolution and see how the memory consumption changes.
2) Compare memory consumption when rendering full image @ 8400x2400 vs 4200x1200 vs 2100x600 vs 1050x300 and plot the RAM usage in something like Excel. You could set up an animation to do this all in 1 night. On your new machine it will take just a couple of hours, so you may even consider to add a couple of resolution just in between.
I'll attach an Excel later...
to save RAM, potentially you would consider not using GI at all, but a fill light setup.
Quote from: FrankB on February 08, 2012, 07:08:04 AM
to save RAM, potentially you would consider not using GI at all, but a fill light setup.
Yeah true, but GI @ 1/2/8 probably won't cost that much more RAM I think.
Yeah, 9x of course :P I'll try something like you mentioned. What if I render in 2 crops? Easy enough to combine them in PS. There's not much in the way of clouds, just one to get a subtle shadow. I might even try to use the shadow function and make it a 2D cloud, if that makes any difference, although I never got that to work properly. I think it needs localized clouds.
I think render detail of 0.6 and AA8 (perhaps even at 1/16 and threshold 0.1) would be good enough, would AA have any influence on memory use?
QuoteI'll attach an Excel later...
Will you find time to do so?
I'll make the castle first (hope to get info after this weekend), finalize the town, then do some test renders as you said and plot it out.
Quote from: Dune on February 11, 2012, 04:06:11 AM
QuoteI'll attach an Excel later...
Will you find time to do so?
I'll make the castle first (hope to get info after this weekend), finalize the town, then do some test renders as you said and plot it out.
Yes sorry I forgot, it's on my PC at work...I'll see if I can redo it here at home...shouldn't be too complicated
edit: file attached
Thanks, Martin.
Finally got the info for the castle... so here it is. Now for the final steps (sigh).
This is awesome. I'm kinda anxious for the grand finale!
Going to show my ignorance a bit. There is a building sitting smack in the water. Is it supposed to be that way?
Hi,
Quote from: masonspappy on February 26, 2012, 04:56:50 PM
Going to show my ignorance a bit. There is a building sitting smack in the water. Is it supposed to be that way?
Yes, do a web search for "moated house". I've always wanted one myself, fish out the window, sail radio yachts from the balcony, kayak from the back door etc. :-)
Regards,
Jo
You took the words out of my mouth, Jo!
It's progressing brilliantly. Yesterday I rendered a final concept at 4200 x 1200 (detail:0.6 AA:8 (1/16 samples)) in 1h17 and a croprender from a total of 9000x2571 in about the same time. Memory use was only 6GB. So I might up detail or AA. What do you think from the crop, would it be meaningful to do so?
I also want a little more shadow around the sides of the houses. They stand there a little 'naked', if you get my point. Would shadowed fill lights help in that sense or would higher GI be better (now 2/2)? Soft shadowed fill lights would probably take a lot more time to render, I guess.
these last two are excellent...can't wait for the finalé!
:)
That's coming along very very nicely Ulco.
I think I'd render it with AA8, as you do, but with default sampling at 1/4th.
You can increase renderdetail a bit further, but honestly I do not see much small scale terrain detail which would justify to increase detail beyond 0.6.
Given the resolution and the fact you'll print it this should all be sufficient.
For extra realism you should enable soft-shadows.
I'd re-render this crop with default soft shadows setting and see how fast it renders.
Then render it again and set sample jitter for soft shadows to 0 and see how fast that goes.
Without the sample jitter you may get banding, but that's often difficult to see when the shadow's being cast on bumpy surfaces.
For darker shadows you may need to reduce the GI strength on surface in the enviro light, but you can also reduce the haze/bluesky density since that also affects brightness of shadows.
Thanks, Martin. Good advice. Higher render detail would be more important in low shots, where the fake grass would benefit, so I agree. Soft shadows will be the major improvement, I also thought that. I never touched the sample jitter, so that would be interesting. A lot of shadows fall on straight walls/streets of course, so I might need jitter after all. I will also eliminate the fill light I have now, besides GI 2/2. Not necessary perhaps.
For copyright and abuse reasons, I can't post the whole thing in its 'full majestic splendor', I'm afraid, but I'll definitely post something. You're all invited to Zevenaar ;)
Ulco are the walls roof etc. procedurals or real texture maps or both of them ?
They're texture maps (6 different wall types, 4 roofs) + color variation on world scale (and some houses have added patches of procedural concrete/cement/mud). You probably noticed some banding ;) Maybe it's a good idea to try making some medieval like stonework procedural. Nice challenge.
Thanks Ulco and ;)
Looking good, looking forward to the finished work.
Wow, don't have to say much more here :)
I agree about the soft shadows if you can pull it off, should help with realism. Detail already seems very granular, especially when this is going to be printed and seen from quite a distance I presume.
I am wondering how you knew what to charge for your fee for this project? It looks like your playing a number of rolls, designer, modeler, environment artist, more(?).
Graphic designers have The Graphic Artists Guild - graphicartistsguild.org/ to help them figure pricing out. What are you guided by Ulco?.. If you don't mind a little business talk
???
I don't mind at all, and to be honest I totally miscalculated this project. I worked on it for 3 months now (not all the time, but most of it). Especially making the houses took a tremendous time, as I am fairly new to modeling, and encountered several problems texturing at first. And there were complicated buildings I didn't know of when calculating my price. The terrain itself was a 'piece of cake', but placing the houses and rewiring their dependencies (they all link to a bunch of communal, internal shaders) took a lot of time as well; 240 houses of 35 types or so. Boring job.
I was also afraid they would find a guy who just painted something cheap and fast, and I was quite keen to do this. But despite the low earnings, it gives me a great sense of reward, having pulled this out of my hat.
I'm not a member of any organization such as you mention, so I have to think ahead and try to imagine the time I will spend. Hard, but a lesson for next time ;D
Soft shadows improves the image a lot, as does elimination of my fill light. Martin's recommendations followed, but I made the soft shadow 1 and samples 5, jitter 1. Still takes almost 3 hours for this part, which is about 1/8 of the total. Added a wagon I made yesterday (not the horses). Another crop is now rendering with jitter 0, see what happens. I also lowered the wave size for the next crop.
No post work, by the way.
So a final rendertime of 24-30 hours. Not bad at all, hence the huge resolution. I know you don't like long (overnight) renders, but you really have to face it this time :D
I guess so. I only see there's a glitch in the hind wall of the castle area. Some polys darkened, where they shouldn't be >:(
I have been following this, but not commenting. I think this is really wonderful. Great work Ulco!
That last render is so crisp! Really very good quality Ulco. And thanks for the info, if you learn of a guild for this kind of work please let us know!
For a rough-base estimate
http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/
Frakking wonderful! Don't try to count the minutes to render this man, this is the result of 3 months of work after all. You'll want it to appear as close to perfect as you can get it.
And you'll have a great visible reference project behind you for as long as you want to use it to drum up more work and justify your prices. That must be worth something. 8)
Thanks guys. You're absolutely right of course, otakar. It's just that these guys aren't very appreciative (in their words) of all the effort that went into it. It's a bit hard therefor to give them the pleasure to enjoy it in full quality. But your last sentence is very relevant, and I will surely pursue highest quality. It's a matter of pride as well. One of the reasons I post is to qualify myself as worthwhile hiring; it's my job after all.
I also want to take this opportunity to encourage professionals to post images they (partly) make with TG. They're probably lurking around anyway to pick up some bits and pieces, so why not post? It's good to encourage people get the most out of this fantastic software, it's one of my reasons anyway. Besides getting a lot of C&C.
Back to business; the jitter of soft shadows at zero gives banding indeed.
Ah indeed, well it was worth trying :)
I too wonder why other professionals here are either inactive or not posting works.
NDA's certainly are part of the reason I believe, but still in the end it's virtually always possible to show at least something.
I know a couple of people, Matt for instance, who don't like sharing their personal doodle's because they think it's not of good quality and/or interesting.
Which is non-sense of course :)
Like Ulco said, just show it!
Wow. This is amazing. Having watched this over the time period since this thread began, you have done a fine job of placing intricate details - impressive.
I agree. Besides, generally its the script that has to be kept secret, a few images are not going to give much away. I would also keep the name of the client secret in most cases.
Very nice Ulco. I am very keen to seeing the full render one day perhaps. This is a job extremely well executed!
The landscape and trees are the best part. The renders look better without the town :)
The quality of the buildings and the shadows are what is pulling it away from being stellar. The buildings are all perfect boxes and not well integrated into the terrain. The shadows are all perfect and hardedged. This is of course unnatural. Is there a way for Terragen to blur the shadows?
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on March 01, 2012, 03:26:39 AM
I too wonder why other professionals here are either inactive or not posting works.
Interesting observation and, I think, quite correct. Speaking only for myself, my images routinely incorporate Terragen 'scapes, xFrog plants, Blender objects, and even people from DAZ3D. I believe Terragen and xFrog art the best programs at what they do, and Blender is a remarkable program that is - amazingly - free. For my work, I need all these elements. I haven't posted many (most) of them here because I just wasn't sure that would be seen as an appropriate use of this forum. :-\ Which has been kind of a bummer, as I'm really looking for honest feedback about my images to make them better, and I certainly get that here. And it's been greatly appreciated.
Quote from: RRMessiah on March 01, 2012, 05:01:30 PM
The landscape and trees are the best part. The renders look better without the town :)
The quality of the buildings and the shadows are what is pulling it away from being stellar. The buildings are all perfect boxes and not well integrated into the terrain. The shadows are all perfect and hardedged. This is of course unnatural. Is there a way for Terragen to blur the shadows?
I wonder how much of this thread you have been reading and how well you have been looking at the last image being posted?
I'm fine with the fact that you don't like the buildings, fair enough and I'll get back to this below, but the shadow part is just non-sense to me.
Ulco uses real-world scales in this image AND used a soft shadow radius @ 1, which is twice the softness that naturally occurs.
Perhaps you could also elaborate on why you think the buildings aren't well integrated? I think if one shares one's opinion, then also explain why and if possible offer a suggestion for improvement. This is called 'constructive criticism' ;)
Cheers,
Martin
Thanks Martin. I would indeed like to hear your ideas about improvement of building integration, RRMessiah. And I must again make clear (I wrote that earlier in this thread) that due to financial and time restraints, the buildings had to be made fast and lowpoly. Also because I didn't know if TG could handle 240 highpoly houses, plus trees and stuff. With more time and more payment, I could have made it much better of course, but I have to draw the line somewhere.
I've just realized how good the water is in your picure. The colour and transparency are perfect, I'd love to hear more about how you achieved it. The problem with the buildings is the problem of bump mapping in TG. The buildings look very smooth, I'm not sure how much can be done without huge overheads in memory use and time.
Fantastic work Dune, I love following your work.
When will bump mapping work with RT objects? I think this is one area that would improve your objects (houses) a lot and not add much time on your part.
For me it is beginning to get a little hard to evaluate TG2 renders, because now I have a very good understanding of how hard it is to make a great image. So when I see a new render I always first think "how hard would that be for me to make", Then I ask my self, "does that look real?" Its hard to imagine now what I would think of a lot of renders if I had no idea what TG2 was.
Then again, if there was more animation and sequence making the reality question would not mater so much, because it becomes like a movie and the real/unreal nature of the renders becomes style/esthetic. We here tend to imagine the renders up on a studio wall next to photographs, or composited into film. A still and a animation are two entirely different monsters.
In the case of Dune's work here, I think it is very important to remember that the images are a series, where the images will be seen together as individuals, so the consistency between the individual images will form a context to view them in, like an animation.
Taken as a whole, and with a little imagination, its easy to see the work as an exhibit. And in that context I think this work is very very good, so as to become a stylish design, a creative series, ART. However, if the renders do not look like they were made by the same artist, if the renders are not consistent, than the work will fall apart.
Thanks for your thoughtful words, Badger. What I did here is showing my progress in the one and final image I have to make, sharing my ideas and questions, hoping for constructive feedback to possibly improve it. What everybody working with TG knows is that's it's a struggle (but a very pleasant one), and you won't turn out a perfect image at the click of a button.
@mhaze: I added a semi transparent (surface layer @ 0.8 coverage or so) mud color over the terrain colors with a max size at around water level. The water itself is extremely basic; roughness 0.001, wave scales 0.3 and 0.1, wind patch 3, 30 m, sharpness 5, transparency 0.75, decay distance 1.5, volume density 0.1 default gray.
Thanks for that info :D I shall have to study it and find a landscape where it may fit ;D
Finalized this project. I can't show the whole thing (NDA), but some parts are fine. After the render finished (4 crops after 25% GI pass, total rendertime 20 odd hours, 10000px wide, detail 0.65, AA 8 (1/16 first sample), GI 2/2). Pasted together in PS (layer... lighter). I think for a smaller sized image I would have set detail to 0.8 and AA full at 8 or 16 or so, but for this 7x2m print in a semi dark garage this seemed ok. Anyway, I will probably make some detailed renders out of this from more interesting viewpoints and nicer light. The client wanted just plain sunlight so all was visible, not even some cloud shadow :-\
detail 1
detail 2
Congrats Ulco! Looks nice :)
Impressive amount of work and a great result!
Love it, great work! :)
Richard
What an epic project! How big will the final be printed at? With so much detail there are things to explore even at wall-size.
- Oshyan
epic, yes it is!
It'll be printed at 7x2 meters, i.e. @ 35 dpi (billboard resolution), which seemed fine to me. There's obviously much more detail, even if rendered 10 times as large, but I wouldn't be able to pay the electricity bill anymore ;)
I could have added lots more little fences, more different people objects, crates, and other stuff, as the memory use wasn't even big (<6GB). I also could have painted in lots more items in post, but I have to move on to other projects (for a decent income).
Great stuff! A huge print for a huge project :) Fun thread too.
Dune, I'm really knocked out by this. The amount of work and detail is impressive. It's a shame that you have to move on before adding extra detail but I know how you feel, one reaches saturation point and has to do something new. Inspiring work though.
I think everything is said. It's gorgeous!!!
It's there and it looks good. Here are some (bad) photographs of the render in situ.
(http://www.terralights.de/terralightsII/images/smiles/extremstaun.gif) awesome!!
wooohoooo niiiice
Really very good.
Richard
ps nice outfit, great hat too ;)
!Outstanding!
Great work :)
Must be a warm feeling standing there before your image printed on the wall this big Ulco 8)
Congratulations Ulco!!!
Well done - looks fantastic. You must be well pleased.
Cool to see it in situ,very nice.
C'est cool. ;)
A-MAZ-ING.
Congrats on completing a great project.
Well done indeed! Fantastic work!
Thanks guys. But the guy with the funny hat is not me! I'm much more handsome and quite a bit younger ;D
An epic ending to an epic project!
Amazing. Look a them people taking photos of your render!!
Congratulations, you totally deserve it man. :D
tremendous finale!
well done Ulco...
:)
Quote from: Dune on May 20, 2012, 12:05:06 PM
...But the guy with the funny hat is not me! I'm much more handsome and quite a bit younger ;D
I thought it was Cypher eh, Rich! :D
Congrats, Ulco. Amazing work!
Hi Ulco,
That's super cool, congratulations :-). Now I want to go and see it...
Regards,
Jo
That would be quite a flight, Jo ;) I know; I've been down at your place in '88/'89.
Superb in all aspects! Nice to see this project finished, been following quite a while :)
It looks great! It must be so satisfying to see a tangible result from so many hours working on getting it just right. Just think of the thousands of people that will see it over the lifetime of it's installation.
Congrats!
Axe
Congrats!
I was expecting a dark concrete cavern somewhere and instead it's a nice bright hall! I hope they have a Terragen reference there on the wall, too. Congratulations!
Congrats. It looks great :)
Gefeliciteerd, Ulco, schitterend staaltje werk!
Where's the exhibition? And till when? I'd love to see this with my own eyes, live size!
Fantastic! I love that someone is trying to take a photo of your computer-generated image. ;)
- Oshyan
Dank je, Andy. Thanks, Oshyan. It's not really an exhibition, but a permanent thing (unless the vandals come along). It's in the underground parking lot on the Masiusplein, central Zevenaar. Drive in, walk towards the elevator, and there you have it. They also have some displays with archaeological finds and replicas of finds there.
And finally, some 100% crops from a 10000x5000 render. With some PS postwork, I must say (smoke, grass here and there). The whole image is awesome, and will probably be available as a limited edition print later on.
I realized that I have to search for a better way to make meadows with soft grass, procedural, and which keeps well in large renders.
Thank you for this. Always a thrill. It'd probably take me weeks just to get the paths look right. One of the hardest things with these realistic renders is the elimination of too many straight lines, which the eye catches rather quickly - and which give an unnatural impression if not removed or softened.
Be sure to let us know if a print becomes available.
Another POV, no post so far except some gamma adjustments. I will probably work this one out to another highly detailed Limited Edition Print. I have to change some things though...
Any comments are welcome of course!
I like this last comp^^ very much, Ulco. Its a very nice image. It would look great in my library (if I had one :()
The render turned out blocky due to forgetting GI prepass, but it has some very pretty parts (IMHO). This is a fraction of the total.
Ulco,
If it saves time to not have GI prepass on, consider using Autopano pro or Autopano giga. If you are assembling the frames like a pano. Autopano can auto correct those frame blends. And does a pro job of it to.
http://www.kolor.com/
Could be worth a try. There is a free trial, I believe. I have used this software for a while now, its pretty darn good.
It is a different scenario. The render has been made by a renderfarm (Pixelplow), who work with tiled rendering. They automatically 'stitch' it all into one image to be delivered, so I have to do the prerun myself and have the farm read the GIC, or use fill lights. But 'we' are working on a solution. In the meantime I have received a new render (done with fill lights), which came back really fast and incredibly beautiful.
But thanks, The Badger!
The only thing I had to do is add some 'dirt' here and there, and smoke from the chimneys. Procedural 'easy smoke' to be placed on top of the chimneys would be super!
awesome... :)