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General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: Hannes on May 09, 2013, 08:26:42 AM

Title: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Hannes on May 09, 2013, 08:26:42 AM
I was looking for a way to get rid of the vertical stretched displacement on steep walls and found this thread:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,15407.30.html
Kadri used Jo Kariboos file there. The crater is inverted to create a tower. I inverted it again to get back a crater, placed some instances of it in a (irregular) line to create a gorge with nicely displaced walls. Additionally I used dandelO's cracks and some more voronoi fractalized stuff by glen5700 as far as I remember.
Title: Re: The gorge
Post by: TheBadger on May 09, 2013, 08:37:25 AM
Thats very nice, Hannes!

Another good one.
Title: Re: The gorge
Post by: Dune on May 09, 2013, 09:17:52 AM
Great, Hannes. Maybe a little less birds?
Title: Re: The gorge
Post by: Hannes on May 09, 2013, 09:23:47 AM
Maybe you're right, Ulco. I am thinking of creating an animation (the view of a paraglider jumping off the edge of the gorge and slowly flying through). Either I leave the birds out completely or I'll have to use my animated ones.
Title: Re: The gorge
Post by: Dune on May 09, 2013, 09:46:27 AM
Good idea, that would be a great animation. Him/her passing a few unobtrusive birds (soaring buzzards?) would be interesting. If you use your animated birds, it might distract from the descent.
Title: Re: The gorge
Post by: inkydigit on May 09, 2013, 01:05:27 PM
hang/power glider... great idea!
I love this gorge... great place for a flight!
:)
Title: Re: The gorge
Post by: Zairyn Arsyn on May 09, 2013, 02:30:42 PM
this is really good Hannes.

i really like the displacements/slight overhangs
Title: Re: The gorge
Post by: Markal on May 09, 2013, 09:26:09 PM
Superb, this is an awesome image and an excellent camera angle...the birds seem a bit over sharpened...or maybe its my monitor? Excellent image!
Title: Re: The gorge
Post by: Jo Kariboo on May 10, 2013, 01:07:42 AM
Very nice formation of rock and distribution of vegetation !
Title: Re: The gorge
Post by: mhaze on May 10, 2013, 07:07:51 AM
Very nice Hannes. Dune have you got something against birds after all there are rather a lot of them out there in the landscape :)
Title: Re: The gorge
Post by: Dune on May 10, 2013, 11:57:45 AM
I hate birds, I'm an ornithologist  ;)
Title: Re: The gorge
Post by: Walli on May 10, 2013, 12:01:41 PM
very nice scene, reminds me of france.
Title: Re: The gorge
Post by: Antoine on May 10, 2013, 12:11:28 PM
great work !
I like the rock shaders and the trees.
Title: Re: The gorge (with preview animation)
Post by: Hannes on May 13, 2013, 05:03:13 AM
Here is a low quality preview animation of the first 262 frames of 400. There's a lot of shadow popping and some weird displacement artifacts. Rendertimes were 15 to 20 minutes per frame at this low quality and resolution. The water shader is replaced by a glossy surface shader at the moment for testing purposes.
In the meantime I'll have to turn off some of the very fine displacements to reduce rendertimes. I animated the mist a bit and deleted some of the plants that weren't visible. I'll do some tests to render out a higher quality animation. Probably I won't be able to use really high quality settings, especially turning on "detail blending", because rendertimes are incredibly high even with the actual settings.
I used "receive shadows from surfaces" in the atmosphere and in the mist's quality tab to create some subtle godrays and to make the sun not shine through the terrain.
Title: Re: The gorge (with preview animation)
Post by: Bjur on May 14, 2013, 02:56:39 AM
Outstandig! Great image and even greater animation Hannes.

Any chance your final render will have a more cinematic frame (thus wider)?
The camera movement is also excellent and felt "real".

Now the horror: I think it is a bit too fast. The tempo feels more like the speed of an helicopter or so.
Yeah, unfortunately another 100-200 frames for the same distance to slow everything down would add even more horrible render time..

But your beautiful canyon and its impressions just shouldnt pass that fast ("In the name of eye candy!").  :D
Title: Re: The gorge (with preview animation)
Post by: Hannes on May 14, 2013, 04:21:35 AM
Thank you for your friendly words, bjur.
I think you're right about the speed. Since I animated the camera in 3ds max it wouldn't be a problem to just "rescale" the animation. Also using a more cinematic aspect ratio would be nice. As you said rendertimes are a big issue in this case. I will definitely not be able to render this in Full HD in high quality. The initial image took more than nine hours in a 2400 X 1350 px resolution. I'd have to use some settings like detail blending which would increase the rendertimes even more.
Anyway I like your suggestions. At the moment I am rendering this thing with a resolution of 1280 X 720 (same quality settings like in the previous one) and it takes 30 - 40 minutes per frame.
But I think I will give it a try to slow down the animation and to use another aspect ratio. Maybe 1024 X 436 px.
Title: Re: The gorge (with preview animation)
Post by: Bjur on May 14, 2013, 07:49:28 AM
I'm going with "2.39" atm. for a cinematic aspect ratio for my 1st test animation including GI just right now. *lashes renderslave*

In your case, with a HD resolution of 1280x720, you would get 1280x536 with 2.39. So you could safe render time right from the start if you rly think about using
a cinematic like aspect ratio for the final render and you would see earlier what you get later. Fun thing is/beware, the whole animation and scene will appear different then visual wise.

I dont know your settings in all nor i'm experienced enough to give a good advice in your case/scene. Just try to go with AA-bloom unchecked if possible for saving more render time (i hate AA-bloom even when it could be useful sometimes).

I wish you good luck and i hope you will be triumphant! I'm very curious about your final render somewhen.. :)
Title: Re: The gorge (with preview animation)
Post by: Oshyan on May 15, 2013, 06:39:55 AM
It looks very good so far. It may be slightly fast, but take a look at the actual helmet-cam videos from wingsuit flights, it's quite fast!

Render times are probably much more affected by casting shadows into clouds and atmo than by your displacement shaders (I am guessing here of course, but both those settings are very "heavy", as you know). Have you tested render time and visual results with them on and off, to see if it's worth the extra time?

- Oshyan
Title: Re: The gorge (with preview animation)
Post by: Hannes on May 15, 2013, 02:28:52 PM
Thanks bjur, at the moment I am rendering the image sequence with an updated camera animation (600 frames now!), but TU suggested to render only every nth frame and to use After effects to interpolate the missing images. I am rendering every second one because of the wild camera movements at the beginning. We'll see how it will look. I made some tests and frame blending worked quite well. I found a great time mapping video tutorial on videocopilot that gave me some inspirations. Andrew Kramer always inspires me  ;D

@Oshyan: yes I did some tests and I found out that in this case the main factor is the displacement. That's why I turned off some of the smaller ones that aren't much visible in the animation anyway.
The shadows in the atmosphere and in the mist are of course making rendertimes a bit longer, but I think it's worth it. And it's not as much as the displacement does here. I want those godrays!
Title: Re: The gorge (with preview animation)
Post by: TheBadger on May 16, 2013, 04:22:21 PM
Its good Hannes. But is it going to be a helmet cam, or will you put someone in front of the camera? Someone in front would effect the aspect positively.

Kadri has some skydiver models he has posted before. Maybe you could get one from him?
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Hannes on May 20, 2013, 06:20:11 AM
Here is the final animation.
http://vimeo.com/66543348
There's still some terrain and shadow popping. I used a value of 0.5 in ray detail region padding which wasn't enough obviously. I rendered every second frame and time stretched it in AE. 600 frames now.
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: ra on May 20, 2013, 11:03:53 AM
Great one! The lower fog layer gives a great atmospheric feeling to this!
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: TheBadger on May 20, 2013, 01:01:06 PM
From 8sec to 13sec is my favorite part. IT IS FRIGGING GREAT.
The entire thing is very good too.
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: otakar on May 20, 2013, 01:06:32 PM
Very nice! Very smooth. Missing the birds somehow :)
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Dune on May 21, 2013, 03:23:59 AM
Awesome!
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: masonspappy on May 21, 2013, 04:19:42 AM
Well done!!
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Oshyan on May 28, 2013, 01:58:09 AM
It's a really cool final animation Hannes, you do very well with the camera setup (and of course the texturing). However there does seem to be a lot of shifting/popping of the terrain (canyon walls) between frames. I would guess this is due to lower main Detail, or lack of Detail Blending or Displacement Filtering, and I suspect this is also (at least partly) the cause of hard-to-fix off-screen shadow popping - even with ray detail region padding, if your main detail is too low, the issues will be worse. Still, it's a result of compromise due to render time issues, not a fundamental problem with your work. Overall very nice indeed!

- Oshyan
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Hannes on May 28, 2013, 05:02:36 AM
Thank you! Yes Oshyan, you're absolutely right. First of all the animation was rendered with the Quick render settings. I used a value of 0.5 in ray detail region padding, which wasn't enough. And I didn't use Detail blending at all, although it's absolutely necessary for animations. I know that, but rendertimes were quite high, so I decided to render it with lower quality settings to get the animation ready.
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: jo on May 28, 2013, 07:39:40 AM
Hi Hannes,

That is a cool animation. It would be great to see it at higher quality, but I understand the constraints :-).

Did you import the camera animation using FBX?

Regards,

Jo
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Hannes on May 28, 2013, 11:46:06 AM
Thanks, Jo. I haven't tested the FBX import/export function yet :-[.
I used Davy's plugin.
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: efflux on May 29, 2013, 12:46:42 PM
The scene is fantastic. Great textures on the cliffs. The only thing that spoils it is the camera movement. It damages the sense of scale because the camera would have to be leaping around a tremendous amount to get that movement. Slower smooth movement would have been better. Otherwise, excellent work.
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Oshyan on May 29, 2013, 06:35:22 PM
Actually I think the camera motion very well replicates what you see in wingsuit videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWfph3iNC-k

- Oshyan
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Hannes on May 30, 2013, 08:30:01 AM
Thanks, efflux. Oshyan mentioned what I had in mind. I wanted to have the look of some kind of helmet camera. That's why I created a quite noisy movement when the brave guy is jumping and made it a bit smoother during the flight.
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Bjur on June 05, 2013, 12:26:49 AM
Excellent final animation Hannes!  :)
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: inkydigit on June 06, 2013, 06:18:01 PM
I think I nearly pooped half way through this, that was **** close!
:))
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Hannes on June 07, 2013, 04:15:16 PM
 ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Bjur on June 15, 2013, 03:36:37 AM
Link, thoughts, settings (why those) and stuff.. -> Animation section pls!  :D
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Oshyan on July 09, 2013, 06:57:33 PM
We liked this animation so much, we rendered it at 1080p in TG3 with the new GISD and 2D motion blur. Thanks to Ranch Computing (http://ranchcomputing.com/terragen-home-produit.en.html) for the render time (you'll be able to render your TG3 projects there at launch!). Enjoy. :)
http://terragen3.com/terragen-3-in-motion/ (http://terragen3.com/terragen-3-in-motion/)

- Oshyan
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: RArcher on July 10, 2013, 12:26:00 AM
That is simply amazing especially the first 3 seconds or so.  Must have watched it a good dozen times.  Superb work Hannes.  Would love to see that at an IMAX or with 3d glasses  ;D
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: TheBadger on July 10, 2013, 02:06:29 AM
Fantastic.

Oshyan, would it be possible to see the two animations side by side in one video, synchronised and playing simultaneously?! In order to see the differences you point out in T3 page, but with the animation.
I for one remain stunned by the difference. And would love to be able to hit the replay button for an hour while I try to pick out all the differences in effect.

It will help me to endure this agonizing wait ;D And Im sure you can think of a better reason to do it than that ;)

Heck, if your busy, send me a zip of the two and Ill AE them into one comp for you, and send it back for you to post!
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Dune on July 10, 2013, 02:18:36 AM
Superb animation and extremely well rendered. No popping of whatever, smooth, watched it over and over again. Congratulations Hannes and Planetside, nice job!
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Oshyan on July 10, 2013, 03:03:39 AM
Badger, the previous animation was rendered at much lower resolution and detail, so it would be really hard to compare properly. But you can extrapolate from the various TG3 GISD images that have been shown so far.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: TheBadger on July 10, 2013, 03:36:12 AM
Ah thanks Oshyan. My mistake. I was thinking in terms of 1080, and not internal detail and quality.  :o Doh! I should have remembered that  final image size, does not mean high quality.

Well thats what you and Hannes get for making nice things. If you don't want your users and viewers saying silly things, than stop dumbfounding us with beautiful work! >:(

And that goes for the rest of you guys too! Start making more crap so I can feel better about my self!



Just in case>  ;)
Title: Re: The gorge (final animation on page 2)
Post by: Hannes on July 10, 2013, 04:03:29 AM
Hi guys! Just wanted to say thank you to Oshyan, the rest of the crew and The Ranch to render my animation in Full HD. I'm so glad you like it. Rendering the animation in this high resolution would have never been possible for me!