Just something I whipped up this early evening before a nap. I wish I could add more populations to fill the scene but 3 is what we get to sample in free. 3 light sources added, 2 to the background and one behind the camera at the base of the foothill.
Beautiful Douglas Fir by AP, and Grass 7 by Dune that unfortunately seems to blend too well with the haze and sorta noise at these quality settings. MPD 0.6 AA 6
C&C welcome.
fascinating!
Some more iterations.....
Like em all, would like to see the GodRays one higher res...
Quote from: bobbystahr on August 01, 2018, 03:13:04 PM
Like em all, would like to see the GodRays one higher res...
Yeah the noise sorta unfortunately drowns out some of the rays, especially in the last preview render. Even in the high quality renders they're pretty noisy, and I have Atmosphere at 32, and cloud quality at 0.75 with GI Cache at Still / High.
GI Cache quality is probably not helping you much here, and likely adding render time. If you are not already using Defer Atmo, enable it. With 32 atmo samples if the noise is coming from the atmosphere it should resolve that at AA4 (again, with Defer Atmo enabled). If the noise is from clouds and you are using V3 clouds (any of the Easy Clouds or Generic cloud presets), try increasing the Voxel Scattering Quality in the GI settings of the Render node, GI in Clouds tab. Test a value of 200.
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on August 01, 2018, 05:15:03 PM
GI Cache quality is probably not helping you much here, and likely adding render time. If you are not already using Defer Atmo, enable it. With 32 atmo samples if the noise is coming from the atmosphere it should resolve that at AA4 (again, with Defer Atmo enabled). If the noise is from clouds and you are using V3 clouds (any of the Easy Clouds or Generic cloud presets), try increasing the Voxel Scattering Quality in the GI settings of the Render node, GI in Clouds tab. Test a value of 200.
- Oshyan
The main haze is V2, but the definition fog is V3. I'll try upping voxel count.
The GI Cache cloud quality did play a significant role in "clean" fire with clouds even with cloud quality at like 10 instead of here at 0.75 so I sorta starta doing it by habit.
I'll try the Voxel Scattering Quality. I don't think I actually have messed with that much. I think I changed it to 100 for the fire tests so may be why I thought changing to "Still / High" or Very High made a difference.
That seems to reduce the noise a bit in the preview render. Will do a bigger render later.
That's pretty nice, I look forward to a final on this, AA 6 if you can, and mpD at .5 work well in this type of scene for me.
Quote from: bobbystahr on August 01, 2018, 06:33:58 PM
That's pretty nice, I look forward to a final on this, AA 6 if you can, and mpD at .5 work well in this type of scene for me.
Curious question about AA since that reminded me, would changing to max samples at AA6 make any benefit for low quality MPD? Figured Terragen knows what it's doing when it comes to the AA sampling, but than again, I am not really rendering at settings everyone else is for the most part.
Quote from: WASasquatch on August 01, 2018, 06:55:19 PM
Quote from: bobbystahr on August 01, 2018, 06:33:58 PM
That's pretty nice, I look forward to a final on this, AA 6 if you can, and mpD at .5 work well in this type of scene for me.
Curious question about AA since that reminded me, would changing to max samples at AA6 make any benefit for low quality MPD? Figured Terragen knows what it's doing when it comes to the AA sampling, but than again, I am not really rendering at settings everyone else is for the most part.
Dunno never did that test. Maybe do it and report heh heh heh
Quote from: bobbystahr on August 01, 2018, 06:57:13 PM
Quote from: WASasquatch on August 01, 2018, 06:55:19 PM
Quote from: bobbystahr on August 01, 2018, 06:33:58 PM
That's pretty nice, I look forward to a final on this, AA 6 if you can, and mpD at .5 work well in this type of scene for me.
Curious question about AA since that reminded me, would changing to max samples at AA6 make any benefit for low quality MPD? Figured Terragen knows what it's doing when it comes to the AA sampling, but than again, I am not really rendering at settings everyone else is for the most part.
Dunno never did that test. Maybe do it and report heh heh heh
Wish I could schedule renders hehe with how long the last full resolution ones went I could do 3-4 in a night.
Well, you could do a series of crops of a major area of interest/problem....
Did a full resolution render with MPD 0.6 and AA6 with voxel scattering quality up to 200, which exponentially cleared up the noise.
Changed the population and lighting up a bit and added some dead trees and a bear. Really want to add a brush population to fill out the scene and some food for the bear, but I'm maxed out on the 3 pops. Wanted to get some rocks in the middle of the scene, but despite any settings the populations of fake stones stays the same. Even though it's different in 2D previews. Really odd. So I deleted one of the foreground trees on the right to at least see a couple rocks.
looks good!
Looks great! One suggestion: I'd never use a V3 cloud for this type of mist. V2 is faster and looks pretty much the same. V3 is great for real clouds.
Quote from: Hannes on August 02, 2018, 03:29:42 AM
Looks great! One suggestion: I'd never use a V3 cloud for this type of mist. V2 is faster and looks pretty much the same. V3 is great for real clouds.
Ironically, you get better streaking god rays imo, that extend farther it seems. When using v2 there's a lot of cut-off god-rays they'd make it partly through a plume and fade out too quickly when the fog was denser). You also get better dark areas in shadows. So, I would definitely use them, and render time is negligible. Only barely 2 hour render. I'm fully aware of peoples bias towards v3 render time, but it's lighting model is significantly better. Even the colour modulators interact better in shadows and lights. v2 clouds are used for the main haze. Just using v3 for fog which creates a much better mood imo.
Another render. I should have done a quick 5 minute preview render to check the beams, they're a bit too strong for my taste but still looks good. Going to do a mid day render with same haze settings.
I know you are probably opposed to a second sun, but I miss that wonderful bark texture at this great POV. Great series renders!
Quote from: luvsmuzik on August 02, 2018, 10:43:25 AM
I know you are probably opposed to a second sun, but I miss that wonderful bark texture at this great POV. Great series renders!
With the exposure in a camera you'd definitely not be seeing that bark, but to the naked eye not focusing on the sunset itself I'd imagine the sky would still be lighting the forest pretty well. I may do another render with brighter GI or a secondary sun for ambient light. Playing with a mid day sun right now and feeling like i need butterflies and maybe like chattering tiny indistinguishable bugs. Butterflies I could probably grab some images of but not sure about tiny bugs. Maybe v2 cloud? Or would that just look like cloud? xD Will have to try.
Seems same density settings for mid day will not work. Looks like a real foggy situation. Ambient GI light brightens clouds way to much so had to drop density.
I know what you mean, I almost ran over a construction flagman driving into a bright sun. Thank God he had a bright vest on, I finally saw!
Painted shader for fake stones can do a trick too...weird a mask fractal doesn't though.
Quote from: luvsmuzik on August 02, 2018, 10:52:42 AM
I know what you mean, I almost ran over a construction flagman driving into a bright sun. Thank God he had a bright vest on, I finally saw!
Painted shader for fake stones can do a trick too...weird a mask fractal doesn't though.
Not sure what's going on with the stones. There is no mask at all. Changing seeds, variation, variation scale, all yield same results in render, but 2D preview will have stones all in different locations.
Here's a preview of mid-day.
The first one, probably unintended, looks like fire. With much of California dealing with the fires, it immediately jumped out at me... Yesterday smelled like a campfire, I am thousands of km east...
Quote from: otakar on August 02, 2018, 12:28:56 PM
The first one, probably unintended, looks like fire. With much of California dealing with the fires, it immediately jumped out at me... Yesterday smelled like a campfire, I am thousands of km east...
That was the intended look actually. Loosing tons of land, effecting both people and animals. I want to return to that original setup (still have light sources in) just want to add little more lighting but need to manually add some shrubs to mask out to "light source" so the haze and lighting can do the rest.
My family is heavy into forest and wildlife conservation. My uncle fire jumps, as well as doing stuff down in Antarctica, though not sure on the specifics there. Probably arctic research and such, like the thawing forest remains.
I path traced this scene last night, but unfortunately it seems the exaggerate surface details plays a little havoc on one of my bark textures (I believe the original AP sent me) while is fine against my edited lighter coloured version. Also the low quality in the fog was really exaggerated somehow haha
I love this scene and I think it is a great render! Are you using soft shadows too?
I actually dont think I enabled them but I may for a second go to try and fix the noise issue against that particular trunk texture.
Yes, shadows don't really preview IMO, but sometimes I even edit the population manually when a closeup gets odd.
At least we have shadows and always things improve.....eventually. :)
Some awesome god rays going on here. I love the feel of the scene. The very 1st image almost looks like a forest fire.
Quote from: cocateho26 on November 21, 2018, 12:15:56 AM
Some awesome god rays going on here. I love the feel of the scene. The very 1st image almost looks like a forest fire.
Thanks, and yeah that was what I was going for. Still have the light sources in the scene. I was playing with light smoke with details instead of solid colour and light sources.
I actually like it too, sort of as-is, but with the addition of soft shadows I think it would be even better.
- Oshyan
Beautiful! :)
Good stuff.