With a little help of Joël Durier (Phylloxera) I've finally managed to create some decent looking stratas using the strata and outcrops shader.
Joël sent me a clipfile of 2 combined stratas (stratas merged via merge shader, standard settings). Thanks Joël!
The clipfile sent me in the right direction on how to add some decent, no 'staircasing', stratas to a terrain.
See in his own image as well, here: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1569674&member (http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1569674&member)
I then added a powerfractal as blend shader to both strata shaders and also as an input on the mix control of the merge shader where the stratas were merged.
This way the stratas have some variaton on where they appear and whether one or both stratashaders appear on the terrain.
Another nice feature, which I didn't expect to appear where the trenches/ditches. Personally I like them a lot :)
As you probably can see there's a flaw in the lighting. I used GI lighting (1/1) with a fill light (to lighten up the shadows) and I forgot to give it the same soft shadow settings.
It was also a bit too strong. So you can see 2 different types of shadow in the image. Tomorrow I'll render a high-res higher detail with correct shadows (hopefully).
Next thing which I might consider is to add some populations to give the image more sense of scale. I also have to improve the surfacing I think.
Please let me know what you think of it :)
Regards, Martin
the crevisis (sp) look nice, good work so far.
This is looking really good.
I like the detail in terrain but there seems to be something odd about the cracks...did you use image maps for the cracks??...
I see you have angled strata...
nice work...
Thank you Will and Saurav :)
Quote from: dhavalmistry on December 06, 2007, 04:54:37 PM
I like the detail in terrain but there seems to be something odd about the cracks...did you use image maps for the cracks??...
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 06, 2007, 04:35:21 PM
...
then added a powerfractal as blend shader to both strata shaders and also as an input on the mix control of the merge shader where the stratas were merged.
This way the stratas have some variaton on where they appear and whether one or both stratashaders appear on the terrain.
Another nice feature, which I didn't expect to appear where the trenches/ditches. Personally I like them a lot :)
...
This looks really good! The deep vertical rivulets in the terrain are what really brings it out for me personally - are those a result of the strata as well or are they from the underlying terrain?
very very good !!!
Thanks O_B :)
As I already said the rivulets/carves/trenches...whatever :)....are a result of the blend shader on the mix-controller of the strata. It's also dependent on the strata-settings.
Their exact relation is not completely clear (not so surprising *lol*) but as far as I know the greater the hard layer depth and spacing the greater and deeper the rivulets/trenches became.
Very well done, looks really nice.
Phylloxera is one of the best TG2 users in my opinion...
Quote from: seth93 on December 06, 2007, 06:16:07 PM
Phylloxera is one of the best TG2 users in my opinion...
Yeah I agree, though I don't see the relevance of your comment.
His images are pleasant to look at. He gave me some of his tgd's sometime and each time I'm surprised by the simplicity of most of his setups. That's clearly his strong point.
He's generous in sharing his techniques and I really appreciate that.
It's a pity he isn't here on the forums, possibly of a language barrier?
You're french as well aren't you...
Very nice!
yes i am :)
and my comments... well i just said what i thought at the moment... i really like to check his galery and i just gave my opinion becaus e, as you said, he's not on this forum. So, i think perhaps some of the people in here don't know him...
anyway ^^
you did a very good job on your render ;)
Invite him on-board! I love his stuff and watch it constantly at Renderosity. I want to learn from him.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 06, 2007, 06:21:24 PM
Yeah I agree, though I don't see the relevance of your comment.
His images are pleasant to look at. He gave me some of his tgd's sometime and each time I'm surprised by the simplicity of most of his setups. That's clearly his strong point.
He's generous in sharing his techniques and I really appreciate that.
It's a pity he isn't here on the forums, possibly of a language barrier?
You're french as well aren't you...
Quote from: calico on December 06, 2007, 06:30:00 PM
Invite him on-board! I love his stuff and watch it constantly at Renderosity. I want to learn from him.
Yeah why not, good idea :) I'll do that tomorrow because I'm going to sleep now ;D if that's not soon enough you can do it yourself ;-) :p
As I said I love his stuff as well and you can certainly learn from him because he's willing to share his techniques with you.
Where does he usually hang out? On planete-terragen.org or some other site?
yep and on RDR ^^
That would be great if Phylloxera came onto this forum. Like a lot of you guys I always check out his images at renderosity, in fact i've subscribed to his gallery. His terrains always look tops.
I also watch his work and would love to see him on this board.
Shall we open a seperate topic for this discussion and get back to the WIP? ;-) ;D
there is nothing to get back to unless you post an update ;)
Ghehe, I'm running a new render @ 1440 x 880 detail 0.9 AA 10 and GI 2/2...
I'll probably show some node-screenshots as well, if anybody's interested of course.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 07, 2007, 04:21:36 AM
Ghehe, I'm running a new render @ 1440 x 880 detail 0.9 AA 10 and GI 2/2...
I'll probably show some node-screenshots as well, if anybody's interested of course.
Well, this was an insane attempt to render it at higher res and quality and thus I've made quite some adjustments to the settings and rendered it again.
I've added a layer of small scale fake stones and also added very subtle (maybe too subtle) specularity on the rock surfaces. You'll probably only be able to see them on the right side of the image. I also changed the colors of the sand because some people said "the snow looks pretty etc."....*lol* so those colors were obviously a little off or at least not the way they were meant to be, so I adjusted them :)
Rendered at detail 0.8, AA 8, and detail blending 0,7.
The lighting setup is GI at 1/1 + 3 soft fill lights (strength 0,125) + 1 additional fill light (strenght 0,75) which doesn't cast shadows but is meant to fill the shadow on the left side of the image.
In the last image the fill lights didn't cast soft shadows which resulted in strange sharp shadows between the trenches/ditches.
Raytraced shadows was on otherwise the mountain didn't cast its own shadow. Strange, because I thought raytraced shadows was only necessary when using populations. Shadows on displaced features should be cast correctly without raytraced shadows switched on. Hence Oshyan's message here:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=150.msg781#msg781 (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=150.msg781#msg781)
It's an old message so maybe this feature has been altered or my image is an exception?
Please let me know what you guys think of it and as you probably know I'm open for suggestions and critics. I'm that way myself too :)
If anybody is interested in node-screenshots or have any other questions, feel free to ask ;D
Martin
can I please see the node network??
awesome work here....how long did it took to render??
Thank you for your positive comment dhaval :)
Yes of course you can, I'll make one and post it right away.
I have an Athlon 3500+ (2,2 GHz) with 2GB RAM. It took 9h16m14s to render :-\
BUT... ;D This week I'm going to order a quad-core 2,4 GHz with at least 4GB of RAM, my so longing for render monster ;D
This is absolutely as close to perfect and realistic and cool I've seen. Great job.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 09, 2007, 09:00:43 AM
I have an Athlon 3500+ (2,2 GHz) with 2GB RAM. It took 9h16m14s to render :-\
BUT... ;D This week I'm going to order a quad-core 2,4 GHz with at least 4GB of RAM, my so longing for render monster ;D
I suggest you wait for quad core till TG2 is released and also buying after Christmas might save you some money!.....
Ok, the node-screenshot :)
As you can see I've numbered a few (important) nodes.
So I'll write a mini-tut of it right away this way.
1) = the blend shader (scales 80, 120, 40m) which gives variation to the appearance of the stratas. As you can see the stratas aren't applied all over the terrain but just here and there, to say so.
2) = It's also the mix controller of the stratas. The color information of the blend shader controls the way the 2 stratas are mixed together. The merge shader has default settings. This way the trenches/ditches were created, but honestly I can't reason why they appear. It might have to do that the merge shader mixes displacement and that this shaders interprets the color information from the blend shader as displacement. But I can't tell for sure.
3) = This small scale and low displacement powerfractal gives all the surface layers some bump to give the surfacing some spice and detail.
4) = The fake stones shader setup: the fake stones are approx. 25cm each. They looked very spiky and displaced upwards so I lowered the stone tallness and increased the pancake effect but it wasn't satisfying enough. Adding a default shader is an easy way to control many aspects of the stones' appearance. The 2 powerfractal give the stones small scale color detail (not visible I think). The powerfractal is hooked into the displacement input. This powerfractal has same scale size as the stones, has very low color contrast and roughness, low displacement factor (0,15) and roughness and spike limit to prevent the forming of spikes.
But sometimes the renderer has problems to calculate the geometry correctly and displacing the stones then will create very ugly spiky stones.
I found out that adding a TEX coords from XYZ node solves this problem. I think it calculates the normals for the stones (more) correctly and thus make the powerfractal do the work it's supposed to do.
5) = This surface layer gives the rocks its shiny appearance. Unfortunately I've been a little bit too reserved with this effect. I'm thinking about another re-render to make the effect more prominent. The default shader has the same diffuse color as the surface layer. So, the default shader is a child with 100% cover. Adding very little reflectivity and reflectivity roughness in the specularity tab gives the rock-structure a shiny or wet look.
I hope this has been useful for all of you ;D
Martin
Quote from: calico on December 09, 2007, 09:01:25 AM
This is absolutely as close to perfect and realistic and cool I've seen. Great job.
Thank you Calico, it took a LOT of time to setup and to perform testrenders :)
Quote from: dhavalmistry on December 09, 2007, 09:32:32 AM
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 09, 2007, 09:00:43 AM
I have an Athlon 3500+ (2,2 GHz) with 2GB RAM. It took 9h16m14s to render :-\
BUT... ;D This week I'm going to order a quad-core 2,4 GHz with at least 4GB of RAM, my so longing for render monster ;D
I suggest you wait for quad core till TG2 is released and also buying after Christmas might save you some money!.....
Yeah thanks for thinking along with me :) I'm also considering that, but the 'problem' is is that I have 3,5 weeks off within 2 weeks so a lot of time to play and explore, you see ;D
a question about the nodes TU....what is the purpose of "Default Shader 01" as a child layer of "Surface Layer 06"
I wanted to have the upper color layers to have specularity/reflectivity.
That default shader is setup the same way as I explained in feature 5.
Was the rest useful for you?
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 09, 2007, 08:40:37 AM
In the last image the fill lights didn't cast soft shadows which resulted in strange sharp shadows between the trenches/ditches.
Raytraced shadows was on otherwise the mountain didn't cast its own shadow. Strange, because I thought raytraced shadows was only necessary when using populations. Shadows on displaced features should be cast correctly without raytraced shadows switched on. Hence Oshyan's message here:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=150.msg781#msg781 (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=150.msg781#msg781)
It's an old message so maybe this feature has been altered or my image is an exception?
Nothing has changed in regard to this feature, you simply misunderstood my original explanation. Here's a full quote:
Quoteyou don't need to turn on "ray-traced shadows" for it to work. Those settings (in Clouds and Atmosphere nodes) are actually only useful for when you want the terrain to cast a shadow either into the atmosphere or onto clouds (depending on where you enable the setting).
Note that in the 2nd sentence I specify that I am referring to the options in the Cloud and Atmosphere nodes *specifically*. The general "raytraced shadows" option in the renderer is necessary for most shadowing to work at all. The specific options in the Cloud and Atmosphere nodes are special-purpose and only affect cloud and atmosphere rendering in specific circumstances.
- Oshyan
This is really nice work. I like how you went the extra mile to grind out some detail. 8)
Thanks for tutorial. As soon as I figure out what moodflow is doing with his fake stones, I'll be back. :D
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 09, 2007, 09:46:28 AM
I wanted to have the upper color layers to have specularity/reflectivity.
That default shader is setup the same way as I explained in feature 5.
Was the rest useful for you?
yes the rest was very useful and awesome work again.....
Another update....
I hope I'm not bothering you people with these updates ;D I'm not finished with this image yet, that's for sure :)
This time I've added some cracks to the rocks, but after almost 15 hours of rendering I saw the effect was little bit overdone.
So the next thing is to reduce the displacement of the cracks and also to lower the coverage of the layer containing them.
The rendersettings were detail 0.85, AA 9, no GI, detail blending 0.85. Switching of GI (original settings 1/1) didn't make that much a difference in rendertime so I think to switch it back on. I also want to create another fake stones layer with slightlier bigger stones and I came up with another idea I'm not going to tell you, ghehe ;D
Please let me know what you think of it and suggestions are always welcome :)
Martin
You have seriously improved the multi-strata method. That's nice to see what you've done with it. The last render is very interesting, highly detailled. ;)
@TU - What is the POP FINAL?
The POP-FINAL is a surface layer which I thought I would need to let my population sit on.
It was a method I used in other images but those images had quite some displacements after the compute terrain node and thus it's easier to select the last terrain node.
This surface layer has no color, nor displacement (as you can see). It's just empty and serves as a base for a population to sit on.
In this project I could delete it because my populations sit correctly on the ground using the compute terrain node.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 10, 2007, 03:40:02 PM
Another update....
I hope I'm not bothering you people with these updates ;D I'm not finished with this image yet, that's for sure :)
What are you talking about? Keep 'em coming! 8)
i love this thread !!!
i am so impatient to see a final render !
nice, though it looks reflective to me for some reason.
Quote from: Will on December 11, 2007, 05:37:57 PM
nice, though it looks reflective to me for some reason.
That's correct: The upper 2 color layers have reflectivity. Smooth and flat rock-surfaces tend to be very reflective at certain angles of incoming light.
Perhaps I've added a little bit too much of reflectivity, but it's very difficult to estimate because there's a lot of difference in monitors. At my work it looks a lot more reflective than at home.
Quote from: Oshyan on December 09, 2007, 07:10:51 PM
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 09, 2007, 08:40:37 AM
In the last image the fill lights didn't cast soft shadows which resulted in strange sharp shadows between the trenches/ditches.
Raytraced shadows was on otherwise the mountain didn't cast its own shadow. Strange, because I thought raytraced shadows was only necessary when using populations. Shadows on displaced features should be cast correctly without raytraced shadows switched on. Hence Oshyan's message here:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=150.msg781#msg781 (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=150.msg781#msg781)
It's an old message so maybe this feature has been altered or my image is an exception?
Nothing has changed in regard to this feature, you simply misunderstood my original explanation. Here's a full quote:
QuoteDisplacements should certainly cast correct shadows (although not soft shadows), and you don't need to turn on "ray-traced shadows" for it to work. Those settings (in Clouds and Atmosphere nodes) are actually only useful for when you want the terrain to cast a shadow either into the atmosphere or onto clouds (depending on where you enable the setting).
Note that in the 2nd sentence I specify that I am referring to the options in the Cloud and Atmosphere nodes *specifically*. The general "raytraced shadows" option in the renderer is necessary for most shadowing to work at all. The specific options in the Cloud and Atmosphere nodes are special-purpose and only affect cloud and atmosphere rendering in specific circumstances.
- Oshyan
The Italicized part of your quote is the part that confused me, I'm sorry, I thought it was about shadows casted by the displaced terrain on the terrain itself.
Guess I have to work on my English a little ;)
----
I've just set up a new scene with reduced cracks and reflectivity on the rocks. I've also added 3 populations and I'm going to render it at 1280x800 @ detail 0.85, AA 12, GI 1/1 and detail blending 0.85. It will probably take at least 2 days to render,...
So people, please stay tuned :p ;)
Martin
Definitely a great work Martin!
the middle bottom area of your picture is just lovely :-* :-*
the crossing hard edges are very realistics .
pretty good job !
Unfortunately the render of the final image crashed after approx. 25 hours of rendering :'(
I can't tell whether it's due to unstability or due to deficiency in RAM. The following screenshot never used more than 400 MB of RAM to render.
The scene contains 2 populations of each about 12500 instances. The rocks have some reflectivity/specularity so I can imagine that consumes quite some RAM.
One thing I've also noticed is that the TG2 instance was completely gone (sounds like a real crash) but that my computer was also restarted (hence my MSN did show up again).
So I can't tell who to blaim:
Me, for chosing to insane settings.
My computer for not being able to render them.
XP auto-update which possibly rebooted my machine.
I think at the time of the crash 30% of the image was finished.
In the mean time I made 1 screenshot of its progress and here it is. (it's a bad print scr copy pasted in paint. The render size and quality were a LOT better)
As you can see only about 1/8 of the image was finished then but it gives you an impression of the scale I had in mind on this one.
What do you guys think about it? Please take a look at my last update and this one and tell me if the scales look right.
Next week I'll receive my new quad-core rendermachine which will make it certainly possible to finish the render.
So it's a pity I'm on a delay now, but it doesn't really matter. After all it took me almost a week to setup the scene, so 1 week for rendering doesn't bother me.
Oh...trees. ;D I'm not one to complain, but as big as poster sized is okay. :o Just kidding. This looks fine...wonderful, even.
nice, though doesn't seem to be the write environment for trees. Thats the only thing that bugs me though.
Yeah, I think I might agree with Will...only because I can't see the big picture. :D
Quote from: calico on December 14, 2007, 03:55:24 PM
Yeah, I think I might agree with Will...only because I can't see the big picture. :D
Well, that didn't nearly change at all....only trees were added and the cracked rocks effect was reduced.
I'll rethink my decision about the trees. I also have other nice ideas as well :)
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 14, 2007, 05:23:11 PM
Quote from: calico on December 14, 2007, 03:55:24 PM
Yeah, I think I might agree with Will...only because I can't see the big picture. :D
Well, that didn't nearly change at all....only trees were added and the cracked rocks effect was reduced.
I'll rethink my decision about the trees. I also have other nice ideas as well :)
Yes, well don't stop. This is some good stuff. I see you added some voronoi texture to some of the more vertical faces in certain areas. This looks pretty good.
Quote from: moodflow on December 14, 2007, 07:12:58 PM
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 14, 2007, 05:23:11 PM
Quote from: calico on December 14, 2007, 03:55:24 PM
Yeah, I think I might agree with Will...only because I can't see the big picture. :D
Well, that didn't nearly change at all....only trees were added and the cracked rocks effect was reduced.
I'll rethink my decision about the trees. I also have other nice ideas as well :)
Yes, well don't stop. This is some good stuff. I see you added some voronoi texture to some of the more vertical faces in certain areas. This looks pretty good.
Thank you moodflow. The voronoi texture is a bit too strong, I've reduced this effect.
I'm trying to place some big boulders and want to mask them using an image mask through camera projection, but I can't get it to work, somehow. Anybody tips?
This is very nice - I personally like the trees, just not as many of them. Hopefully you'll be able to render the whoe thing soon :).
Wow the scale on this is going to be amazing. I look forward to the final render, it should be quite impressive.
Finally I've managed to finish this image.
Well, finished, it's never finished ;)
I had an idea of placing BIG boulders here and there with nice displacements and texturing. I had it all worked out but I couldn't manage to get the image mask working properly.
I created the image mask by painting a b&w mask on top of the the original image (white where I want the stones to be) and then applying it using through camera projection.
Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work properly. Perhaps I've to start a topic about this in the discussion section, because I really don't understand why.
Ok, about the image...
I've reduced the crack-effect and also lowered the density of the populations, which was quite denser in the test renders and also the small crop I've posted about the crash a few days ago.
The combination of displacements, specularity/reflectivity and dense populations was the reason of the crash.
This one took about 29 hours to render.
I'm considering to re-render it at higher quality and resolution once I have my quad-core system up and running, but for now I consider it finished.
Please let me know what you think of it :)
Martin
i REALLY prefer it without the trees :)
Quote from: seth93 on December 18, 2007, 01:05:54 PM
i REALLY prefer it without the trees :)
Ok, that's being noted ;D (I tend to agree, though the awful lot of work makes me tend to like this image more haha *lol*)
hehehe totally understand what you mean ! :D
Don't take this wrong, as this image is spectacular.
However, as stated, these trees don't work for this image the current way they are set up.
Additionally, the lighting looks odd in places, though this could be due to the render's issues (which will hopefully be improved by next update). Did you use fill-light?
Otherwise, the rock specularity is nearly spot on! Nice work.
The rock formation continues to be the really unique thing about this image - BUT with the trees (although I agree they look like they don't belong there), the impression of massiveness that the rock/mountain is receiving from the trees being there, is simply awesome.
Maybe it's just a question to have one object in the scene that doesn't look out of place, but still offers the right sense of scale. Maybe a plane? A hut and a couple of birds, smoke from a fireplace?
Cheers,
Frank
Spectacular rocks and mountains and terrain. No to the trees, unless you bunch a forest of trees at the bottom and not on the hillsides.
Quote from: moodflow on December 18, 2007, 01:36:45 PM
Don't take this wrong, as this image is spectacular.
However, as stated, these trees don't work for this image the current way they are set up.
Additionally, the lighting looks odd in places, though this could be due to the render's issues (which will hopefully be improved by next update). Did you use fill-light?
Otherwise, the rock specularity is nearly spot on! Nice work.
Thank you for your comment and constructive criticism :)
In which areas in particular does the lighting look odd? I deliberately used specularity on the rocks on the right.
The lighting setup is one global light @ 3.5, one fill light @ 0,75 which doesn't cast shadows and which is 180 degrees opposite from the global light. It is supposed to lighten the big shadow casted by the mountain. I'd love to let GI handle it but I don't know how (yet).
Further more 2 soft fill lights for colortone (strength @ 0.15).
Quote from: FrankB on December 18, 2007, 02:24:40 PM
The rock formation continues to be the really unique thing about this image - BUT with the trees (although I agree they look like they don't belong there), the impression of massiveness that the rock/mountain is receiving from the trees being there, is simply awesome.
Maybe it's just a question to have one object in the scene that doesn't look out of place, but still offers the right sense of scale. Maybe a plane? A hut and a couple of birds, smoke from a fireplace?
Cheers,
Frank
Also thank you for your comment and crits/suggestions.
The idea which appeals most to me is to add some birds. I'll see if I can do that in 3D, otherwise good'ol 2D ;D
Quote from: calico on December 18, 2007, 02:26:17 PM
Spectacular rocks and mountains and terrain. No to the trees, unless you bunch a forest of trees at the bottom and not on the hillsides.
Thanks calico!
I've tried a dense forest at the bottom and not on the hillsides, but it made my renderer crash twice.
Maybe my new render-machine can handle it, but so far I think I'll get rid of the trees.
I'm going to say no to the trees too, although a fairly dense, well placed population of vegetatio at the base would be good. The rock is spectacular though very well done indeed.
When you can get the forest below to work, it could be close to the best thing I've seen here. I've run into similar problems with displacements like this and tree populations. Have you tried connecting to the objects with the last displacement? If so, have you just tried elevating the tree objects 500 or so meters above the surface and make sure there is nothing touching the sides of the wall? Sometimes using the preview view helps.
Quote from: calico on December 18, 2007, 03:53:02 PM
When you can get the forest below to work, it could be close to the best thing I've seen here. I've run into similar problems with displacements like this and tree populations. Have you tried connecting to the objects with the last displacement? If so, have you just tried elevating the tree objects 500 or so meters above the surface and make sure there is nothing touching the sides of the wall? Sometimes using the preview view helps.
Thanks for thinking along with me.
I don't have any troubles with placing the populations onto the displaced terrain. The compute terrain node serves as base for the populations and works fine. I've checked it with high res crops and alle the populations sit perfectly on the terrain (see also my node-screenshot a couple of pages back). The only problem is that my machine couldn't handle the dense populations and it consequently crashed.
Hi,
as for the lighting:to me it seems that the darkest shadows
are on the wrong side of the crevices and also the trees
shadows should be more visible,but that's just my opinion
and could of course be wrong.
Hope you'll find the solution,good luck!
In most cases, I am not a fan of fill lighting "IF" GI can do the job properly. TGTP's GI seems to work quite well. Of course using fill-lights for additional effect is a situational thing. I know Oshyan pioneered some good fill light methods.
Were the GI settings on at all for this image? I thought that they were though the way you recently made it sound, they were not.
If not, try GI of 2, and turn on GI surface detail. From all the tests I've run, anything higher than GI of 3 is barely even noticeable, and above 4, UN-noticeable, except for massively increased render times.
Also, a suggestion is to play with the shadowing. I always turn soft shadows on with a diameter of 20 @ 9 samples (unless there is a prominent flat surface - the samples need to go up in such a case). When I turn soft shadows on, I bump up the sun strength to 5.0, else the image is a little too dark.
As stated, this image is incredible as-is, and these are only suggestions that may or may not make it even better. Hopefully I don't sound like I am hijacking the image here, but I really think its great! 8)
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 18, 2007, 03:20:49 PM
Thank you for your comment and constructive criticism :)
In which areas in particular does the lighting look odd? I deliberately used specularity on the rocks on the right.
The lighting setup is one global light @ 3.5, one fill light @ 0,75 which doesn't cast shadows and which is 180 degrees opposite from the global light. It is supposed to lighten the big shadow casted by the mountain. I'd love to let GI handle it but I don't know how (yet).
Further more 2 soft fill lights for colortone (strength @ 0.15).
If you look at the prominent "fingers" on the right side near the bottom, you can see that areas that should be shaded somewhat are artificially lit up, causing it to look "flatter" than normal. I think with the GI up, and soft shadows on, you can get more of a natural looking feel to it. Thats my hope atleast! ;-)
Youch, I hope I don't sound like a "rear-end hole" or like I am hijacking this thread. ::)
Quote from: moodflow on December 18, 2007, 07:25:46 PM
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 18, 2007, 03:20:49 PM
Thank you for your comment and constructive criticism :)
In which areas in particular does the lighting look odd? I deliberately used specularity on the rocks on the right.
The lighting setup is one global light @ 3.5, one fill light @ 0,75 which doesn't cast shadows and which is 180 degrees opposite from the global light. It is supposed to lighten the big shadow casted by the mountain. I'd love to let GI handle it but I don't know how (yet).
Further more 2 soft fill lights for colortone (strength @ 0.15).
If you look at the prominent "fingers" on the right side near the bottom, you can see that areas that should be shaded somewhat are artificially lit up, causing it to look "flatter" than normal. I think with the GI up, and soft shadows on, you can get more of a natural looking feel to it. Thats my hope atleast! ;-)
Youch, I hope I don't sound like a "rear-end hole" or like I am hijacking this thread. ::)
Oh no, not at all! This is exactly what this thread is meant to be about and what I like to see from the users here.
Critics and suggestions, all more than welcome.
GI was actually on on this one, both settings at 1.
The fill light doesnt cast any shadows and is about strength 0.75. It might be a little bit too strong but as far as I know it is the only method to lighten up shadows. Also, without the fill light the "fingers" look lit up and flat as well.
I don't know how to manipulate the GI/Enviro Light settings to get nice light and detailed shadows.
I could try rendering it with GI at 2/2 on my new quad-core and with upcoming beta (since rendering with multiple instances can differ in GI results, isn't it?) because on my current machine it would take ages, you see.
In this render the soft shadow settings are at a diameter of 5 and 15 sampling, if I remember correctly (am currently at work). 99% sure. I'll test your settings. I understand that increasing sun's strenth to about 5 lightens up the image, but I don't want the overal image to be lighter but the shadows in particular.
The standard shadows created by GI are way too dark and look unnatural to my taste.
Thanks for your suggestions Moodflow. I don't feel like you're hijacking the thread or being a rear-end hole ;)
Regards, Martin
Have you tried increasing the GI Strength on Surfaces in the lighting setup? Also, switching on 'GI on surface details' in the Render setup (not sure if that'll do much)?
Yes, GI surface details were checked, but I didn't increase the strength on surfaces.
I shall try that a.s.a.p.
Thank you!
I like the trees as a reference point for size, but I don't think they look that great.
Hi everybody!
So this is really the LAST render of this image.
I've lost my interest in it a little and I think it's good enough to consider it finished now.
I've added an other type of crack function and rendered it larger.
Almost 24h of rendering on my 'old' machine.
I'm pretty satisfied with it and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Crits and comments are always welcome of course.
Martin
Very nice work, Martin. I wish I understood as much to do this sort of work. Cool.
Thank you Martin for this thread and all those who have presented ideas and questions. The depth of this program is amazing; and, you have used it in an outstanding way to create a highly detailed strata.
The detail in the structures is amazing... fantastic job! 8)