Here's an early version of another of my animal series.
Lots to improve and develop such as grass, ground cover etc., but quite decent so far.
Is the mist too low? should it be more spread out or just higher?
C&C welcome.
trees -Xfrog
elephants - 3daz
ferns - unknown (but free for non commercial use)
grass - Mr_Lamppost via Ashundar (I think)
I like the background trees. Are ferns typical ground cover in this kind of forest? Also, it's good that you have the shadow patterns in the mist, but they seem too regular. Not sure how you fix that.
wonderful.... i find it perfect !!!! super with these elephants !!
Wow, I love this already! Really cool. I'd only thin the mist, maybe by about half density and make the layer taller, it's quite an abrupt cut-off. Can the elephant textures be sharpened any? A wee bit blurry at such close range.
Really great, though! :)
The pictures make me nervous. Elephants are too large! Great render, Martin's suggestions are good.
Thanks for the comments. I agree the mist is too thick and "clumpy" and I think it needs to be higher. As for the skin textures, yes I'll increase the bump map effect and darken them maybe to be less blurred.
Oh and ferns do cover these forest areas ;D they're one of the earliest and most ubiquitous plants and are found all over the world (but I might change them!). Anyone know what the big shiney green leaves are that you see in jungles?
QuoteAnyone know what the big shiney green leaves are that you see in jungles?
Plants? :D
Only kidding, I've no idea what the plants are. Sorry, that was just too good to resist!
Quote from: dandelO on May 07, 2010, 01:27:11 PM
QuoteAnyone know what the big shiney green leaves are that you see in jungles?
Plants? :D
Only kidding, I've no idea what the plants are. Sorry, that was just too good to resist!
best laugh I've had all day! :D :D :D :D
SWEET! Just a tad more displcement on the Elephants if you are going to render it again.
Good job.
here's the latest version. more definition on the skin textures, less dense mist and higher up, and slight POV change. oh and some water!
Now if I could just get the middle one to spray some water!
C&C welcome
looking excellent Kevin...what about banana plant?...they have nice big shiny leaves?
I really like the sunbeams. The elephants look better also. 8)
Here's an update (but no mist).
This one has an improved skin texture for the elephants and slightly different POV with soft shadows enabled.
I gave up waiting for a mist version due to soft shadows AND raytraced mist shadows together taking so long (only half rendered after 20 hrs or so then a power cut!)
C&C welcome.
A pity about the mist, but the light through the trees is gorgeous. Nice work!
Great looking elephants. Sorry about the power difficulty.
The displacement on the animals is much, much better.
Excellent!
the elephants look great !
The elephants look excellent now, I agree. May I make an experimental suggestion? You don't seem to have any terrain in the scene so this might be a good time to try Raytrace Everything. I suggest putting AA at 5 or 6, atmosphere samples at 32-64 (maybe 48 is a good value to try), and cloud quality to 1 (whatever the sample levels this gives you). Then render 0.5 detail with Raytrace Everything and see how fast it progresses compared to previous. It *should* be a good deal faster, though I don't know your original settings so it might not be the same quality. I'd have to do some crop render tests with the scene to fine tune the settings fully. But I do think it's a good candidate for Raytrace Everything.
- Oshyan
Hi Oshyan, I presume you mean with soft shadows and raytraced shadows on the mist (cloud)?
I'll give it a go and get back.
Thanks for the input guys, much appreciated.
O.K.
here's the version as suggested by Oshyan. It certainly reduced the time - down from 20hrs for less than 50% to 9.5 hrs finished.
The quality values were lower than the original:
detail .5 down from .7
AA 5 down from 7 but overall it's hard to tell the difference.
Tempted to try one more with higher "mist" cloud values.
Thanks Oshyan, good example of when to use raytrace everything.
C&C welcome.
By jingo that mist looks good!
Looks good! Glad to hear the render time came down. Now here's the trick to improving quality while using Raytrace Everything: increase AA, not cloud or atmosphere samples. You can do either one actually, but increasing AA will increase overall quality, reducing noise everywhere, so it's generally of benefit. But for my eyes this looks great as-is (though I actually liked the "mist clinging to the ground" look of earlier versions).
- Oshyan
Very nice, Kevin! The big one(Daddy?) has a 'Don't mess with me and mine!' look in his eyes! He's going to trample me!
Can almost hear the trumpeting of those beautiful animals - and, in all, the best of your renders!
Thanks for all the positive feedback guys, much appreciated.
Oh wow, this is kind of disturbing. I feel like I'm trying to hide in the grass after beeing spotted by those three hoodloom elephants. Now they're figuring out the best way to trash me...
Really nice work.
superb scene, Kevin,great results!