Elephants in the mist (wip)

Started by Kevin F, May 07, 2010, 08:28:00 AM

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MGebhart

The displacement on the animals is much, much better.

Excellent!
Marc Gebhart

Seth


Oshyan

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

Kevin F

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.

Kevin F

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.

domdib

By jingo that mist looks good!

Oshyan

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

dandelO

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!

choronr

Can almost hear the trumpeting of those beautiful animals - and, in all, the best of your renders!

Kevin F

Thanks for all the positive feedback guys, much appreciated.

Eikers

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.

inkydigit

superb scene, Kevin,great results!