Iron Age Cult place

Started by Dune, August 14, 2011, 03:56:17 AM

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Dune

This is the first test of a thing I have to render out big for an educational billboard. Had to reduce it or it wouldn't fit here. Stream in the distance, some higher areas where these ancient folks settled, a gathering place right under your dangling feet. The trees and fields need a lot adjustment still, and I have to place farms on the sandy plots, and the gathering place needs a fence and a small building.
I welcome all suggestions for a more photographic reality.... perhaps I need more haze in the distance?

Henry Blewer

Maybe a slight Depth of field/blur would do the trick. Haze might do, but the lighting would be different across the view.
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

inkydigit

the tree/bush populations stand out to me... the groupings seem a little too structured and maybe not enough scale variation? Edit: (or maybe there are not enough trees? I cant decide?)
haze or low mist may help also?
cheers
J

Cyber-Angel

If this is an Iron Age settlement, then generally speaking they tend to have an enclosure ditch surrounding them; this is perhaps is what is needed. However If this is a recreation of a real settlement without archeological evidence (Geophysical Survey [Resistivity or Earth Penetrating Radar] or earth staining [Ditch Fill different color from surrounding natural]) then one should not be included.

That is the only thing I can think of at this time, in terms of improving the realism of the image.  ;D

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel               

Hetzen

#4
Hi Ulco

I've been playing around with population anti aliasing, primarily for animaton to get rid of flicker. Anyway, long Friday story short...

Try Detail 0.5 (not much displacement here, maybe 0.6), AA 32 (I know pretty extreem) BUT...

Go into edit sampling and set 'First sampling level' to 1/16. This should give you 64 min samples to fire at ray traced objects to give a better average (more samples = better initial over all accuracy of what colour that pixel should be in ray traced objects, ie your trees). Then set the 'Pixel noise threshold' to 0.15 (this is quite high to keep render times down. If render times are too high, then increase this value, but I'm not totally sure if threshold is an above value or fraction yet).

I think it's better to get an accurate initial pixel colour, before going on to the next level of AA (up to 1024 the 'Max samples per pixel')

Give that a try. This will give you a softer effect on your populations and reduce contrast noise.

More cowbell in the atmosphere will also help blue bleach the horizon.

All the best

MGebhart

Ulco

This is fantastic. The overall scope of this project is well thought out and executed. I'm really looking forward to see were you take this. If you need some special vegetation let me know. I would love to help out.

Marc
Marc Gebhart

otakar

So delighted to see another one of those historical scenes. Since you asked about realism Dune, what kind of feels unnatural are the fields. I am sure you are basing their size, dimension and situation on archeological evidence, but they still feel to me like they are plopped down on the land, just a touch too unnatural. Maybe it's the color or the straight lines, but that's my view, which could be way off of course :)

Dune

Thanks guys.
@ otakar: You're right, but in fact that's what these guys did. Take a piece of land, clear it, put a small levee around it, and plant something completely different. But is was in the pipeline to make different crops, and make some fields abandoned or less stark (some corners probably didn't grow well and were overgrown by weeds). 
@ Marc: I much appreciate your offer, but I think I'll manage with what I have or make myself. Your refinement in trees would be invisible from this height anyway.
@ Jon: I'll give this a try, but I have to see how my machine behaves with these figures. I hope to render out at maybe 6000x6000px or slightly larger (the final print/poster will probably be 1-2m wide), but earlier renders of 5000x4000px stumbled and crashed occasionally. What do you mean by cowbell in the atmosphere? I was thinking of adding some very soft cloud to haze up the distance a bit.
@ Henry: I don't think blur would look natural from this distance, and I think the client wants everything sharp.
@ Inkydigit: That is indeed the problem, but I hadn't come to refining the tree pops yet. These are just 3 species with 0.6-1 size difference and some pop variation and a very rough mask. There will be more species and lonely and dead trees and such. The haze has been another thought indeed.
@ Cyber-Angel: There was no evidence of ditches around the settlements, and I'm not sure yet about levees around the fields. I put levees in, but they're not visible in this size render. By the way: I made the levees by subtracting a hardened (color adjust) mask from the initial soft field mask.


Dune

Iteration 2 at jpg quality 75. Still looking for the best shaders for high dry and low swampy country. Sand needs work, so do the farms and fields. I added some more tree species, but I still have to change the masks from fast black-white to gray variations for denser and less dense wood. The mist needs a higher quality, as I detect some sort of grain all over. It may also be that the displacement in the shaders is just too fine. Too much white and yellow in the low areas (old reed and flowers = springtime) to my taste. The sand mask needs to be larger and tighter. Cloud shadows were better last time.
@ Jon; I tried your settings but the rendertimes skyrocketed, so I experimented some more. It's now AA8 with 1/16 samples and pixelnoise threshold 0.1, which is even going faster than default and doesn't show much difference. I'll have another go at this though.

Dune

Next.

EoinArmstrong

This is so real looking - amazing stuff - I love the procedural surfaces :)

Tangled-Universe

Looks great Ulco! ;D
If you need renderhelp, then you know where to find me ;)
I'm curious to see how Jon's AA suggestion works out.
Definitely will try it myself some time.

Cheers,
Martin

Dune

Thanks guys. I think I just manage, Martin. Thanks for the offer, and yes, I know where to find you  ;) I'm now doing some tests at 6x6k, detail 0.5 and AA 4, and I use 2.4 Gig. Jon's settings, by the way, were too high for my machine, but I might try some more settings for the best result.

Henry Blewer

These are really wonderful. Do you have a link or links to see your commissioned work on the net?
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

Saurav