Medieval city

[Dune]

Thanks, Martin.

[Dune]

Finally got the info for the castle... so here it is. Now for the final steps (sigh).

[mesocyclone]

This is awesome. I'm kinda anxious for the grand finale! 

[masonspappy]

Going to show my ignorance a bit. There is a building sitting smack in the water. Is it supposed to be that way?

[jo]

Hi,

Going to show my ignorance a bit. There is a building sitting smack in the water. Is it supposed to be that way?

Yes, do a web search for "moated house". I've always wanted one myself, fish out the window, sail radio yachts from the balcony, kayak from the back door etc. :-)

Regards,

Jo

[Dune]

You took the words out of my mouth, Jo!

[Dune]

It's progressing brilliantly. Yesterday I rendered a final concept at 4200 x 1200 (detail:0.6 AA:8 (1/16 samples)) in 1h17 and a croprender from a total of 9000x2571 in about the same time. Memory use was only 6GB. So I might up detail or AA. What do you think from the crop, would it be meaningful to do so?
I also want a little more shadow around the sides of the houses. They stand there a little 'naked', if you get my point. Would shadowed fill lights help in that sense or would higher GI be better (now 2/2)? Soft shadowed fill lights would probably take a lot more time to render, I guess.

[inkydigit]

these last two are excellent...can't wait for the finalé!

[Tangled-Universe]

That's coming along very very nicely Ulco.

I think I'd render it with AA8, as you do, but with default sampling at 1/4th.
You can increase renderdetail a bit further, but honestly I do not see much small scale terrain detail which would justify to increase detail beyond 0.6.
Given the resolution and the fact you'll print it this should all be sufficient.

For extra realism you should enable soft-shadows.
I'd re-render this crop with default soft shadows setting and see how fast it renders.
Then render it again and set sample jitter for soft shadows to 0 and see how fast that goes.
Without the sample jitter you may get banding, but that's often difficult to see when the shadow's being cast on bumpy surfaces.

For darker shadows you may need to reduce the GI strength on surface in the enviro light, but you can also reduce the haze/bluesky density since that also affects brightness of shadows.

[Dune]

Thanks, Martin. Good advice. Higher render detail would be more important in low shots, where the fake grass would benefit, so I agree. Soft shadows will be the major improvement, I also thought that. I never touched the sample jitter, so that would be interesting. A lot of shadows fall on straight walls/streets of course, so I might need jitter after all. I will also eliminate the fill light I have now, besides GI 2/2. Not necessary perhaps.
For copyright and abuse reasons, I can't post the whole thing in its 'full majestic splendor', I'm afraid, but I'll definitely post something. You're all invited to Zevenaar 

[Kadri]

Ulco are the walls roof etc. procedurals or real texture maps or both of them ?

[Dune]

They're texture maps (6 different wall types, 4 roofs) + color variation on world scale (and some houses have added patches of procedural concrete/cement/mud). You probably noticed some banding   Maybe it's a good idea to try making some medieval like stonework procedural. Nice challenge.

[Kadri]

Thanks Ulco and 

[mhaze]

Looking good, looking forward to the finished work.

[otakar]

Wow, don't have to say much more here
I agree about the soft shadows if you can pull it off, should help with realism. Detail already seems very granular, especially when this is going to be printed and seen from quite a distance I presume.