Night Sky rv 2019

[WAS]

Revision of my old night sky which seems to load weirdly in TG now (probably new AA, didn't really test). Different PF settings, and a new milky way as I can't even find my version with the milky way type galaxy I did awhile back.

I think it turned out alright, and the starts look decent. I noticed a issue with the masking used to add the "Dense Stars" to the galaxy area, where the "Add" set to 1 doesn't want to give me totally solid stars. Large stars may be a tad too large, as well.

[Dune]

That's really nice Milky Way. Mine is probably too light, but I tried to simulate this one. I like darker better, though a slight bluish haze in sky would be nice. Masked fractals on background too?

[WAS]

Yep you got it Some simple shapes too. Looking at the colours I'm not totally satisfied. I based off an vibrancy adjusted Hubble milky way shot and looking at your example makes me want to follow that color scheme.

I'll share the project once I'm satisfied with the dense stars I'm getting picky over.

One issue I still struggle with is Simple Shape Shader needs Better Colour Continuation Calculation. The hard falloff is very noticeable on hard black space. If @Matt could add that in an upcoming release, that would be awesome (for smooth step). It seems even with 100%+ edge width on percentage, the fade is still hard along the edges and not a true linear gradient from center 1 to 0. Playing with Gamma helps, but is no fix.

[Dune]

I set SSS to 150 or even 200% smooth step and added a gain at 0.9. Don't forget using a smoothing node as well, that helps.

[WAS]

Upclose and personal with these stars (only took about an hour on the server, or about 30 minutes on my desktop). MPD 1, AA7.

Not as happy with the highlights, the falloff was giving me trouble so I kinda gave up. Going to go back to further in the file revision and bring in some older shapes.



The dense stars following the light of the galaxy were actually hard to achieve. Luminosity mixing together doesn't like to play well, so I ended up multiplying the stars by 10, which finally gave my a proper mix, though I feel due to having to have denser stars (more voronoi billow blops bumping each other), shape is lost.

[Dune]

Looks good, and very impressive if enlarged. And quick to render. Seems like mpd=1 isn't too bad at all, though I would think background would have more to do with mpd than AA. I used mpd=0.5 and AA6, have to see what happens if I use lower...
I did that; setting all values before feeding into one final luminosity, as I found the same obstacle.

[WAS]

Looks good, and very impressive if enlarged. And quick to render. Seems like mpd=1 isn't too bad at all, though I would think background would have more to do with mpd than AA. I used mpd=0.5 and AA6, have to see what happens if I use lower...
I did that; setting all values before feeding into one final luminosity, as I found the same obstacle.

I was curious about this too and you reminded me. I was testing at MPD 0.7 but let throw one at the server which is more conventional at MPD 0.5, just to see...

[Dune]

Interestingly, a PT render took about as long (even less) than default render. Looked the same.

[Oshyan]

Don't forget the effects of Defer All if you are using that (and if you aren't, try it, but remember not to let Robust Adaptive be too adaptive, i.e. try 1/4 first samples maybe).

- Oshyan

[WAS]

Don't forget the effects of Defer All if you are using that (and if you aren't, try it, but remember not to let Robust Adaptive be too adaptive, i.e. try 1/4 first samples maybe).

- Oshyan

I started this remotely so it was based on default scene. I can't remember off top of my head but I believe it's now default defer all? I hadn't even checked AA as I was building around default settings as I know many don't play with it unless needed.

[WAS]

Couple more iterations. I think this is close to a final. It's probably as fast as I can get it. And considering I shaved off over an hour form 1920 render, I think that's pretty remarkable. This 4k render took 1h 21m at MPD 0.6 AA6. I'm sure you could get away with MPD1 in a scene like this but not practical for a more foreground based scene.

[Dune]

Looks impressive, and quite close, I'd say. You can't of course compare to a lot of photo's as they are often longer exposures or HDR type.

[WAS]

Looks impressive, and quite close, I'd say. You can't of course compare to a lot of photo's as they are often longer exposures or HDR type.

Yeah. I tried to mimic the lighting to a degree, and the dense stars. The only way I'd think you would get closer is not so much the BG but camera exposure and fiddling with gamma and contrast of the render. Than taking that through PS or light room. I only added a leveled guass blur on Dodge.

[KyL]

Looks great!

and fast too...

[Hannes]

Indeed looking fantastic!