Recent Renders

[pixelpusher636]

I have a few renders to share. I think I'm most happy with the desert cloudscape and how the colors just sort of worked out, the hot air balloons might need a larger render and some rework but the western mountain I've tried repeatedly to make realistic and have fallen short at every turn. Definitely open to suggestions on this one, actually I might be begging a little.  

[Dune]

Nice work again. But for each one, I can suggest some changes. Most importantly, I think you need to work on layers in the terrain, either subtle or more pronounced color variation like strata. Especially where you've used the strata shader. Use an XZ stretched PF followed by a transform shader set to world. You can of course warp the strata a bit over Y before that transform shader to make them less straight.
In the desert I would change the POV so you have some trees in full in foreground, to create more depth. And use more species, some low grass where the trees are, e.g. especially if you move the cam more to ground level.
The lake might need some shore vegetation, and/or some bigger trees among the shrub. Some variation at least.
And in the landslide render, I would also incorporate some (more) color variation in the rock. Old rock, and especially shaded crevices/gullies, can have more lichen and moss, dirt, that sort of coloration, whilst the landslide might have lighter rock, where it has freshly broken of the mountain. And I would not plant any trees or shrub there.
Just my 2 cents.

[Hannes]

I absolutely echo Ulco!!! Some really nice images, and what Ulco wrote might be some cool suggestions.

[pixelpusher636]

Well I think this is progress. I wasn't sure how this would look applied to the eroded terrain from CE but I have to say it's definitely a rock "face lift." Thanks for the tips!
I will post more progress as it progresses.

As for the desert scene, I would agree with those tips too except this is part of a larger story. I'm actually working on this same shot with UFO's in the sky so the POV is needed.
You couldn't have know that though. The whole idea was inspired from the attached accompanying image to the mountain image. I just need a human 3D model realistic enough for the scene...

[Dune]

Well, the mountain sure has improved now. Good luck with the others. Curious to see any updates.

[Stormlord]

Yes, I totally agree here, definitely more details would improve a lot the mountain scenery.
Maybe some (white) sand in the deep water lake (which light up the deep water zones more!), some variations in the sand in the shallow water zones, some peebles at the beach and some huge boulders outside. Also more different vegetation around the lake and more, scrubs, bushes, small trees here and there.

Regarding water
I often take white sand for deep water zones to illuminate shallow water (sandbars, shoals, ect.), more darker colors the closer you come to the shore and sand with pebbles at the shoreline.
Dune suggested one time regarding my Lake Tahoe image the following... but read yourself... (Before / After image attached)


Dunes comment was really good!


Lake Tahoe (Detail Wet Zone)

STORMLORD

[pixelpusher636]

Yes, I totally agree here, definitely more details would improve a lot the mountain scenery.
Maybe some (white) sand in the deep water lake (which light up the deep water zones more!), some variations in the sand in the shallow water zones, some peebles at the beach and some huge boulders outside. Also more different vegetation around the lake and more, scrubs, bushes, small trees here and there.
Regarding water
I often take white sand for deep water zones to illuminate shallow water (sandbars, shoals, ect.), more darker colors the closer you come to the shore and sand with pebbles at the shoreline.
Dune suggested one time regarding my Lake Tahoe image the following... but read yourself... (Before / After image attached)

Dunes comment was really good!

Lake Tahoe (Detail Wet Zone)
STORMLORD

I started out with a wet reflective shore but at this distance in order to really notice the wet shore the numbers had to be exaggerated. The suns position didn't add any reflection and finally the lake being fairly calm a large wet shore didn't make sense anymore for this render.
I would love to have the raw computer horsepower to handle whatever I threw at it but that fact is I'm on a nearly 14 year old computer. I sometimes have to pick and choose with how many pops vs displacements and how patient I'm feeling. When things take too long I lose interest and I don't want that to happen anymore. So for now I will just have to get creative with how to a-lot my limited resources.

By the way STORMLORD I am still a huge fan of your Lake Tahoe image, stunning.

Well, the mountain sure has improved now. Good luck with the others. Curious to see any updates.

Well thank you kindly Sir. I will be happily posting updates as this progresses. I appreciate the feedback.

[Dune]

14 year old! That's probably dead slow indeed. No chance of upgrading? Secondhand perhaps. I think under $1000 you can get quite a decent machine that can do these kind of renders within half an hour, or even less. Just be careful within tiny displacements plus RT reflections, transparent rough water and huge (Easy) clouds. Those are the main culprits for slower rendertimes, especially in Path Trace mode.

[Stormlord]

@ Pixelpusher
Thank you, very kind!
And congratulations, I have the same problem, so I totally understand your situation.
When I start up my machine... it says... ASUS Motherboard 2009 (LOL!).

I would like to do more Renderings like my "Lake Tahoe" series, but I haven't enough RAM (Only 6GB available).
This Lake Tahoe series constist mainly of layers, which has been rendered seperately and combined later in Photoshop due to my restricted memory.
(I know that I could do it again, but it's so much effort to create such a scenery with my outdated machine.)

But back again to your mountains. Just some ideas...
First, try to estimate the average size of all your objects in your senery. At a glance your big boulders stick out totally because they are pretty big!
I mean, well it could be that way in nature, but it does not look natural in your image. It's just about the proportions. Boulders in proportion to the mountains.

Same for water.... I sometimes place a light source in a way that I have reflections on the water. Just to see how the size of the waves match to the rest (in proportions).
Sometimes an artist creates a good scene, but the porportion don't look natural and so his artwork ends up somehow below the capabillities of an otherwise cool work.

Same for textures of the plants. A good texture with a good lightning to it, makes the difference!
Often plants or trees are dull, booring and don't look lively. Like leafs with some dust on it or lustreless barks. How can you expect to get an atractive result with textures like this?

Also water... especially water...
If you look at your lake, it looks totally mossy. Would you like to jump in it?
Well... if not... try something else. Maybe a bright turquise or a more bluish look would make a real difference here.
Same for reflections in the water. If you have a real good sky, increase your reflections to bring in a nice sky in a harmonic way.


Maybe a little bit this way

See the reference and especially pay attention to the reflection of the sky in the water (mixing the water colors with the sky colors) towards the horizon to make it all clear.
Just try combinations and look what's kicking...

But all these suggestions are only my 2 cents here.... Basically your scenery is a good point to start.

STORMLORD

[pixelpusher636]

Dune I honestly would not say it was dead slow but compared to rendering the same image on a 2021 machine it's considerably slower. Depending on what I'm doing and what I'm comparing to it's a staggering difference. The mountain image (with avalanche) prior to today was taking roughly 1 hour 36 minutes which if I'm comparing to the earlier days of TG and the machines I had then, it's fast. 😀 I was seriously contemplating new Mac Studio a few months ago but decided to hold off. The specs with the M1 ultra are impressive. I would be curious if anyone here has enjoys this new system? I've only fantasize what it would be like to have those specs.


STORMLORD perhaps that's my whole problem, not using a reference in this particular case. Just enjoying the process of creating. Maybe another problem is I tend to find a little beauty in  everything, so a picture perfect shot in this case didn't bother me. After all, everything in the real world isn't this way either. Muddy nasty water, imperfect clouds etc. my main goal here was to reach a realistic enough landscape that pleased me. If it happened to be beautiful then it would be an added bonus. I for sure picked up on Dunes "landslide" comment (although not at first) and looked into my rock sizes. Some were indeed a bit large (and too dense) for the purpose I intended. I have seen large boulders spread far and wide down a mountain but in this case I wanted it to serve as eroded rock that's been deposited down the mountain for years and years from natural erosion. Scree might be the word but I'm not certain.

I am curious how you achieved the darker rock that starts right at the waterline to underwater. I can speculate to a few techniques but haven't confirmed if they would work. My first thought is a surface layer with correct altitude and fuzzy the next to mind is a painted shader. Whatever the method it looks quite nice. The rocks are very natural as well as the trees and other veg. Perhaps I'm completely wrong and this was all improved in post?

I lean a bit more towards the purist route in that I mean only using one light source to light the landscape and rarely have I did anything with the final render in post.  If I do it's to add a bit of contrast or color etc. not to say that I never have used a second Sun or light to improve a scene but even using a second Sun conservatively without shadows etc. it never worked out for me so I steered clear.

Hopefully with my next post I'll be a bit further along in achieving a more realistic render. I've already removed the exaggerated landslide. 😀

[pixelpusher636]

Fallen rock still needs more work but I have updated the rock face colors of the mountain, added a few more tree and bush species to a total of 13 and changed the water shader around a bit for a different murky look. I'm most troubled by the rock slide so that will be my next focus.

[Dune]

Looks much better!

And take a look here for a beach setup, a bit like the sample image Klaus posted. This rendered in 22 minutes on my machine, even with the subdivision settings set at 0.5, and a compute terrain.

[aknight0]

I really like the hot air balloon one!  Nice composition.

[pixelpusher636]

Looks much better!

And take a look here for a beach setup, a bit like the sample image Klaus posted. This rendered in 22 minutes on my machine, even with the subdivision settings set at 0.5, and a compute terrain.

Thanks Dune! I downloaded it on the spot. Some interesting things going on in this image at glance. For instance it looks like your shoreline surf is recognizing the larger rock front right and interesting how some of the rock underwater is under the sand. Great share!

[pixelpusher636]

Dune I don't think that 22 minutes is accurate. I think your machine had to have rendered this in much less time as my ancient machine rendered it in just over 20 minutes. In any event I was correct.. A lot of things to be learned in this scene. I particularly like the simplicity of the setup all the while achieving some advanced techniques. This will make it easier to understand whats going on. Well done Sir.