A secret place

Started by FrankB, April 15, 2008, 12:22:39 PM

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nikita

Quote from: FrankB on April 15, 2008, 12:22:39 PMThe canyon structures are based on Nikita's ingenious and lightning fast method of creating a procedural, decent looking canyon. You should really look it up there if you haven't done already. Nikita maintains an english version of the site: http://en.tgblog.de/

Nikita, if you read this: there's a slight mistake in the canyon tgd, and it's related to lateral displacement (hint). Do you want to try and find it yourself or do you prefer me to point you to it ;-)
Thank you very much! but I'd like to use this opportunity to mention that this technique was developed by my co-author Goms/J.Klamans. :)

As for the mistake.. There should be another compute terrain node right before the final Power fractal shader for the lateral only option to work correctly. If you use the file as is, there shouldn't be much of a problem, but ugly artifacts and unexpected loss of detail might occur if you use heavy displacement after compute terrain.
I'll put that on our to-do list :)

(Also, the connection between compute terrain and the distribution shader has no effect and shouldn't be there)

rcallicotte

Thanks, nikita.  Great site!
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

efflux

#17
I love the composition and mood of this. Excellent. The only thing I'm not keen on is the colouring and lighting.  A bit dark and could do with more colour variation away from the red. Im my opinion this could be a truly fantastic scene with a few tweaks. I would definitely work on this some more.

FrankB

Quote from: efflux on April 18, 2008, 05:40:51 AM
I love the composition and mood of this. Excellent. The only thing I'm not keen on is the colouring and lighting.  A bit dark and could do with more colour variation away from the red. Im my opinion this could be a truly fantastic scene with a few tweaks. I would definitely work on this some more.

Thank you - I thought I may tweak this a little more. I'm thinking of some little vegetation in between the gaps of the rock structure (if I can make that look good, usually I find cg vegetation destroys the realism in most cases).
I'd also like to enhance the surface, of course. All this will surely add up to more render time, and I already wish I had a 4 core system.
I'm still struggling with the decision to either buy now or wait until the Nehalem intels become available beginning of next year - but I'm drifting away from the subject.

Although it may look great, I may refrain from using the cracks and gashes function, although Id be intrigued to see if it adds to the scene well enough.

We'll see. In any case, I'm going to revisit this scene. :-)

Frank

efflux

#19
On the whole, the scene has a fantastic mood. The tall aspect enhances the deepness of the chasm. You eye is drawn up through that. The large dark shadowed imposing rocks above. You have lots of cool silhouetted rock edges and sense of depth. The dark areas focuses attention on the smaller lit areas. It's not usually good to fill a picture with lots of detail everywhere. You have that strong orange/red area, directly below that, the little patch of blue sky, the small patches of light on the water, the opposing dark stones in the water. Even that tiny bright patch in the distance aids the composition. It's a focus of attention. Take that out and the scene would lose impact. You can also see a triangular compositional structure in the whole thing. There are lots of compositional rhythms going through this. Global illumination makes a scene like this work in TG2. It wouldn't work well without it. It's a very effective dramatic set up in my opinion but don't lose those key elements. The concept could yield a host of renders. Different POVs etc. The rock colour could be very subtly broken up more but the rest is really great.

monks

Really awesome image- reminds me of a long tunnel I once had to negotiate in Severance, Blade of Darkness, or was it Unreal- god, all computer games merge into one...lol

monks

FrankB

Quote from: efflux on April 21, 2008, 05:40:14 AM
On the whole, the scene has a fantastic mood. The tall aspect enhances the deepness of the chasm. You eye is drawn up through that. The large dark shadowed imposing rocks above. You have lots of cool silhouetted rock edges and sense of depth. The dark areas focuses attention on the smaller lit areas. It's not usually good to fill a picture with lots of detail everywhere. You have that strong orange/red area, directly below that, the little patch of blue sky, the small patches of light on the water, the opposing dark stones in the water. Even that tiny bright patch in the distance aids the composition. It's a focus of attention. Take that out and the scene would lose impact. You can also see a triangular compositional structure in the whole thing. There are lots of compositional rhythms going through this. Global illumination makes a scene like this work in TG2. It wouldn't work well without it. It's a very effective dramatic set up in my opinion but don't lose those key elements. The concept could yield a host of renders. Different POVs etc. The rock colour could be very subtly broken up more but the rest is really great.

That's probably the most thorough, complete and analytic critic I ever saw someone write-up for any of my images :-)
Thank you for that!
I also agree with your assessment on what the strongest points are in this composition. I have begun to play with minor additions and changes, and I'm ruthlessly discarding those which just don't play along with the original.
I found I may end up doing nothing at all, or very little for a next version of it.

Regards,
Frank