A mountain WIP

darthvader · February 01, 2009, 03:49:57 PM

I've always thought Mt Rainier up here in the pacific northwest was a very pretty mountain so I decded to redo one of my early images and make it....actually good. I really need to work on the texturing for the rock surface as I boubt the rock is really that red. The trees are X-frog's Grand fir's. And as always comments and suggestions are very welcome.

Render Time: 10 hours 24 minutes
Detail: 1
AA: 8
GI: 1/1

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old_blaggard · February 01, 2009, 04:39:32 PM

Very nice work here. The scale is quite good, and the POV is nice. I would work on smoothing out the snow a little in addition to getting that red color out of the rocks.

domdib · February 01, 2009, 05:21:06 PM

It looks pretty good, but the one thing that I wonder about is the lighting - it seems excessively blue. Even the green of the fir trees seems too bluish. Interesting to compare this with Saurav's image of Mt Rainier of a few weeks ago at http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5484.0. I know it's a different POV, but the lighting in his image just seems more sympathetic - but then I like early morning/late evening sun on mountains. Good luck with developing the scene!

Tangled-Universe · February 01, 2009, 05:35:46 PM

This is looking promising so far!

I think O_b and dombib already pointed out the most important issues as well as the stong points.

As for the lighting I might have some ideas/tips to improve it:
You may try slightly lowering the sun's elevation, about 5 degrees or so. Then decrease the haze density by about 60% and increase it's half heighth by about 50%.
Then increase the red sky decay by about 50% or so...depends of course a bit on the value you've already set. I guess it's the default.
You should now have a slight less dense atmosphere, which will give more detail to the trees, and this should also introduce some more red in the lighting.
The lower angle of the sun adds to this as well as it will make the lighting a bit more dramatic.

I hope this helps.

Martin

darthvader · February 02, 2009, 02:33:32 AM

Thanks for the tips on the atmosphere TU, at least in the preview render that seemed to clear up a lot of the blueness. We must have different monitor settings because the scene isn't supposed to be early morning/evening...though I imagine that would look rather nice. I'll post round two when it finishes.

darthvader · February 02, 2009, 11:50:48 AM

Here is round two. I teaked the atmosphere settings, adjusted the gamma correction and got rid of that red rock...at least on my computer. I still need to fix the snow roughness a bit and work on creating a more realistic rock texture.

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Tangled-Universe · February 02, 2009, 02:17:11 PM

I see you have raised the elevation of the sun instead of lowering it

The lighting is a bit dull now because there are not so many shadows and they're quite light. Funny by the way, because normally many people are complaining that their shadows are too dark

Anyway, the bluish-ness is indeed less.
This is not a standard easy to lit scene because the snow is white as well as the clouds.
If you don't mind you could send me the tgd and a link to the terrainfile and I could show you an example of what I have in mind

Martin

Seth · February 02, 2009, 02:21:53 PM

it's easier to have some good lighting with low height sun... that's my opinion....
I agree with T-U but as some might say, it's a matter of taste, not a technical advice

RogueNZ · February 02, 2009, 05:27:40 PM

I think the first one looks more realistic, try taking the redness from the rock and making it really dark, like almost black. I also think the clouds could sit a little higher. But good stuff so far

domdib · February 03, 2009, 12:48:47 AM

Looking more realistic - if that's what you're after

. I see the firs are very light green anyway.

When you say you want a more realistic rock texture... doesn't the far POV mean that changing this is unlikely to show up?

Tangled-Universe · February 03, 2009, 03:22:20 AM

I've received the files and hope to look at it this night or tomorrow. Please be patient, I'm quite busy!

darthvader · February 03, 2009, 07:07:06 PM

Here is my next go at it. I messed with the gamma so it may turn out too blue again. Also the clouds in this one really don't fit the scene so that will have to be played with some.

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Arandil · February 03, 2009, 09:27:44 PM

One cool experiment might be to shade/displace the snow differently based upon angle (and perhaps slope) to emulate the sun's influence as it passes over to the south every day. You could get a bit tad more exposed rock on the south side of the peak, for example, or thicker trees on the southern slopes.

domdib · February 04, 2009, 06:03:47 AM

The latest version seems a big step forward - the cloud distribution is more interesting, and the lighting is looking good. Bravo!

Tangled-Universe · February 04, 2009, 01:43:47 PM

Quote from: darthvader on February 03, 2009, 07:07:06 PM
Here is my next go at it. I messed with the gamma so it may turn out too blue again. Also the clouds in this one really don't fit the scene so that will have to be played with some.

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This is a great improvement already. The lighting is much better and the rock-colours are more interesting than previous versions. The clouds could use some work though.
At the moment I'm working with your tgd and thought I had improved the lighting already, but I think this looks even better.
I also made adjustments to the clouds. I'll send you a tgd within a few hours.

Martin