Road Trip 2013

[Oshyan]

Very nice all of them, but 2754 is *superb*. The stand-out winner by far in my eyes.

- Oshyan

[gregsandor]

Thanks guys.

Here's a higher-res version.

Edited to replace the possibly broken image with a possibly not broken one (though it displayed fine for me). 

[Oshyan]

Hmm, corrupted image? Not showing in the forums and download and view in XnView doesn't work.

- Oshyan

[Tangled-Universe]

Doesn't open in the forums for me either, but I can save and view it without any problems.

[Oshyan]

Wow, now there's a first! Windows Image Viewer/MS Paint can open it, but XnView, Irfanview, and Picasa Viewer can't!

- Oshyan

[gregsandor]

Lets try this one.  The image displayed inline for me, but here's one that should work for everyone.

[Jo Kariboo]

All your last images are impressive. You have in my opinion a good length of advances for this contest.

[TheBadger]

Very nice!

[Oshyan]

Excellent. The upper 63% of the image is in my view nearly indistinguishable from a photo, at least upon casual inspection.

- Oshyan

[Dune]

Excellent indeed. And Oshyan's remark about the upper 63% obliges me to comment on the lower 37%. I think the grass might have some more variation (color, wear/growth, occasional weed) and there's a certain repetition in the road's edge, like the serrated edge of a mask.

But I give you a very high chance of winning nonetheless, unless there's serious contesters who didn't post any WIP's. Let's hope for the best.

[gregsandor]

there's a certain repetition in the road's edge, like the serrated edge of a mask.

That serration has plagued me since the start.  I recut my road-cutter mask from 4096 to 8192, and still had jagged edges, so again recut it to use 4 masks at 8192 each which is what we see here.  Still it shows.  Is there something I can do with fuzzy zones or something to blur that edge?  Here's my node setup for the road-cutter and a fullsize section of it:

[Dune]

If you blur the masks, you can get rid of the serration. I just tried it primitively with Irfanview (no access to Photoshop now). Then in TG you can add a color adjust to sharpen the edge again if needed. Hope that helps for you as well.

[gregsandor]

If you blur the masks, you can get rid of the serration. I just tried it primitively with Irfanview (no access to Photoshop now). Then in TG you can add a color adjust to sharpen the edge again if needed. Hope that helps for you as well.

Thanks.  It is an improvement, but I am not sure it is a dramatic enough difference to warrant destroying the sharp mask in the original file.  Most important to me is that the original mask is precise, and pretty closely meets or beats the resolution of the orthophotos.  I'd like to find a solution that preserves those hard edges and fixes the jagged edge either procedurally or with another external mask or something without changing the size of the road. 

I don't know; your render really looks good and smooth.  Maybe mine just isn't blurred enough or something.  Its a fine balance.

Here's a comparison of the original versus blurred files:

[Dune]

I only blurred it enough to 'fill the gaps', so to speak. I always blur my masks slightly, and sometimes considerably and re-harden in TG. And if you make another set of masks, you won't loose the originals. I also prefer tif over jpg; I don't know if artifacts will manifest themselves. I did see a tiny bit of compression artifacts at the edges.

[jo]

Hi Greg,

Are you actually using JPEGs for the masks or just to show them in the forum?

Regards,

Jo