Post Your Renders - #4: A New Hope

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Comments

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Simple black and white image maps for light gels work nicely as well. I've made leaf patterns, applied them as a gel and used them to make it look lioke an off-camera light was shining through leaves. Add a light cone, and it can really be cool!

  • FractalDimensiaFractalDimensia Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    I tend to overfill my scene sometimes as well. Mostly it's because I'm not entirely sure what angle I want, and what will be in the shot. Once I get a couple angles figured out, I either go through the scene and delete things that I know I don't need and hide things I'm not sure if I'll need. Checking the invisibility checkbox is a great way to speed up renders when something isn't in frame. Especially if you're using GI.


    I love this scene because I started to build this elaborate set and I wanted some atmosphere. When I did, I found much of the background objects were hidden from view, so I started hiding and then deleting until only a cube primitive (floor/ledge) and a few pillars were left in the scene.

    I especially like the hieroglyphs, EP. :) Nicely done!

    So, is this render called, "Lunchtime!"?

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    It's an homage to Frazetta. I call it, if I had the talent Frazetta had in one little pinky.... ;-)


    Anyway, here's the images I mentioned in a previous post. All the same light rig. The sunlight in the first image is the standard hard shadow. The second image is the shadow buffer set to the maximum buffer size, and the third image is with raytraced soft shadows with a light diameter of 50'.

    Wall-soft_shadows.jpg
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    Wall-shadow_buffer.jpg
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    Wall-hard_shadows.jpg
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  • GSSEVGSSEV Posts: 32
    edited December 1969

    Very cool! I know... I really enjoy Carrara's modeler myself. I figure that if I ever outgrow it, then I can shop around. But that might have to wait 'till my next life 'cause Carrara has everything I need for my modeling needs so far.

    That's one heck of a change in appearances you've pulled off here! Sweet!
    FYI, if you go to the top level shader, you can use Advanced options to fade between one entire shader and another, the same way you did with just color and bump, using a single slider!
    It's called "MultiChannel Mixer, in the Complex Shader options at the top level. Your current shader will then become "Source 1" and Source 2 is empty, so you can add your second, entire multi shader in there, and then use a slider or whatever to control the change/blend.
    Here's the Video I made using this concept.

    Many thanks Dartanbeck, I will be playing with the multi channel mixer. Thought I had reached Carraras limits but it has so much more.
    With this I should be able to have even wilder changes using displacement on to of the sculpted morphs.
    I Appreciate the help.

  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    gssev said:
    Many thanks Dartanbeck, I will be playing with the multi channel mixer. Thought I had reached Carraras limits but it has so much more.

    It never ceases to amaze me how far Carrara can be pushed sometimes. Some users come up with truly incredible shaders that just blow my mind.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Been working like crazy on my scene. I've come up with another tree. It's a Poplar like tree. I've also added an inverted tree to my weeping willow so that it looks like there's some roots. I've created my own tree shaders for the oaks, willows and poplar. I've dialed down the intensity of the translucency of the water rushes and added a couple dead rushes to the mix.

    Fantasy-village.jpg
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    poplars_lining_road.jpg
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  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    Been working like crazy on my scene. I've come up with another tree.

    I can't even begin to keep up with the changes you are making here. But they look damn good. It's been priming my own creative pump to do a landscape scene in Carrara again.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Garstor said:
    Been working like crazy on my scene. I've come up with another tree.

    I can't even begin to keep up with the changes you are making here. But they look damn good. It's been priming my own creative pump to do a landscape scene in Carrara again.


    Testing a new terrain shader that incorporates a grass texture map. (Thanks for the tip Dart!)

  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    Testing a new terrain shader that incorporates a grass texture map. (Thanks for the tip Dart!)

    I have some nice grass textures that help sell the terrain shaders.

    One minor quibble I have with the terrain shaders is that unless they are entirely procedural, they seem always need tweaking with each new terrain you use them on. Nitpicky...yeah...it is... ;)

    Looking forward to seeing what you've done!

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Garstor said:
    Testing a new terrain shader that incorporates a grass texture map. (Thanks for the tip Dart!)

    I have some nice grass textures that help sell the terrain shaders.

    One minor quibble I have with the terrain shaders is that unless they are entirely procedural, they seem always need tweaking with each new terrain you use them on. Nitpicky...yeah...it is... ;)

    Looking forward to seeing what you've done!


    I'm using a fairly low res texture that I've altered in Photoshop to create a tiling texture. Since I don't have a heck of a lot of experience with it, it's not that great. To hide the resulting tile pattern I'm heavily mixing it with terrain functions, mixers and additive functions. So far it looks pretty good.

  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    I'm using a fairly low res texture that I've altered in Photoshop to create a tiling texture. Since I don't have a heck of a lot of experience with it, it's not that great. To hide the resulting tile pattern I'm heavily mixing it with terrain functions, mixers and additive functions. So far it looks pretty good.

    Alright then...keep us in suspense!

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Garstor said:
    I'm using a fairly low res texture that I've altered in Photoshop to create a tiling texture. Since I don't have a heck of a lot of experience with it, it's not that great. To hide the resulting tile pattern I'm heavily mixing it with terrain functions, mixers and additive functions. So far it looks pretty good.

    Alright then...keep us in suspense!


    I'm rendering! I'm rendering! Keep your pasties on!

  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    Garstor said:
    Alright then...keep us in suspense!

    I'm rendering! I'm rendering! Keep your pasties on!

    ROFL!

    I'll just keep installing stuff with DIM and shaking my money-maker while I wait for your system to catch up to Garstor Time! ;-P

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    For my system it shouldn't be that great for animating, but for a fast rig like yours, it should be pretty speedy. The issue is the trees I think. I've worked on keeping the replicators small-ish to minimize the dreaded, Filling Grid progress bar, but since the trees also use a replicator system for the leaves, it's a double whammy. Even if you do as Dart suggests and duplicate the trees rather than replicate them it makes no real difference. I've tested it. To get the trees to look good, you need a lot of leaves properly scaled.

  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    For my system it shouldn't be that great for animating, but for a fast rig like yours, it should be pretty speedy. The issue is the trees I think. I've worked on keeping the replicators small-ish to minimize the dreaded, Filling Grid progress bar, but since the trees also use a replicator system for the leaves, it's a double whammy. Even if you do as Dart suggests and duplicate the trees rather than replicate them it makes no real difference. I've tested it. To get the trees to look good, you need a lot of leaves properly scaled.

    Trees can drag even this beast down (of course, I could be shooting myself in the foot with some poor render settings that are needlessly high). We are forever balancing between what we want and what our systems can do for us. In a masochistic sense, that's part of the fun.

    Wow...I took the high road and didn't make a Mac comment... ;-P

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Garstor said:

    Wow...I took the high road and didn't make a Mac comment... ;-P

    A stable ten year old Mac comment. ;-P

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,574
    edited December 1969

    Garstor said:

    Wow...I took the high road and didn't make a Mac comment... ;-P

    A stable ten year old Mac comment. ;-PDude... That's awesome!

  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    Garstor said:

    Wow...I took the high road and didn't make a Mac comment... ;-P

    A stable ten year old Mac comment. ;-P

    Dude... That's awesome!

    Don't encourage him! :lol:

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited April 2013

    Speaking of encouragement.... Garstor, you really must post a Carrara render! I'll shoot off another beta of my scene for you later if it will help!


    Here's a sample of my latest attempt. Improved, fleshed out Weeping Willow, procedural terrain texture with custom image maps added, improved cattails, improved procedural shader on the dam, etc. Still have to flesh out the rocks next to the dam.


    Oh yeah, just for Dart, no postwork except to convert to .jpg.

    Fantasy_village2.jpg
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    Post edited by evilproducer on
  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    Speaking of encouragement.... Garstor, you really must post a Carrara render! I'll shoot off another beta of my scene for you later if it will help!

    LIKE!

    I will get a Carrara render posted in the near future -- pennance for my LightWave sins!

    But I need to get more DIM work done first.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    A homemade light dome test for my scene. Light dome replicates one distance light 50 times. There is one sunlight- hard shadows. No postwork.

    light_dome_test.jpg
    1200 x 900 - 733K
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Interesting.... I almost always try and fake GI with strategically placed lights. I'm testing a home brewed light dome to simulate reflected atmospheric light, such as Carrara's Skylight option produces in the render settings. Normally I don't see ashing, but in this render I do. I suspect I may have gone down a little too low on the replicated lights in the light dome and what I'm actually seeing isn't photon artifacts, but rather shadows artifacts from the leaves of the tree. It's just kind of interesting that it looks so much like GI ashing. See shaded areas in screen shot:

    Picture_1.png
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  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,988
    edited April 2013

    very interesting evil, it's great to see you working this up!

    here's a few from me, : the first is K4's mesh only (except for the socks) - I rearranged his mesh to give him some clothes as an experiment.

    for the textures I used baker to export the uvees and used Fenric's tree duplicate plugin for the multiple k4's.
    I also used Fenric's unlock figure plugin to give me access to K4's morphs.

    the second is a carrara render printed out into a4 sections, so it's about 90 cm by 120cm.
    the carrara file is 2.1 gig.

    its for a painting i'm working up for a show I've been invited to take part in later during the year. (the show is called "Nightmares".

    I'm using the Verdaccio technique - so this is just the beginning of the underpainting. (acrylic on linen)

    P4150118.jpg
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    P3290019.jpg
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    k4bodysuits3.jpg
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    Post edited by Headwax on
  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    head wax said:
    the second is a carrara render printed out into a4 sections, so it's about 90 cm by 120cm.
    the carrara file is 2.1 gig.

    its for a painting i'm working up for a show I've been invited to take part in later during the year. (the show is called "Nightmares".

    I'm using the Verdaccio technique - so this is just the beginning of the underpainting. (acrylic on linen)

    Very neat! Reminicent of medaevil (I hate spelling that word...) artwork. I like it.

    @EP: I'm not sure what you mean by "ashing" in that image -- it looks pretty darn good to my eyes.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    @Headwax: Should be very interesting when it's all put together. You'll have to post a snapshot when you're done if it won't violate any of the show's conditions!


    @Garstor: If you look at the shaded area of the big building, you'll notice blotchy areas or noise. You can get that in images that use GI. It's more noticeable in darker areas. From what I've read, it can be due to a couple factors related to the virtual photons. Either not enough of them, or too low of a lighting quality, interpolation on (or off), the chicken entrails are wrong.... You name it. The effect is called ashing because of the gray ash-like look.


    Since I didn't use GI, lowered the light count down on my light dome, and I didn't use soft shadows on my primary sunlight, I suspect I inadvertently carried my simulation of GI too far. I think the blotchies are actually softish shadow artifacts from the tree leaves due to lowering the light count down on the dome a bit too much.


    Here's the final product. I did re-render it with soft shadows enabled to see what effect it had. Not much. I also noticed that when I open it in Photoshop, the gamma in the image looks darker than when it was rendering.

    Fantasy_village3.jpg
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  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    @Garstor: If you look at the shaded area of the big building, you'll notice blotchy areas or noise. You can get that in images that use GI. It's more noticeable in darker areas. From what I've read, it can be due to a couple factors related to the virtual photons. Either not enough of them, or too low of a lighting quality, interpolation on (or off), the chicken entrails are wrong.... You name it. The effect is called ashing because of the gray ash-like look.

    Alright, I do see the blotchy noise...but to my eyes, it is just dirt on the wall surface. It really does not take away from the image.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Garstor said:
    @Garstor: If you look at the shaded area of the big building, you'll notice blotchy areas or noise. You can get that in images that use GI. It's more noticeable in darker areas. From what I've read, it can be due to a couple factors related to the virtual photons. Either not enough of them, or too low of a lighting quality, interpolation on (or off), the chicken entrails are wrong.... You name it. The effect is called ashing because of the gray ash-like look.

    Alright, I do see the blotchy noise...but to my eyes, it is just dirt on the wall surface. It really does not take away from the image.


    Yeah, I'm not too worried about it. I just thought that it was interesting and weird since I didn't use GI, until I thought about the likely cause.

  • Rhian-SkybladeRhian-Skyblade Posts: 223
    edited April 2013

    Here's one of my render attempts on an "elderly" person (yes, it's supposed to be Sheogorath from Elder Scrolls).

    While the face looks nicely "elderly", I can't still figure out how to get the hands and ears looking somewhat older and not so baby smooth. It's as if Carrara ignores the texture map details here.

    Well, overall I am pleased with his face and hair ^^

    Sheogorath2.png
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    Post edited by Rhian-Skyblade on
  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    Rhiana said:
    Here's one of my render attempts on an "elderly" person (yes, it's supposed to be Sheogorath from Elder Scrolls).

    I'm not familiar with the character but I do like the regal and distinguished look.

  • Rhian-SkybladeRhian-Skyblade Posts: 223
    edited April 2013

    Thank you Garstor. He's a character from a game series called Elder Scrolls (Morrowind, Skyrim and so on). He's the Mad God and Patron of the crazy people :-)
    If they ever are going to make a movie I hope they ask Sean Connery doing him.


    Continued Here

    Post edited by Chohole on
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