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What the..?
What the..?
Comments: 7
Frozencry

28.03.2024, 11:54








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Border to Desert
Border to Desert

            

Border to Desert
Description: Outdoor scene using IBL. The HDRI was self made from the Bryce 6 sky used here as well (courtesy David), but not rendered as backdrop. The light from the Bryce sun is a bit low and instead of placing a radial light as second sun over it, an HDRI with the sun at the same position yields superior results - particularly as far as shadows are concerned.

For the foreground, I've used Rashad's leaves found on the MatXchange here. IBL and transparent materials really boost render time up dramatically. By a factor of six, in this case - though it was worth the wait. Unfortunately, the material on the tree trunk is a bit cheap. But after waiting for 5 days and 15 hours (and 36 seconds) on my new dual core machine (my old one would have grinded this for 22 days), I lost the courage to re-render it.
Added by: Horo
Keywords: IBL, HDRI, desert, border, leaves, Horo
Date: 10.23.2006 08:57
Hits: 4370
Downloads: 108
Rating: 5.00 (2 Vote(s))
File size: 473.4 KB
Previous image: Longing
Next image: Winter Woodlands



Author: Comment:
davidbrinnen
Admin

Join Date: 01.03.2004
Comments: 2224
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Leaves have come out very well. They appear to have a lot of depth and detail. I think you might have got away with the material on the tree trunk if you had not drawn out attention to it. The from of the terrain is a little to uniform for my tastes and does not display the same degree of depth as the foreground. But that is more a matter of choice and taste than a criticism. There is no doubt that the ibl has done a good job around the leaves, very pleasing effect. But a high price in terms of render time. Worth it.
10.23.2006 18:54 Offline davidbrinnen mail at davidbrinnen.co.uk http://www.davidbrinnen.com
rashadcarter1
Admin

Join Date: 06.04.2006
Comments: 2610
Whoa man!!!!

I am amazed. Just plain bedazzled by this scene. Thank you Horo for the mention and the use of the "trick" or technique. The effect is unmatched. The leaves look so very real. I do not think one could ask for more convincing foliage in any 3D program on the market. Trully excellent implementation. The .hdr combined with the transparency trick has just the breathtaking effect I thought it would. Full physical realism. Wow. I am truly proud to see this work.

I feel almost responsible for the long render time. I'm so sorry. I just don't know of any other way to produce this kind of realism. The .hdr seems to be very costly in general so adding this step I'm sure requires some serious commitment. It makes you want to render it once and that's it. Though you could plop render just the tree trunk if it's material bothers you, it doesn't bother me so much. There's no reason to re-render the whole thing. The leaf image is ever-so-slightly ill-fitting the leaf mesh, as the leaf tips have black edges. After waiting this long I know you cannot change it, but in the future I suggest always fitting the mat with "actual selection" in the mat lab to assure a fit. It is minor and almost no one will notice it.

The scene is very interesting as David mentions the foreground is so detailed. The sky is perfect. the over-all light quality is very convincing. Haze is nice. It seems like maybe you were forced to morph into desert because more layers of vegetation would mean even more render time.
Hopefully, DAZ will see a few of these scenes and write some code to make rendering foliage transparency like this a bit faster. It would be nice if scenes like this could be rendered in less than a day.

Again, thank you for this scene. I am so anxious to apply ibl to my own scenes particularly those with foliage transparency. You have shown me what to look forward to and I must say I'm impressed beyond expectation. 5/5
10.23.2006 21:45 Offline rashadcarter1 rashadcarter1 at aol.com
rashadcarter1
Admin

Join Date: 06.04.2006
Comments: 2610
I was so excited I forgot to say...

In this scene we are looking down at the foliage and the effect of the transparency is subtle but powerful. If we were in a jungle or forest with above head canopy, the transparency effect would be even more pronounced as the "glow" would be visible from below as light passes "through" the leaves.

I like the way you merged more than one tree to look like a single complex one there on the left. I can see that some stems have leaves and others don't, an option not allowed in 5.5, or even 6 as far as I know though I don't yet own it. You must have used more than one tree. You hid the roots very well.

Nice adaptation of the transparency "trick" for the orange colored leaves/blossoms. "Black Nothing" serves as the perfect transparency platform, and is the true magic of the trick. Once you introduce foliage transparency into a scene, it's hard to place normal opaque foliage next to it. You kind of have no choice but to follow suit as you did here.

I would say in general that photograph based materials are on a whole different level than procedurals. Procedurals are nice, but it's hard to mimic the complexity of nature with a procedural. My feeling is why fuss with procedural textures when there is an entire universe of real texture samples out there just begging to be scanned or photographed and then applied in 3D? The green leaves in this scene were from the park outside my apartment here in NY and scanned into my computer. The orange colored leaves are fine on their own but are not easy to accept next to the realism presented by the photo-based leaf mat of the ground vegetation. Perhaps it would be best to export the leaf photo into photoshop or something, change it's saturation/hue to what you desire, and then re-import the new photograph into bryce.

Also, I know well that there is high specularity tuning in the original mat, yet I see none or very little here. Does the ibl kill specularity, or did you lower it purposefully? Either way it looks fine here, though I know you tend to like high specualrity values on foliage it surprises me that I don't see much here. Please fill me in. Also, how did you tune the volume color channel of the foliage? Did you lower it from white to dark gray to cut down on the lightness, or was it fine out of the box?

Lastly, I notice some slight ambient issues. The background has ambient but the foreground doesn't. Or should I say the mountain seem to have a decent amount of ambient, perhaps enough to notice. Minor quibble again. Sorry for writing so much, again!
10.24.2006 03:27 Offline rashadcarter1 rashadcarter1 at aol.com
LitoNico
Member

Join Date: 05.07.2004
Comments: 242
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I'll agree with David on the leaves, Rashad's trick does really work. Lots of detail. My favorite is the groundcover, despite being a bit flat.
The light on this piece I find somewhat inconsitent (as I think Rashad mentioned). Some too-black shadows on the bush in the front-right, and no dark at all in the middle- and back- ground. Also perhaps increase the frequency of your sand texture, the bump looks a little bit odd to me.
10.24.2006 03:55 Offline LitoNico LitoNico at aol.com
Horo
Admin

Join Date: 05.26.2004
Comments: 4721
-

Thanks for your rich comments. The leaves are not the only transparent things: the foreground terrain has a transparent copy hoovering over it (a method found in the Bluebell Woods by David).

The best leaves are the photographic ones on the low bushes. These are multiple copies of the default tree. (Which reminds me that B6 also features Random Multi-Replicate.) Specularity is indeed at 100 and IBL almost completely kills ambience. There are theories about why this must be so, it is a bit disappointing nevertheless. IBL can do a beautiful job, but like the sun, combining with other lights may be what is needed.

The Ambiance channel is at 0 for all materials. Using ample haze does mix with ambient. Color Perspective is On and Fog and Haze blended with sunlight (color 50, luminance 75). This should account for your observation of ambient in the background but none - or less - in the foreground.

The leaves on the tree at left have Rashad's procedural material on, I changed the colours, that's all. The bush at right is too dark, agreed, but there is more about it that is wrong: there are no leaves on it, but it should have - it's out of the objects library and I might have a mistake on the mat used on it. I completely forgot to look more closely at that over placing it correctly. We had quite a fight until it was placed correctly - but I won in the end. However, this bush doesn't make me happy.

Yes Lito, I did consider to put on some noise on the terrain and decided on that floating terrain with dark green patches. I left the rest as fine drift sand. Now, since you mention it, it could have done with a bit high frequency noise.

I concentrated probably too exclusively on IBL. I wanted to have something ready by the B6 release but considering the time invested on the render, I might as well have invested a bit more time and thought on the materials.
10.24.2006 07:27 Offline Horo h.-r.h.wernli at bluewin.ch https://www.horo.ch/
davidbrinnen
Admin

Join Date: 01.03.2004
Comments: 2224
Ah...

Horo says "the foreground terrain has a transparent copy hoovering over it". And I say... oh yes, that really will have pushed up the render time. And as you have mentioned IBL does not do much with the specularity channel. Specularity is apparently a bit of a rendering fudge which harks back to simpler days of slower computing, to produce effects without having to resort to time consuming reflection simulation... as I understand it... anyhow I've found it a really useful effect on it's own and doubtless others have too, so it's a bit dissapointing that the IBL does not stimulate it as I would have expected. The work around is to slap in a couple of additional point light sources to get it going where you need it or use more reflection.
10.24.2006 08:08 Offline davidbrinnen mail at davidbrinnen.co.uk http://www.davidbrinnen.com
tina gazcon
Member

Join Date: 08.07.2006
Comments: 254
Very Nice!!!

Im a big fan of your work. There are a few of you who really inspire me. Thank you for your comments on some of my work. Im learning more on each project. Im just about finished with my next one. Keep the critique coming.
10.30.2006 14:46 Offline tina gazcon pecasg62 at hotmail.com


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