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jmarvel

19.04.2024, 21:42

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Thaumaturgiston

Thaumaturgiston
Description:	The Grobburg is a Bryce model from DAZ3D. Else, there are 2 cubes and 7 selfdrawn terrains, the Bryce 6 default sky (by David) with adjusted colours. Lit by the sun and a selfmade light probe (Woolball). This light probe enhances the power of the sun and brightens up the shadows. About half the picture has transparent materials (water), the render time was accordingly long. I do not recommend to go this near to the thaumatologist's palaces, you never know what's going to happen to you. And crossing the river might turn out to be just another silly idea.
Added by:	Horo
Keywords:	grobburg, daz3d, thaumaturgist, hdri
Date:	03.05.2007 12:30
Hits:	5555
Downloads:	153
Rating:	4.00 (1 Vote(s))
File size:	323.2 KB

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rashadcarter1
Admin

Join Date: 06.04.2006
Comments: 2610

water

The water looks great. Really top knotch waterfall. The foam effect at the bottom could have been better, but it would involve volumetrics which along with transparency would be a crazy render time. I have a scene going now that has been rendering for ofver 100 hrs. I hope the render engine gets much faster in upcoming releases. Very interesting pebble-like material chosen for the foreground at the mouth of the fall. The aspect I like least is the castle, which to me is modeled far too simply. It looks a bit like someone was having fun with octogons and forgot about all other geometric shapes besides ocotogons. There is a scene of detail missing from that castle.

Where are the softened shadows that usually come with ibl?

Can you explian what you mean by the default sky by David? Do you mean a sky preset by David? The default sun colors cannot be adjusted as far as I know except through sun position.

The sky is interesting. It feels a little dark to me but I could be way off, as Spektyr's Carrara scene the other day had a similar color and I believed it 100%. To me this entire scene comes down to that close-up of the waterfall and it is awesome!!

03.05.2007 18:07

davidbrinnen
Admin

Join Date: 01.03.2004
Comments: 2224

I can't but agree with Rashad. The waterfall is wonderful, I really like the mix of colours used - but the plunge pool is a bit solid looking. You were brave to used IBL alongside so much transparent material. Compositionally, I think I'd prefer this scene if it were mirrored. All that buliding on the right and the fall away on the left is not to me as pleasing to look at as the reverse. I might even suggest swinging the camera out to show more of the front side of the waterfall - which is the star of this image afterall.

03.05.2007 18:48

gat
Member

Join Date: 12.21.2006
Comments: 667

I like the space in this render. I don't think using an IBL for lighting was needed for this image, just a couple of spheres would have been good, and all that transperent water........ Also, you could have used volumetric material.

rashad - 100hours?!! are you insane? I give up on a render after three! lol if it takes me 20 minutes to preview an image I just get rid of everything that is making it render that slow, or don't even atempt it in the first place :D

Yeh, Bryce realy really needs a speed improvement in rendering. I was wondering some render engines such as the one in blender are fast, but they take up a tone of memmory and bryce doesn't. Is it because of the way bryce renders an image?

03.06.2007 04:40

rashadcarter1
Admin

Join Date: 06.04.2006
Comments: 2610

render time

Yes gat, as you should have gathered by now, I am indeed crazy. I too get sick of long render times, but I also like to test the limits of my skills so to do that I have to occassionaly render scenes that go farther than expected. 100 hrs has been the render time just for the anti-alias. The basic render was another two days before that. The problem is that the anti-alias seems to be going along at about 1 percent per hour. I also have had other programs running and other scenes rendereing at the same time, which adversely affects the render time. The scene is 87% done so another 13 hours from now it will be finished cooking, provided I releave the computer of any additional stresses, which I probably won't. It is a re-make of IndoorOutdoor fusion... so it's very complex and there are many light sources and light directions, and detailed materials.

If you have a powerful enough computer, you can render very quickly in bryce. I'm on a single processor still, I'm on the slow end of things. With dual processors and dual cores or combinations of both, you can rig many multiple gigabyte systems that render very quickly.

In the case of Horo's image the ibl and the water get along very well. Ibl has wonderful effects on bumpmapping, from stone to water effects. It has a way of really rounding out the bumps with shadows. I feel like I can almost see individual pebbles in the foreground. I really feel the water moving over the edge. I feel ibl is what gives the water that extra little push.

03.06.2007 14:22

Horo
Admin

Join Date: 05.26.2004
Comments: 4721

A long reply

Thanks for all your comments. There are a few things I'd like to add. Waterfall: never easy and I've worked very long until I got it the way it is - and than again, when I changed the lighting. Water is all about transparency and specularity and it changes rapidly when light changes. Provided the riverbed is flat and not full of rocks and boulders, the sheet of water just folds down. Adding erosion may be a good idea at times but beware: what was a flat top before will be lowered and erosion creates triangle bump. This is difficult to see in the terrain canvas, but it happens. This might be what peers complained about in Nibor's Hermits Bridge. You have to rise the terrain to make the top flat again.

The foam is indeed very weak and I'm not happy with it. It looked good enough on a smaller render size, but here, it is obvious that it is flawd. Back at the drawing board for that one ...

The Grobburg is a nicely textured set of buildings but otherwise not very elaborate. There are no transparent windows and hence they cannot be lit. The prevalence of octagons prompted me for the name because the number eight is a magical number -- at least for wizards and such people.

The sky, Rashad, is the first sky in the Bryce 6 sky library under Daylight. Its name is Lazy Afternoon and it was contributed by David. It is the sky in my default.br6 file, hence I call it the default sky. Sorry for the confusion.

Where are the soft shadows from IBL? I used the lowest quality setting and quality determines the number of light sources - the higher the quality, the softer the shadows and, unfortunately, the longer the render time. Gat is right, of course I could have placed a couple of lights around the buildings but I had that freshly made HDRI and wanted to put it to use. I could also save me the trouble to place a second sun, since the light probe provides both.

David is completely right about the composition. If you look at this picture, you get the impression that the main weight is towards the top right corner and the river flows in the wrong direction. This disharmonic appearance was chosen at will. I even considered to use a problematic square aspect ratio to increase this impression. The "checkerboard" light of the sky and the city should underscore the uneasiness of mind when near thaumaturgists.

The foreground is simple. A terrain with erosion, pushing up the top to get rid of the erosion "hills", then lowering it a bit and adding noise. Not all the bump is in the mat, part of it is in the rock.

And don't dispair Rashad, my Border to Desert did AA-ing at 0.5% per hour on a dual core (twice 3.4 GHz) machine. I used your transparent leaves and I say it was worth every hour I waited for it to finish.

03.07.2007 00:13

Gueran
Member

Join Date: 05.24.2004
Comments: 29

looks really great.. only thing is that i think that the mountain or whatever it is comes too fast.. you have the building, the awesome waterfall.. then you have a kind of "flat" mountain and it stops the image... oh i feel like i am not explaining myself well.. did you get my point at all? =)

03.09.2007 21:26

Horo
Admin

Join Date: 05.26.2004
Comments: 4721

Gueran

Yes Gueran, I think I see what you mean. The coastline in the distance should be further away. It was a cheap way to get rid of the white line on the horizon. A couple of islands far away would probably have been better from a compositional point of view. Thanks for pointing this out to me -- and welcome back, I haven't heard from you for quite a while.

03.09.2007 23:58

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