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Here's the scene with some lighting changes. Does it look better? Note: I turned off soft shadows and increased object and shadow AA to 1 pixel, so it may be a bit grainier looking.
This is straight out of Carrara.
It looks "better" but it does not look like night anymore..., more like the (very green) bottom of a chasm or large sinkhole.... I am a bit confused over the lighting here, actually.
I think the issue with this round, although it is much easier to see details, is the vivid saturation on all the greenery. I think the previous suggestion for desaturation might be true.
I think we may not be able to simply "change the lights" to get good results in Carrara.... It seems it's always lights AND shaders.... but tbh I think a lot of nature scenes are way over saturated to begin with....
Yes, my gut feeling is that night scenes should be desaturated.
The physiological reason for this is that there is much less light available at night - even the full moon is tens of thousands of times less bright than the sun - so the balance of our vision shifts from one type of photoreceptor in the retina to the other. Instead of using primarily the receptors called 'cones', which are color-sensitive, night vision makes much more use of a second set of receptors, known as 'rods', which are more responsive in low light, but not sensitive to color. Drop the illumination level low enough, and vision depends almost entirely on the rods, so in very low light we see in black and white.
Supposedly, we become more sensitive to the green part of the spectrum when light levels drop, so leaves etc. appear relatively brighter. However, I think that @de3an's simulation, using Photoshop to desaturate the image, came much closer to what I think of as the look of a night scene in woodland.
It looks "better" but it does not look like night anymore..., more like the (very green) bottom of a chasm or large sinkhole.... I am a bit confused over the lighting here, actually.
I think the issue with this round, although it is much easier to see details, is the vivid saturation on all the greenery. I think the previous suggestion for desaturation might be true.
I think we may not be able to simply "change the lights" to get good results in Carrara.... It seems it's always lights AND shaders.... but tbh I think a lot of nature scenes are way over saturated to begin with....
I'm leaning to the shaders myself. I was just trying the easier route first. But you are right as usual, shaders and lighting all interact. One of my earlier tests on the fern shaders used a slider in the translucency channel and most of the ferns looked alright, but if the leaf was turned a certain way in relation to the light, it was translucent gray as opposed to translucent green. Once I added a color, it worked as expected. Ah well. I didn't have anything to do tonight....
I also think it is too bright. I liked the light levels in my last try, but de3an and bigh thought it was too dark. I figure since de3an is on a Mac, bigh is (I'm pretty sure) on a PC, I would try the light levels first as it could be a gamma issue on my part.
I did find that using a distant light and setting the motion method to Moonlight will tie it to the RSE's moon controller without actually selecting Moonlight from the light pulldown menu. Well sort of. If I made a change in the RSE, the ligt wouldn't respond until I just clicked in the motion method part of the motion tab. I didn't change anything, just clicked. You also didn't get the wireframe moon for the light when you manually changed the position of the light. The advantage is that you have control over the light color.
I found it easier to just parent a distant light to the Moonlight, crank the Moonlight's intensity down to zero and use the distant light. I could rotate the moonlight manually ad see the wireframe of the moon to see if it was in frame, and the distant light adjusted with the Moonlight.
Your first image looked like a night scene to me, this one is brighter. I just got back to this thread, so I didn't follow the entire conversation.
Your first image looked like a night scene to me, this one is brighter. I just got back to this thread, so I didn't follow the entire conversation.
Not overly dark or muddy looking? I'm trying to find the right balance, so any feedback or suggestions are more than welcome.
Personally, I felt the first image looked more night-like as well, with the exception of the light color and/or color saturation.
Not overly dark or muddy looking? I'm trying to find the right balance, so any feedback or suggestions are more than welcome.
Personally, I felt the first image looked more night-like as well, with the exception of the light color and/or color saturation.
No, not at all. In this one you can even see the shadows, and well defined leaves on the trees even thought it is night.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/542646/
Just the light color as you explained, maybe make the lighting color cooler so the trees don't look so green, etc.
My monitor is set at the default 6500K if that makes any difference.
Not overly dark or muddy looking? I'm trying to find the right balance, so any feedback or suggestions are more than welcome.
Personally, I felt the first image looked more night-like as well, with the exception of the light color and/or color saturation.
No, not at all. In this one you can even see the shadows, and well defined leaves on the trees even thought it is night.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/542646/
Just the light color as you explained, maybe make the lighting color cooler so the trees don't look so green, etc.
My monitor is set at the default 6500K if that makes any difference.
Thanks for the input. I think I will mute the colors in the shaders and see what that does for the saturation.
...and then have a separate set of 'night time' shaders? That would be pretty cool, I think.
Hi DB thanks, you can dload the .obj scene somewhere from Octane site. My testings are being made to explore carrara biased renderer potentials specifically for animation purpose. I'd like to build up an integrated renderfarm with texturing and lighting services as well, but currently daz EULA doesn't allow afaik :smirk:
By the way here is another quick example using the same lighting rig, with and without SSS. You may notice the different light absorption with sss activated, not many apps out of there can handle this :-)
another try without and with a spot light in 2 flavours (grey and yellow); see how it affects the shadows color
I prefer the third 3 for this.
Nice lighting! I'm not sure which one I prefer. I'd love to get a look at your light rig and render settings though!
Here's the latest night scene tests. I have removed the stars as it is not something I can share. As such, the sky itself is still in progress and I'm trying different things. The lighting itself is unchanged from image to image. I've muted the colors in the foliage of the plants and some of aspects of the terrain shaders.
I honestly don't know if it's a gamma issue between my monitor and other users monitors, but to me it looks bright enough and if I go brighter it looks wrong. To all those that kindly offered their input, I'm not blowing it off or ignoring it. I've spent the last two days trying to find a happy medium and this is where I arrived.
Nice lighting! I'm not sure which one I prefer. I'd love to get a look at your light rig and render settings though!Ditto. I like them all.
This one takes a few minutes to render. The orange sky is an effect using volumetric clouds I've been experimenting with - as is the central mist.
there is no water on Mars
less air density here, the first with clouds the second with ambient set to sky: 3-4 min/frame resolution 3K
EP actually in my scene there is only a distant, a spot - mainly for post effects - and a anything glow light for the inner emitting plane which casts fake reflected light. Then a participating medium - a volumetric hemispherical cloud dome - which allows to filter the albedo on reflecting surfaces and participates to sky light enhancing the sky color just like the actual air does.
Finally I use ambient brightness as diafraghm, occlusion radius as shutter and AO intensity as ISO sensitivity (3d evangelists don't kick me) :cheese:
Doing so it's easy for me to set up a likely lighting for each situation, the photorealistic result is up to you
another quick try (sorry for that :roll: ) just to add something for those interested.
same scene without and with a spot light: you may notice how it 'washes' shadows a bit and enlighten in a different - and more realistic - way some parts of the scene (look the vertical walls under the porch). the vaults are lit thanks to an emitting plane, while the cloud dome participates to the general lighting (the blue-gray effect on the walls); this may result important to take control over the skin lighting as well.
Hi Magaremoto,
It's very inspiring. Thanks for sharing.
I will certainly use it (or at least what I'm able to :-) )
Hi Magaremoto,
It's very inspiring. Thanks for sharing.
I will certainly use it (or at least what I'm able to :-) )
Hi Philemo, my pleasure
this method isn't as realistic as physically based renderers' but I find it easy and funny and gets decent results even in presence of high brightness
Some good work being posted..
I'm working on some renders for the yearly Emperor Ken's render challenge over at Hivewire..
a bit of work needs doing getting the birds to work in Carrara which is enjoyable in itself..
Here are a couple I have done but not entering as I'm not happy with them as an entry.. working on another one at the moment.
Entry is limited to one render as well so I have to be happy with it and it must pass the wife's judging as well lol which is the hardest part!
Waving the Carrara flag ;-)
I agree with the result. I often use AO based lighting and I'm usually happy with it (good results for a decent render time).
What is easy for you and maybe not for the rest of us is the way you setup the other lights and your volumetric dome. If you could explain a bit more about that dome, I would be most grateful.
I agree with the result. I often use AO based lighting and I'm usually happy with it (good results for a decent render time).
What is easy for you and maybe not for the rest of us is the way you setup the other lights and your volumetric dome. If you could explain a bit more about that dome, I would be most grateful.
I was curious about that myself. I'm not even quite sure what a volumetric dome is, to be quite honest. At first I was assuming it was an hdr in the scene's background in conjunction with the Realistic sky. I didn't think it was a literal dome as I don't think Carrara can do volumetric geometry without the aid of a plugin such as Primovol, and I'm not sure that really counts either.
Nice work Stezza. I like the sunset picture for the dramatic lighting. There's something with the foreground birds that doesn't look quite right. Maybe it's the postwork or the fill lighting?
thx EP.. yep I really struggled with the lighting of that scene... that's why I scrapped it.. the lighting for the second one I also struggled..
something about birds and lighting I think!
allright, here is a screenshot of my volumetric cloud dome; some info:
1 add sky light, not necessary, to be used to increase sligthly the GI
2 participate in GI, it works jointly with sky (or realistic sky and bigradient background) to enhance the sky light GI. I consider sky and dome as a diffuse coloured emitter
3 perlin, the only type which works significantly
4 density, the more the density the more the effect on GI, range between 10 and 80 to simulate more haze in the distance
5 brightness, the more the value the more the effect but also alters the sky color towards green
if you move the dome up or down, closer or further, the density will change (and so the haze perceived)
A couple of issues when you don't use IL; carrara doesn't handle with ease alpha maps (example 1) and huge maps at high resolution (2560 px and more - example 2)
I haven't thought of using a volumetric cloud. Neat Idea, I'll try it.
Thank you very much for the hint.
I would start with ambient set to 50 and more and act on AO radius to see the behaviour with shadows (like a shadow cast by a car upon the ground), then tune up the AO intensity. Don't forget a soft spot light to warm the color temperature and soften the shadows as you can see below. A new sky lighting model based on AO would be great imo
magaremoto,
Very interesting posts and renders here. They clearly show with a little imagination and experimentation Carrara renderer can produce some very nice results. Often time , I think we all see other renderers and think wow ---that's a lot better than I get with Carrara but often times one overlooks if one has really pushed deeply into what Carrara renderer can do.
I think your posts here demonstrate alot of this.
Thanks for sharing and experimenting .....it takes a lot of effort and time to explore renderers deeply and I am sure others here appreciate your efforts.
Rich
thank you Rich I greatly appreciated your post, actually lighting TD and pipeline consultant were my specifical tasks in the past years so I find it natural experimenting new ways to improve the workflow and get good quality content in short timing.
Turning back to carrara, I dislike shaders data base and mimic; no way to pull out something realistic by them