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I can not agree with you, Mark! You probably understand me wrong.
Fair Enough. In the near future I will present two scenes.
1. The scene, as in my example, the terrain in the foreground resolution 512 * 512 and the size N * N BU.
2. The same scene, but with the terrain resolution of 4096 * 4096 and the size of 8N * 8N BU. In this area, a height map of the DTE will be repeated in Photoshop 8-fold vertically and horizontally with the appropriate permissions. Whence 8N? This is elementary, sir! :) Simple arithmetic: 4096/512 = 8.
I assure you that both scenes visualization will look absolutely identical in the foreground. And what is the size of the file in both cases?
3. You can even do such a thing. Must be placed on the scene 64 terrains with resolution 512 * 512 and arrange them as a square with sides of 8 * 8. This is the same terrain that one resolution 4096 * 4096. File size is exactly the same. But why do you need those areas which do not fall within the field of view? That's right, they must be removed! How then reduce the file size?
4. Above I suggested the following options:
a) 1nd terrain size 1N = 512 * 512
b) 2nd terrain size 2N with increased 2-fold in Photoshop height map = 1024 * 1024
c) 3nd terrain the size 4N with repeated 4 times the height map in Photoshop = 1024 * 1024. In a pinch you can do is 2048 * 2048. But judging from the angle of view of your camera, since for any size image resolution of the background still will not distinguishable!
However, the number of polygons in the terrain and the file size still depends on the complexity of relief, that is, the height map. Anyway my version weighs an average of 10 times less.
___
I just did an experiment:
1. The size of the scene in your case (1 terrain 4096) = 24 MB.
2. The size of the scene in my case (3 terrain 512 + 1024 + 1024) = 4 MB.
But I'm not repeating textures for the 2nd and 3rd terrain in Photoshop. Therefore, file sizes can vary one way or another.
@Alex : I've reduce the resolution of my water terrain to 512*512 and hit render to see how it looks and you're right, I just can't see any difference between this res. and planetary resolution even if I've employ the default grey material to render it faster.. it simply reduce my file size and the memory usage in bryce, great great great alex! Great to see that there's always something to learn from someone. But that's a strange thing because by the past I have encounter problem with a distance terrain (have a look at my springtime picture, the background mountain).
Thank you very much for this usefull trick and now please, don't shoot because it's time for me to populate my island with bryce palm dates trees and this is going to take several memory, ouch!! (Still joking).
Third step :
We're now going to populate one of the islands in the background, the lower one because I'm not proud of the tallest for this time.
I'm going to make a palm date tree which I think fans look better than coconut tree. I just put maximum values in leave scale and number of leaves and select an appropriate texture for trunks and leaves. When it's done, I can see that my tree is composed by only 171 polygons, less than any xfrogs one and now we're ready to instance in the instancing lab.
Very tricky as you all know, I try two, three, four times before having a good looking forest (maybe.)
I then select my instanced group and ungroup it because I'm going to lower down all the 13000 trees. I just don't want to see their roots flying over the ground when it'll be time to render the full sized picture.
And hit render button.. 3h40mn to render and I have work about 1 hour and 15 minutes.
File size 110 mb.
You can not use another cloudscape. If you want to make additional high cirrus clouds, then there are three ways:
1. Procedural clouds (Stratus and / or Cumulus).
2. An infinite plane (Plane), located above the Slab.
3. Thin infinite plate (Slab), but with a surface material. Visualization is fast.
If you are not satisfied with the existing volumetric clouds, of course, it is better to create others. I know that David usually appoint the texture of volumetric clouds as World Space. Try to make a projection as Object Space and change repetition rate in the DTE or Texture Editor. The advantage of this method is that you can move the volumetric clouds (Slab) on scene. Will also change the appearance of the clouds.
Apply Bryce Trees for cloning - is the right decision!
However, 110 MB for such a simple scene - it's too much! Optimally - is 10 -12 MB.
***
There are two ways that the roots of the tree are not sticking out of the ground. One of them is pre-drown tree sample to the desired depth in the ground. Then work in Instancing Lab.
@Alex : the fact is : I'm using two cloudscapes in this render. I'll show you with another screenshot tomorrow by selecting both of them but you can already see them in the one I've post.
Two cloudscapes - this murder to visualize!
Find elegant solutions to complex problems in a simple manner - that's is our task! :-)
Here's a quick sketch.
File size 5.31 MB. Resolution of island 512. 1077 copies of trees. Coconut Palm Tree 233 polygons.
PS. Mark, do tree parameters, as I have. This slightly increased the number of polygons, but the palm will look natural. Pay attention to the Distribution of Foliage (Spiral).
@Alex : yes, your palm tree is best looking than mine but since I'm going to employ them only for the background of my scene, I don't need to make them "natural". I sometime find bryce tree too "ugly" to use them on the foreground of my scenes, I prefer xfrog trees for that.
Nice looking render from you, I just find it a little bit dark since you don't use True Ambiance. Did you use sphere dome light here?
Hi c-ram. Very interesting and inspiring thread. Many thanks for your effort.
@Electro-elvis : You're welcome. The next steps will come this evening, lots of work this last weekend..
Fourth step :
Just the picture of my islands render with the palm trees.. the all scene is looking dark but I'm going to first work on the second island in the background that is not tall enough.
Fifth step :
After having remake the second island in the background, I then populate it with the same palm date tree and when it's done, I ungroup the instance and lower it down. I have also take some trees here and there and push them up to give the set a better look.
I have group all my island with the trees and moved them a little bit closer to the camera.
I have work about 1 hour and 20 mn, the file size is about 172 mb.
And hit the render button : about 7h47 to go.
Sixth step :
While bryce is rendering I'm going to work on the thaï boat and for that, I open wings3d and start working with a sphere. I'm not going to detail all the process but all I can say is that I have did it twice. I have made a first version of the boat which I was not proud.
Note : I have made the name on the boat by using text modeler in wings3d. I have found the font at dafont.com
Here's a wire frame view and the result in bryce with a simple wet sand ground texture.
I've work about three ours on those objects.
Thanks C-ram, this thread is so interesting and informative. Thanks also to Slepalex for your input. It's inspiring learning from the masters. :)
great work so far mate, looking forward to seeing the next part :)
What a great thread! Thanks C-Ram and also Slepalex and others for their input!
@ TimBateman and Hansmar : thank you, proud that you're around in this thread.
Step seven :
Back to my island to work on a foreground beach, I add two terrains and adjust them to take place above the sea, a little bit fiddly to do.. on the wire frame view, you can see the selected red terrain, that's what I call the foam terrain. The material apply is one of pro material from David Brinnen.
I'm not going to calculate the entire picture, after reloading the previous island picture, I just crop the foreground of my scene and then hit render button. 2h 43 mn. I've work about 2 hours 30 because it was hard here to find a good balance between the beach, the sea and the foam. File size 142 mb.
wow that is really getting there nicely :)
C-ram this is looking very nice, can you mention the materials you are using from the pro materials for dummies like me. Thanks :-)
@Mermaid : Yes, of course! I'll do that when I get back from job this evening. For the sand of the beach, it's the beach material from David with a little bit of tune but I'll show you that sooner today.
@Mermaid : Here are the materials I've employ for the beach and for the foam, both are from David. I've just reduce the ambiant to 25 percents for the foam.
Hope this help you. I'm thinking about a way to upload my work to Dropbox to make it available to download to everyone. For copyright issue, the file will not include Davids cloudscapes of course.
C-ram thanks for the screenshots.
It will be cool to get your finished file sans David’s cloudscape, but I must mention it is more fun playing along with you. :-)
Thanks for starting this thread.
@Mermaid: You're welcome. I'm going to upload the file this next weekend.. But.. What? You've put a French word in your sentence? Are you French? I just mean, if that's right, I am French too!
No I'm not French, a few of my colleagues over the years were French, so I picked up a few words here and there. :)
There is only the sun (Diffuse = 300) and cumulus clouds cast shadows. If you add Sphere Dome Light, it will be quite good.
TA is not always justified for reasons of which I wrote above.
C-ram - Here’s my attempt so far. I did not make the terrain for the sea like you mentioned but used the mordor fractal on 2 terrains. This is fun stuff. Thanks for the workout.
@slepalex : nicely done for a normal render mode. I'll try to render my scene in this mode with a fill light but I don't think I'll get improvement and, expect your works, I'm usually bored with normal render mode in bryce, I prefer IBL and T.A mode.
@mermaid : great! Good work here! try to adjust your camera closer to the beach ground to avoid the visible polygon edge of the the foam and the beach. The background Island seems to be on the foreground here, maybe a little scale problem too but generally a good approach in your try to reproduce my work!
To all : I'm going to upload my work in a Dropbox link and I will put it here in this tread when it's done. The scene will include the beach, the sea, the background Island and... my Thaï boat for you to play with.
Step eight : working on some foreground vegetations, I run xfrog and search into the Oceania packages to find some good tropical vegetation. I export them to 3ds format and then load the textures into photoshop to scale them down. I don't need a 4000 per 4000 pixels map for palms fans and it'll cost a lot of memory usage.
Here are some few examples :
Mark! In my scene I have not worked with the lighting! It was just a quick sketch. I'm just here showed that instead of 100 MB can be 5MB and it will look the same. You are too wasteful attitude to computer resources.
And more. You should not confuse the two concepts: 1) render mode and 2) the method of lighting the scene. For such a scene is appropriate mode "Premium 16 rpp" and lighting "sun plus Dome Light". If you use volumetric clouds and transparent foliage, the TA mode is impossible. You can use IBL instead Dome Light, but certainly exclude volumetric clouds.
By the way, I recently did a simple landscape, but with transparent leaves and grass. Render "Premium 16 rpp", lighting Radial Light, Dome Light and sun. After 6 or 7 days of continuous rendering faulty power supply of my computer, so two weeks I did nothing. I bought a new power supply. I made a new render this scene 5 hours 47 minutes. I deleted Dome Light and made 3 pieces Radial Light and sun. Believe me, the picture quality will not suffer. That's all I'm saying to the problem of optimizing the file size, the memory, render time and quality of lighting. All of these things are interrelated. I will upload soon this scene in the gallery.
I promised to show sea foam material, I certainly will.
In general, you infected me the idea of this seascape! Even in the work of which you mentioned, I would like to put boat to the fore. However, my ability to modeling is not very large. I especially difficult given UV-mapping.