Isotropix Forums

Just like the Phases of the Moon the work goes through many changes, not sure i'll ever get to the stage of saying something is done,
I find myself making so many small changes, 2 steps forward one step back, but believe the best changes are the Conceptual Ones,
better lighting perhaps more important than minute texture changes, or even better composition/ideas extra geo.
I tried IBL for some, but then decided to try something else, just lights....and I'm still working on perfecting that
The Goal was to learn, to take a simple model & try to make it better with textures, to improve on renders done in the past with Max & Vray
which shouldnt have been so difficult, as my previous renders in max where nothing to shout about. I think I improved on my previous work but still have a long way to go before it's a quick/fluid procedure.

The one thing I couldnt get right was Sun placement so the moon was lit how I wanted it, I tried another spot behind the moon for the bounced light, I tried a big sphere around the moon, but couldnt get it to work without effecting the moon, this moon has self illumination on, I think I got lucky with illumination of the clouds near moon, I was looking for a stronger effect. I managed to get a crescent moon looking ok(even with sun in wrong place), it wasnt really contributing to the cloud lighting much so need to relocate it I think I know what is needed to change this.
I tried sphere lights around the streetlights, couldnt get the shadows looking right, I think I just want to illuminate the mist more around the lights.
I've had the Clouds looking fine, then you change things up a bit and loose the good sky/clouds, too much hassle to go back so you keep moving forward trying something new, but in this procedural world it's hard to get attached to some arrangement, when everything can always be improved. I think I'm rendering with much lower samples than I've seen everybody else using, ray count also low, evident in the street lights, I've replaced the glass for a white emmisive material to make things easier but that comes with its own issues.

I was watching a film the other day with a pilot flying through a moonlit sky, it was just soaked in a blue light, I didnt want that, I still wanted to see some colour, although at night before led street lights the predominant colour being tungsten, not quite what I want either, ies lights could be better but I dont fancy wading through the profiles, but I'm sure with the right ones it would make a big difference(as would having a better lighting strategy, not sure I can call myself a landscape gardener just yet.

It's taken far longer than the guy who built the Lovecraft set and should have way more stuff going on, but when your still trying to get the best(photographic) render you can, testing various settings, but it's very hard to see details you expect to see(perhaps due to low sampling/sub optimal AA?), a mix between crispness & not so crisp it looks CG, maybe I wouldnt have to sweat over the details if I knew throwing a lut on it would give me something i'm happy with?

It might not be exactly what I wanted but at least the emissive material lights now work, I somehow rendered an image with no dots in the fog from the street lights, other lights look fine/smooth though could be probably better with more dramatic ies, just the emissive, probably better to go with real lights & glass, but trying to improve things only resulted in much longer render times with loads of dots, not smooth, had to blur in post, no idea how to get back the combo of settings and the amount of time spent fiddling with volumes only to always want to improve them, is probably going to give me DVT & cataracts.

I've tried a few different render methods,
variable auto ie AA 1(8 or 16) over 16 or 32 or 64, Ive tried 3/16 or 24 etc with mat samples & light samples at 1
i've tried the same with altering main light samples, and the same sort of thing again with a fixed AA.
can't decide on one ideal, lots of switching back & forth, I know there are more efficient ways, i'll get around to at some point.
though in one of the fog examples fixed AA was @1024.... I tried that but not sure the computer was having any of it.
in the examples on the web of the greyscale camera render I dont see much improvement over 32 in either AA or Mat samples.

The ability to export the combiner even as a low res mesh would be cool for trying out some better smoke sims in blender, I really need a more whispy tendrill like mist. I havent done any weathering fx on anything, I couldnt figure out rounded edges yet had a go but never seemed to get what I wanted, so many areas to explore in clarisse, many areas I'm far to scared to go, things I may never get my head around.

The amount of time spent on this is crazy, by now you would think I could manage to grasp some simple fundamentals but i'm still unsure of things.
Metal or spec workflows can they be used in same project? Sometimes metal map is not available so I try the other route but I'm not sure I'm getting that correct either. I read Spec workflow is easier to break the laws of physics, which no doubt I've done.
I've decided to try yet another variation, though not sure if I will improve things or break them further.
Does the Rough go in the diffuse or the spec channel(obviously you could have more than one) but I see you guys using it in the diffuse rough.
I see you guys liberally sliding around the spec/rough slider but when I read other examples they use numbers in different range
I have loads of AO maps but question the need for them if you are displacing surfaces, I read they arent needed, & they are...
ie I could multiply AO & Dif in Gimp and use one texture, I've currently been multiplying RAW AO with srgb dif...now i'm not sure any of those textures are correct, and I see no examples that specifically spell it out for me.

What a mess, is this the way not to do it? I realized I dont need the second grass, but i'm in the process of trying to tidy it up.


Previously I had the normal map node before the tri planar, but wondering can it come after?
and when mixing materials using more than one normal map, I had the normal node on each normal map, perhaps just one at the end of the chain is enough, and same with the srgb node? after or before or it doesnt matter(or is it even needed if the image has the right colour space selected),

Previously I was mixing/multiply Raw AO with srgb-linear on the diffuse, but after reading about pre-mixing AO in photo edit app,
I decided to set change AO to srgb, mix & then add the srgb-linear Now render times seem to have increased
so I wonder if I'm doing it all wrong, double gamma? Yup I think so bypassing all colour space nodes seems to brighten things up, just in the process of going through all mats.

I forgot to add triplanar to the normal in second pic,
I think most of my materials dont have metalness so have to go the other route.
I assume you dont use gloss with roughness(duh of course you could but where?), some of my maps have 2 glosses ie hi-gloss
I have no idea where to use them, I assume in the 2 layers of specular, but do they go in strength or colour? if they are needed at all.
Then the other issue was roughness in the diffuse or in the specular, when I started out with this I was adding the rough to the spec channel
but then see video's of it going in the diffuse, I suppose free's up the specular channel for additional emphasis or treatment, a different scratch. map.

The Inspiration, still have the port area to model, had to guess all the dimensions, finishing the port part will improve things
and once thats done i'll have to improve the castle as the way the model came out of the CAD program isnt ideal for displacement.

Ok it's finally sinking in, I disabled the srgb conversion node and things are starting to look better, now i'll have to re-balance the lights
2020's over Roll on 2021, have a good holiday everyone. #ilovevfx #welovevfx

Hi,

Going in the right direction. As you said balancing the light will help you to know where you need to focus and add details in your image.

I did a quick paint-over in photoshop to help the readability of your image and bring a touch of mystery. I will recommend to add also some atmosphere in the far BG to blend the mountains with your clouds.



Keep going

Have an happy Holyday

ohh that looks nicer...thanks, I didnt bother tweeking in PS or Lightroom, and when I watch tut's with people colorizing & photoshoping images...I realize i've never really gone as deep as some... what did you do, create a darker image and expose the brighter areas of the under layer?
Sure I will need to alter everything, especially the textures, fog & mist is setup but still needs improving...when you watch others comping volumes they never do it with just one.

Stay Safe & keep your bubble inflated seriously without Clarisse this year would have been really really BORING

I think the idea was to use Aymeric suggestion to modify your actual lighting.

thanks Sam I will re-do lighting, obviously I had to crank them up to overcome the double gamma, but also the street lamps where cranked up to get past the frosted glass I had previously, but the lighting overall was a bit of a mess, with a mixture of power & exposure...I need to get all exposures back to zero and adjust power only in the black body, it might all work much better than how things are at the moment.