photoman

Update. Another quick update of tweaks. I tapered the grass and did a few adjustments on the lighting as well. I also grabbed a horse model of the A:M CD and posed it in. The model has tons of deadend splines and folds/creases. It looks ok but not great, after this render I adjusted the model a little bit and adding some bumps maps to it to at least simulate fur without using particle hair. More off the machine as it gets done Photoman Thanks for the C&C !!! It helps!

Update! I fixed the barn a bit. (Changed the door decal so its physical correct now) You will probably notice I did not change the roof edge to match the top. The reason for that is that it follows the "grain" of the steel slates on the under side. Though part of it is me being lazy , though chances are that I will fix it as well as making the roof a bit thinner. I need to run more passes to get rid of the pixelly hills, the grass needs more passes to be able to look its best. I also picked the day/afternoon atmosphere, it brought out more details in the scene than the dusk. Im fiddling with the sun and ambient light amounts to get the right shadows, theyre at (Sun 150%, ambience 20%). I want to have those defined shadows as well as the slight lighting of the barn roof. I did a bunch of tweaks to the whole scene as well. I feel like it needs something more though, I dont want to add trees because that will kill my render time (Still reasonable (Reasonable as in it can render in one night at my full res according to my calculations which I proved accurate)). Though if I dont find anything else I will have to throw some in. The amount of trees I would have to add to comply with the scale would be VERY high say at least 20,nall with a probable patch count of 1-2k and a DarkTree Texture. I would not be leaves on them though, that would make the render even longer. (Right now its at 18minutes passes at 1500x800 which is very reasonable.) I also readjusted the hair again, I made it more dense and longer (The far hair/grass is 3 times as long as the foregrounds as the foreground is 4 times more dense). I did many render tests today (at 750x400) and figured out using some basic algebra that my final render at (3000x1600 9pass) settings would be around 12 hours pessimistically. Time to tweak everything again and again. Photoman PS look at the windmill. EDIT: Clarity and Grammer

Quick Update. Adjusted the atmosphere to dusk to see if it would look any good. The sky is actually the MultiSky material plugin. I also redid the grass so its now at 100k hairs. Took 37minutes @ 750x400 4pass. I can only imagine the final render (3000x1600!*) More coming Photoman * I know the whole discussion on resolution and Im willing to deal with the render times.

Update! Modeled a fence (Took all of 3 minutes including the texture). I also created the terrain and a *quick* ground texture that will be improved later. I set the scene together too. Then I played god and made hair umm grass grow on the scene. After applying the color decal I checked the hair count and found it to be: Not very surprised but to put it into comparison one of my previous scenes which was hair/grass intensive had only 23k hairs. So I tweaked and created several seperate hair materials at different densitys which decreased with distance from the camera. I check again and it was at: That is a much better number, it will actually not cripple my computer and leave it bleeding. Now all I have to do is tweak and tweak and tweak! I plan to experiment with different lighting scenarios and skydomes. Hmmm just imagine a AO render! Anyway more coming. Photoman PS Thanks for the comments!

Update! First off, THANKS! for the feedback, it expands my knowledge and gives me a better perspective on what I am doing!! Textured the Barn, all using 2 different textures with a bump map for each and a displacement map on the roof (Still tweaking all of them). I dont know what else to model right now. I have been enjoying the modeling for I rarely ever model. The next step (if the modeling is finished) is to create the terrain (Valley) and set the scene and atmosphere. Add some grass and misc textures in there and Im done. The hard part though is getting everthing to feel in scale. Im going to spend a lot of time with the skydome and fog settings as well as using a single sun light w/ shadows and the global ambience settings. More coming! Photoman PS Please C&C

Quick Update Rigged the windmill (Yes it was a hard task for me so go ahead and laugh).Took me about 5 minutes surpisingly, I even managed to add constraints on the rotators. Windmill_Rigtesta.mov Texture Time for the Barn! Photoman

Update! Modelled the barn. Very basic, no interior at all just the roof and walls. I plan to decal texture it all so that'll be easy to render. Im thought that I should rig the windmill so that it can turn and spin. So.. theres going to be a lot undo'ing and cursing for I have never ever rigged!! More off the machine soon. Photoman

Update, finished modeling the water tower as well. Connected the two models in a action and rendered them. The ambience occ./wireframe render is slightly not right, the water tower is now at a different scale but the splines are the same. I also textured using darktrees. I tried using bitmapps but wasnt getting the right look. More on the way, Photoman

Thanks for the feedback , I just checked the patch count and there is only 1906 patches! For the texture Im going to probably use a bitmapped based procedural texture using a lot of GIMP work and tweeking in A:M. Just noticed, Should I add a pipe or something coming from the top? As well for another point of interest, what about a water tower and a small shack of some kind? Just brainstorming Photoman

That patch was the blade I used for sweeping the other ones. I'll remove it when Im done. I finished the modelling aspect late last night and set a couple renders and here they are: More comming, still have to texture the windmill, then model other points of interest. Photoman

Hello y'all! Been inspired recently to pickup an old project of mine. So imagine a summer day, a breeze whispering to the trees and creating paths through the grass on the hills, gently spinning the windmill that time and nature have left behind. Thats my scene in a sentence. Ive gotten started on the modeling of the windmill. I plan to "try" and create my own procedural rusty metal shaders but may resort to decals or a darktree shader. I will also use hair for the golden grass and leaves on the oaktrees. I may model a barn or some other point of interest too. More coming Photoman

My god the details! You really do have a talent for splining! Keep going! Photoman

Thanks for the comments ! I plan to rerender as a quicktime movie rather than a uncompressed sequence. I dont know too much about clothe and stuff that seems to be Vern's territory The ball is just hash's built in basket ball material (materials->plugins->hash). I added a noisemap for the bumps.

The "master" bone (For lack of the right word) is set at the feet instead of the center of gravity. I thought it looked cool

Hi! Here is what my limited imagination came up with right now. Been busy with school and swimming so.... progress is going to be slow but I'll try to make the deadline. Very basic scene. About 15ish thom models and a basketball. I rendered it out originally as a PNG sequence because I had a problem with the bump on the basketball and A:M would crash. That way I could figure what frame it was on. Fixed that now. Compiled in AE with a curves adjustment and a slight vignette. PTB_RUND_low.mov Its a hefty file but anything compressed below that looked horrible. (Uncompressed was 261mb) Here is a extra high res grab. I know its not the best but my imagination is being put on hold for a while C&C Please! Photoman

Try apples new H.264 Codec it is really good for quality and file size. Photman

Wow, that is a great A:M color setup! You have just inspired me to change mine! Photoman

To screen shot if your on a mac just shift-apple-3 and it creates a png the same dimensions of your screen on your desktop. Photoman

Finished! Took only 4 hours to render it! (25min a pass 3x3) I rendered to OpenEXR with light buffers, depth, and all the other goodies. I also rendered a seperate depth image because the buffer in the original image came out bad... All in all this is probably one of the fastest projects I've done. Counting all time spent creating it clocks in at about 5 hours + 4 hours rendering. Hope y'all like it! Final with a quick levels adjustment: Screen grab of all the buffers from the OpenEXR Sand Material (Will post later) Water Material (Will post later) C&C Welcome Photoman PS The final OpenEXR file was 70Mb PSS Not a complaint^

More done! I added some flocked birds (Great feature really powerful!) and weathered the chair. I also did a bunch of tweaks here and there. As for the graduated wet-dry sand... I ran into some problems when dealing with the gradients. After about 1 hour of constant change value-render-repeat I gave up, I don't want to create different maps to decal for the placement of wet sand either. I also adjusted the light so one can see more of the rocks detail and other misc details. I think Im about done with this scene so Ill hit the giant render button tonight! This is not the current scene but close enough. Screen shot of current scene Render Settings: Size: 3000x1600 (YES I KNOW THIS IS A BIG SIZE AND I AM NOT COMPLAINING OR GRUMBLING ABOUT RENDER TIMES NOR FILE SIZES! AND YES THIS IS FOR THE SIDE OF A AIRPLANE HANGER*) Passes: 9 (3x3) File Type: OpenEXR Shadows, particles, fog, reflections: On (Reflections at level 3) I also figured out the Villa plugin from ToonNation is a good plugin to adjust waters reflectivity and refractivity. C&C Always welcome! Photoman *Humor

Im in though my animating is more sloppy than ... well a sloppy joe!

Update. Did a lot work today. I got the sand material to look better and I modeled a beach chair for the scene. I also did some more grass and atmosphere/lighting work. I used several material effectors to give the rocks and sand a green algae look. Im probably going to change the hair underwater to a image of something ocean like (Google search....). A patch didnt render on the shot b/c the camera is too low so Ill fix that. I also took a eagle model of the AM disc spice things up. I plan to add/tweak the scene a bit more. I still think that the sand needs to look more beach like. The chair, Its a darktree texture with a seperate bump map. Doesnt look great but its not going to be close up in detail. C&C Welcome, I need it Photoman

The plan (at least my usual plan) is to go not for photorealism but to create something that is still beautiful, a still. It would take much longer to set things up to scale to make a animateable set. Yes the grass is using the hair system. (Check here for a download of the hair I used in my previous project. http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...4764&st=15) The reflections are a little problematic because I have to find the balance between transparency and reflectivity. Usually for water I just shoot up the reflectivity to 100%. Thanks! Photoman

Hi, got an idea for a new project!! Ill see if I can upload a sketch but it involves an ocean shore with 2-3 large rocks and various small ones as the focal point. Grass and maybe a old beach chair or fence in there too. I have some of it done (see pic). I need to work on the sand texture/shader. I really want it to look real so I'm going to be spending a lot of time doing that.... The rocks are going to be a modified version on the one I used on my previous project. The water was kinda interesting to do. I had to adjust the transparency and reflectivity to get the right look. I wanted to use the Index of Refraction, density, and transparency settings for more realistic water but I believe those only work with radiosity. So... more tomorrow (Just got back from a big swim meet). Photoman

Sigh... I dont want to rerender so I guess I'll just matte it and replace the sky.... Here is a quick video I did in AfterFX using the depth map: I had a few problems with the compression so mind the quality. Hills_Logo_2.mov Photoman