Grass Foothills

[photoman]

Hi! I decided to move this over here so that it would actually be in the right subforum. Here is the link to the original:

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=34739

So continuing, I finished everything for the most part. The render problem I had had fixed itself* so I double checked everything and did the final touches, tree here rock there.

 

*NOW, my rendering problem is that every 4th pass won't render. What I mean is that everyother pass is about 47minutes (3000x1600) and the 4th (4 out a 5pass) just keeps on chuggin for about nine hours. Stuck on rendering hair..... SO... I guess I'll just setup a AA render and call it a day.

Here are some more shots etc.

Screenshot of scene

No grass/hair/leaves

Here is the scene with the hair problem fixed. But is not up to date on layout.

Im going to set the final render tonight. The settings I plan to use are:

Size: 6000x3200px

File Type: Targa w/ Alpha (To composite sky later)

Render Type: AA (Anti-Alias)

Fog: Yes

Reflections: No

Particles/Hair: Duh!**

Shadows: Yes

Ambience Occlusion: No

 

 

**

Total Hair Count (w/ leaves): 24648 Hairs (Over 40k before I optimized scene )

Total Textures Maps: 7

 

I will post the materials and grass when I finish the render.

 

Thanks For The Help!!

 

-Photoman

[martin]

Size: 6000x3200px

What! Are you rendering a billboard!?

 

I read all kinds of BS in these forums about resolution. At one point I even wrote a long Tech Note about it to try and straighten out all the misinformation. In a previous life I wrote the mechanism software for the HP Deskjet printer, and one of the things I wrote the code for was resolution. And, of course, I wrote 99% of A:M's renderer... There are few people on this planet that know more about resolution than I do, and anything over 2000 is ridiculous. TWO is rendered at 720.

[NancyGormezano]

I wrote the mechanism software for the HP Deskjet printer, and one of the things I wrote the code for was resolution. And, of course, I wrote 99% of A:M's renderer...

 

Uh-oh Martin - careful, careful - people might start to think of you as one of those evil, lazy programmers, rather than a saintly, accomplished crazy artist...

[robcat2075]

What! Are you rendering a billboard!?

 

I read all kinds of BS in these forums about resolution. At one point I even wrote a long Tech Note about it to try and straighten out all the misinformation. In a previous life I wrote the mechanism software for the HP Deskjet printer, and one of the things I wrote the code for was resolution. And, of course, I wrote 99% of A:M's renderer... There are few people on this planet that know more about resolution than I do, and anything over 2000 is ridiculous. TWO is rendered at 720.

 

translation to calmer, post warm milk and nap tones: You're rendering bigger than you need to. 6000x3200 would exceed the capabilities of any existing display in our world.

[photoman]

Im going by megapixels. I figured that the average digital SLR is now has around an average of 15 Megapixels (Medium format has as high as 40 and large format has a sensor that shoots at 61!!!!!) so 6000x3200=19.2 megapixels vs 3000x1600 is 4.8 megapixels. Though I guess I should just go for something in the 10 megapixel range and call it a day ... So that would be (finding calculator.....) 4500x2400.

What DPI does A:M render at?

 

Photoman

[martin]

What DPI does A:M render at?

DPI!!! My head's going to explode! (Please, never mention "DPI" and "resolution" in the same breath again or my heart will fail.)

 

720 X 405 will work fine (better than fine) if you're doing an animation. 1200 X 800 looks pretty good on a computer screen. 2000 X 1600 will look great in any magazine or 8X10 print, (we use it for posters!)

 

p.s. Quick, Robert, jump in front and block me with your body when the next guy brings up megapixel render settings.

[martin]

BTW, cool image, Josh.

[frosteternal]

As a visual fx/design major I have to clarify this. I HATE misused terms. (That is the Virgo coming out in me.)

 

DPI = dots per inch (usually ONLY used in print, and does not define the dimensions of the final image. If you are talking about the space between pixels on a crt, that is "dot pitch")

 

resolution = number of pixels in a given axis (usually described as height x width etc)

 

colour/bit depth = the amount of colour/transparency information stored per pixel

 

megapixels = snazzy marketing term used by camera manufacturers that gives less information than it hides (what is the horizontal resolution? the vertical resolution? the colour depth? none of this info is present in the phrase "X MEGAPIXELS!")

 

 

3D software does not render according to "megapixels." You specify the resolution as x-lines by y-lines, and set the pixels for either square pixels (1.0) or some variant, depending on final output format (DV, for instance, does not use square pixels, instead they are set as 0.9, rectangular.)

 

So... what is your final format? TV? DVD? Blu-ray? 35mm film? Print? If print, what size is the final copy? If you just want a pretty image for your computer screen, I wouldn't render any bigger than the resolution you can display.

 

Wow...I sure do ramble...hopefully someone benefits from all this info!

[phatso]

Just for comparison, anybody know what the resolution of a 35MM print is? They blow that up to 20ft. wide and wider. What's good enough for a movie screen has to be good enough for anything.

[Luuk Steitner]

Just for comparison, anybody know what the resolution of a 35MM print is? They blow that up to 20ft. wide and wider. What's good enough for a movie screen has to be good enough for anything.

We rendered the Phantom of the Cinema at 1828 x 1101 pixels for 35mm film. But I believe different resolutions are used for this. Found this pdf on the net: http://www.cst.fr/IMG/pdf/35mm_resolution_english.pdf

[jakerupert]

What DPI does A:M render at?

DPI!!! My head's going to explode! (Please, never mention "DPI" and "resolution" in the same breath again or my heart will fail.)

 

720 X 405 will work fine (better than fine) if you're doing an animation. 1200 X 800 looks pretty good on a computer screen. 2000 X 1600 will look great in any magazine or 8X10 print, (we use it for posters!)

 

p.s. Quick, Robert, jump in front and block me with your body when the next guy brings up megapixel render settings.

 

Maybe it would be a good idea for questions like this, which pop up once in a while ( same with patches versus polygons ) to just have a little

Mini-explanation/tut ready, that you simply could copy paste into your e-mail, so that neither the "errant sheep´s" feelings nor your nerves get hurt.

[martin]

Maybe it would be a good idea for questions like this, which pop up once in a while ( same with patches versus polygons ) to just have a little Mini-explanation/tut ready, that you simply could copy paste into your e-mail, so that neither the "errant sheep´s" feelings nor your nerves get hurt.

I'm just being over-the-top theatrical for entertainment's sake.

[photoman]

Hmm.... now I guess I shouldn't render that high My only reason is that I like zooming in and seeing as much detail as I can.

 

As for the megapixel argument. SLR's usually (should) have an as[ect of 3:2 b/c their sensors are just smaller version of the 35mm (24x36mm) slide. I once heard someone say that a proper exposed 35mm color SLIDE film slide has about 25 megapixels of detail.

 

In the end I should (will) stop using the megapixel term in CG and save it for photography.

 

 

Photoman

 

PS 9hours into render about 1-3 more

[HomeSlice]

Oh, one more thing. It is a little late for this render because you are already over 9 hours into it. But a practice that will save you much grief in the future is to render a very small final image first. Just big enough so you can tell if there are going to be any major problems. There is nothing quite like the feeling you get when you wait several hours for an image to render, only to discover something didn't render like you had intended. The preview (Q and Shift-Q) renders are just quickie previews. A small "render to file" is the best test.

[phatso]

Thanks luuk, that was interesting and useful. Based on that article, I have decided not to buy a better projector than the one I've got.

 

Summary from the article: in the theater, you get 650-750 horizontal lines of resolution. The very best results they got in one test where everything was tuned to perfection was about 850. This is a gross oversimplification and anyone seriously interested should read the whole article, but it gives an idea of what you're seeing when you watch a film.

 

Of course, IMAX and OMNIMAX use larger frames and get better resolution, but they need to, since the screen image is so much larger. I have to say, I've seen the restored Lawrence of Arabia in 70MM and Oklahoma in Todd-A-O, and there's a lot to be said for higher than normal resolution. I'd think, though, that beyond about 2000 lines the eye couldn't resolve anything, even if the mechanical system could.

 

I like to zoom in too, but for that I just re-render a small patch of the image. Much faster.

[heyvern]

I would taper the grass to a point. Maybe a freshly cut lawn would have flat tips but a naturally growing field would have pointy ends, otherwise a very impressive image.

 

------------

 

Anything can be put onto 35mm film. Even low resolution crap digital images can be printed to film (I've done this. It works). The "digital" equivalent of 35mm film doesn't really exist because it's a chemical process. They sort of "guess" what it should be but it isn't "real". From my experience in the print area and photographs, the printers always specified a size in megabytes for the image. Not resolution but the uncompressed tiff size in megabytes. That determined for them that it would be big enough to print at a specific size. I would often have to send out computer illustrations to be printed to 4x5 transparencies because none of our printers at the time could take digital files (imagine that!). This was back in the day of Syquest cartridges... not CDs or even zip drives. All our files had to fit on 45mb or 80mb cartridges.

 

The concern wasn't resolution but banding. Back then I would have KILLED for the EXR format or the higher bit depths we have now... holy cow. That stuff didn't get mainstream until after I got out of the print biz. I had to use a lot of noise in Photoshop back then... lots of noise to hide banding. Banding was my nemesis.

 

That image you are rendering is going to be HUGE... about 60mb uncompressed. If you plan to animate it get a big hard drive.

 

-vern

[photoman]

Oh, one more thing. It is a little late for this render because you are already over 9 hours into it. But a practice that will save you much grief in the future is to render a very small final image first. Just big enough so you can tell if there are going to be any major problems. There is nothing quite like the feeling you get when you wait several hours for an image to render, only to discover something didn't render like you had intended. The preview (Q and Shift-Q) renders are just quickie previews. A small "render to file" is the best test.

 

I always try to do that, It also gives me an guestimate on the final render time. There was that one time I did a 28 hour radiosity render and it just showed white ..... Thanks though for reminding me!

[photoman]

Hit yet another render wall. Im using the AA render, ok, so after 36 hours it hasn't finished rendering the grass! It took it about 3 hours to render patches and anti-alias but now it just doesn't move at all. AND it displays weird numbers. For multipass it took about an average of 50min per pass so 50minx16pass (Equivalent of AA)= 13+1/3 hours and Im at 36 hours now. I'm render at 4500x2400px, I got a succesfull render at 750x400 the other day (That took about 30min).

 

Ideas?

 

Photoman

[mtpeak2]

4500x2400? Why are you rendering at such a high resolution? With that amount of hair, it will never render.

[heyvern]

The render size is just way too big. It's total overkill. You could render half that size, rescale in photoshop, a little sharpening and you would barely notice any difference.

 

Maybe something between 4500 and 750. That's a huge jump.

 

-vern

[photoman]

OK, Ill take this a lesson b/c of how much flak I am getting for my pet peeve of ultra high resolution Im going to rerender at 3000x1600 my usually medium size.

 

Photoman

[martin]

OK, Ill take this a lesson b/c of how much flak I am getting for my pet peeve of ultra high resolution Im going to rerender at 3000x1600 my usually medium size.

Knock yourself out... BUT no complaints about hanging! No complaints about how long it takes! No complaints about how big the files are! No complaints about crashing!

[photoman]

Still tangled in some render problems so I decided to upload some of the materials I used for all to use ! They include the grass and rock materials with a sample project.

Rock:

w/Displacement @ 250%

w/o

Displacement alone

Grass:

Pack:

Grass_and_Rock.zip

 

Enjoy

 

Photoman

 

PS Im just going to render at a 2k resolution (2000x1067), the hair has me in a tangle.

EDIT: Going to render in parts and composite. Seems like a logical idea.

[heyvern]

Your difficulties are most likely due to the processor intensive things you have in your project. Displacement and hair are both very processor intensive when rendering. If either of those things were "fast" and "easy" everyone using AM would have hair and displacement all over the freaking place.

 

At the size you want to render you probably don't need 16 passes (is that right? 16 passes?). You could probably get away with 9 or even 6 or 3 and still look good. I used 1 or 2 passes (maybe 3?) on most of my recent project and everyone was amazed it looked as good as it did.

 

I will say this again... resizing in photoshop is perfectly acceptable. You have to see it to know this. Your image doesn't have a lot of detail that requires a huge resolution. There isn't that much in there that benefits from a huge resolution.

 

I would even bet money that the decals/images you use aren't even CLOSE to the resolution you are rendering to. If the displacement decal for the rocks is not the same resolution as the render resolution it is all wasted effort. Rendering at a huge resolution with low resolution images won't make the details any sharper. Is the sky an image? If so is the image used at the same resolution as the render? If not it will look... blotchy and soft when rendered. The missing pixels are "interpolated". I think I see some "blotchy" enlargement artifacts in the smaller render you did. Rendering it HUGE will only exaggerate those things.

 

Here's the 1500 pixel image from your first post scaled up to 6500 pix in Photoshop. A little sharpening and saved as a jpg with a medium compression. Yes, at full resolution, 100% in photoshop you see things getting a bit "blotchy". But rendering it larger, save as a targa and scale THAT up in photoshop it will look like a million bucks. Several of my last few image contest entries were rendered at a slightly smaller size and scaled up in photoshop. In some cases it was a small amount like 10-20% but even that much is a huge difference in overall size. It looked fine. No one could honestly say they could see the scaling done.

 

-----

 

There is another option if you are willing to spend the effort and risk the time lost if it "goes wrong"...

 

Do your final render in the chor window. Zoom in on sections and render just one section at a large size. Do a screen grab when it's finished. Keep offsetting the view and rendering until you get the whole thing and then stitch it together in photoshop or an image editor. The problem here is that if it stops rendering or you "bump" something after it's done you lose that rendering and have to start again. You should also WRITE DOWN THE CAMERA ZOOM AND OFFSET VALUES. That way if you close AM you can get it going from the same spot.

 

-vern

[thefreshestever]

i´m really wondering what you wanna do with this... the biggest renders i made in a:m were 2000 x 1500 px with 16 passes, and that were advertisings for a 210x297 cm magazine... they were packed with grass too, and the toughest one took almost 32 hours... the needed resolution at 300dpi for that format is a width of 2400 px, i just pushed the rest in photoshop, nobody in the whole wide world can see any difference when it´s printed. why do you put yourself through the hell of aborted renders and 36 hour waiting??? i hope you´re not only doing this because your digicam has 15 megapixels or whatever... it´s just a silly argument for selling cameras, nobody, really nobody needs such a high resolution, for nothing!

[martin]

Many (most?) digital cameras use an HD resolution of 1440 X 910. That's where we got the resolution we used for TWO, (1/4 that=720X405). All that Megapixel crap is color info, interlace, frame rate, etc. In fact, HD video cameras (and HD in general) can only change the color of a pixel every 4 pixels (that's why it's called "4:1:1").

[heyvern]

The largest print image I ever created from scratch on the computer was a 16 x 20 inch poster I did many years ago. This image was part of a promotional advertising brochure for a "new" (at the time) offset printing process that used 6 "special" inks, CMYK and an extra bright cyan and red ink that increased the dynamic color range of traditional offset 4 color printing. This same technology is used now in consumer "photo ink jet" printers that only cost a few hundred dollars. At the time this new offset printer prototype with proprietary computer system cost a few hundred thousand.

 

The specs for the pint job were; 16" x 20" at 600lpi (lines per inch as apposed to dots per inch. LPI is the number of "dots" per inch in half tone printing plates. It has nothing to do with digital "dots"). The image was composited from massive high resolution scans done by the client on their own scanners, from 4 x 5 transparencies and several elements I created and rendered out of a "popular" 3D application at the time that no longer exists (AM? I had never heard of it yet back then. It existed but it was probably version 4 or 5 or 6?).

 

The image was so big and difficult to work on that I could not use Photoshop. At the time this was being done the most powerful Mac with Photoshop was brought to its knees by the size of the image. Windows PC's just weren't an option back then for desktop publishing (win 3.1 anyone?). Mac was the only way to go. I had the most powerful Mac at the time with maxed out ram. Photoshop could barely open this image let alone work on it with multiple layers.

 

I had to use version 1.0 of a brand new application that had just come out that used some sort of proxy image display that only loaded the area being worked on into memory. It was very cool and I wonder whatever became of it. It didn't actually edit pixels. It used some sort of "list" of the changes you made. What you saw on the screen at any time was only 72 dpi of the area that filled the editing window. So if you zoomed in it only had to draw that small portion at "full" resolution. The only way to get a "final" image was to export it. Without this application I could not have considered creating this image at the full resolution. Even using this program the image was so difficult to work with it took a week to finish it.

 

Don't even ask what the render times were for the 3D elements. I had started those ages before hand after getting a low res comp image approved. The only 3D elements were a few stone pillars with a stone arch. This took a week to render (not with AM. I didn't know AM existed back then). A week literally. I had to keep pausing the render each day to do other work and let it run during lunch and at night. You think your render sizes are big? These were HUGE!

 

The final image saved as a tiff format at the resolution needed to print 16" x 20", at 600lpi was over a 1gb. We had no way to transport the file without sending an entire hard drive. There was no way to transport the file to a printer. The printer helped us out and sent a huge hard drive to put the file on. I eventually had to cheat and reduce the size and resolution and save as a JPG so it would fit on that hard drive (final image was about 650mb). The final print was so amazing, so fantastically sharp and wonderful it was incredible. The 6 color print process and special inks made it jump off the page. The agency I worked for at the time never allowed the artists to get any printed samples by claiming some sort of "confidentiality" clause in our contracts (top secret experimental printing technology. This was back when printing was a HUGE business). I think this was some sort of strategy to keep us from building up a portfolio and get a better job. I was very angry I never got to get a print of that poster.

 

The final image size I NEEDED to print a 6 color 16 x 20 poster at 600lpi (which is actually 16 x 20 at 1200dpi or 19200 x 24000 pixels) was 1.29gb. I ended up using 600dpi instead of 1200dpi so it would fit on a disk. The frustrating part was that the hardware and software was able to handle the full size image. It was the storage media that was lacking.

 

Funny thing... I just now used Photoshop to create a 19200 x 24000 image to check the size... if only I could go back in time with this Mac to do that image I might not have had that nervous breakdown. Looking back on it now I really think I had a nervous breakdown working on that monstrous image. I had actually already quit that job before the end of the project but was hired back as a part time freelancer to finish it. I was the only person who knew how to use the software that created it and figure out how to get it on a disk. Ironically my new job involved working on a Unix based "Barco" system. Very expensive. System and software updates cost in the thousands. Imagine if AM cost $3000 each year to upgrade! The Barco system could handle gigantic images easily but the software to do this was useless compared to photoshop. Now of course a cheap computer with a copy of photoshop can easily do ten times what that hideously over priced system could do.

 

-----

 

p.s. Ah... the memories... did I tell you about how a coworker got filthy rich investing in Iomega just before the zip drive came out? I showed him a tiny article I found about this cool new "zip" drive coming out. I casually mentioned that if I had any money to invest in the stock market I would buy Iomega stock. This drive was going to be huge. At the time removable media was very pricy (no CDs). He invested a bunch of money and made out like a freaking bandit. I thought he could at least have bought me a steak dinner... or a car.

 

-vern

[photoman]

OK. SIGH.... The whole problem was solved by restarting my computer Everything would render beautifully, I even got a few passes at 3000x1600 (4hr passes) but had to hit the cancel button to do a school project. So I just rendered at 2000x1067 and used The Gimp to upres it to 4500x2400 and did a quick unsharpen mask. I had rendered it originally as a OpenEXR to get the depth map but since my scene was actually really small scaled it didnt work. So I just set fog to white and adjusted that and turned on the null shaders and I got a great depth map. (Will post a video I made in AfterFX of the DOF using the map) The image looks great!!

2hours 5pass @ 2000x1067

5min for 1pass

 

I just want to thank everyone who helped or contributed a post to this fun filled thread. It really does help (I now know not to render at 20 Megapixels )

 

 

Photoman

 

Edit-PS Looking at the depth map, the scene would look good with heavy fog and a slightly different camera angle closer to the rock and tilted up more.

 

Edit2- On the note of 1gb images, I once read a article in a photo magazine (I think it was DigitalPhotoPro) and they talked about using a 39 Megapixel Hasselblad camera to take a picture of a Ferrari Enzo for Epson as a "test" for their new printer. After the took the picture and did their magic in photoshop they had a 3gb Tiff (The original raw file was 150mb) That they sent to Epson to be printed at 3x4'. They used one of those Uber Mac 8-core towers w/ 16gb RAM.

[heyvern]

Glad it worked out!

 

I hope you didn't feel like we all ganged up on you too much about the resolution issue. I think, speaking for myself at least, the goal was to save you wasted time and effort.

 

A small critique I mentioned earlier. The sky image is a photo right? (mountains as well?) You may want to use a higher res photo or a "better" one. It appears to have not fared well in the upscaling of the render. It looks like a small image that was scaled up. It looks as if there might be some strange blotchy pixel scaling artifacts.

 

If you just went out on a bright sunny day with a clear blue sky and your 50 bazillion megapixel digital camera you could get a smooth high res sky image that would really push this up a notch. There may also be some nice free sky images on the internet. I bought a CD a while back of some sky images for a job I was doing. My client always needed these big huge beautiful skies added to crappy images of fields of corn and soybeans. I got tired of tweaking the gray overcast storm clouds in all the images they provided.

 

Just a suggestion... another suggestion.

 

-vern

[photoman]

A small critique I mentioned earlier. The sky image is a photo right? (mountains as well?) You may want to use a higher res photo or a "better" one. It appears to have not fared well in the upscaling of the render. It looks like a small image that was scaled up. It looks as if there might be some strange blotchy pixel scaling artifacts

 

The sky is a image of course, I got it from cgtextures.com . Its a huge 8k spherical mapped image I just decal on to a half sphere for my skydomes. (They have hundreds! for free!!) I usually make my skydomes really big my scenes b/c it removes some of the spherical distortion that happens if you animate the camera, it also gives the viewer a better sense of being outside. That could the reason for the blotchy sky pixels. The mountains are actually rendered in A:M with the rest of the scene. As for the artifacts... I used the GIMP for the upscaling and the interpolation method was set to the Sinc option. It was after bilinear and bicubic so it must be better right?

 

Photoman

[heyvern]

I think the images whether they are big or not are being really scaled up during render. Putting them on a dome over the scene means that only a small portion is visible at any time. In that view of your render it probably means that only 30% - 40% of the entire sky image is seen. Even a huge high res image will have to be scaled way up to cover the dome. I can't say for sure without seeing the original sky image but it looks like the "blotchiness" might actually be film grain. The more I look at it the more I think it is film grain. Where ever you got the images they still had to be scanned in. If they were shot digitally I think it would look different.

 

-vern

[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

[photoman]

Well, Ive been looking back at this project (Its been a year since I finished it) and I now want to further enhance and update it.

 

I am going to rerender it at dusk-late afternoon, and I have a new plan on how to be able to render the displacement, hair, and AO!

And before anyone has a (another) rant about resolution, I AM NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT RENDER TIMES.

 

So.... here is a quickie update on the rock up front:

AO is used

 

 

Photoman