The Big Picture Thread for 2019 AND 2020

[LAdair]

It looks like that is one resource-heavy set!


Dana

It uses a lot of instances, but yes, it is very resource-heavy. Several trees, reeds, a couple of grass objects, all instanced and controlled with Ultrascatter by the PA.

I created a Selection Set on the Ground, a rectangle of polys within the frame, and ran Ultrascatter on one "grass clump" so I could remove the grass from the foreground.

It looks great at a distance, but close to the camera you could see odd, unnatural angles. The grass right in front of the camera is from Hemlock Folly.

With less than a third of the instances for that one object, rendering improved from about 180 samples an hour to a little over 200/hour, with one GTX 1080. It would have gone faster if it weren't so big, but I'm thinking of using it for a "print on canvas" to hang in my office.

[Agent0013]

LAdair, this has to be one of the best images I have ever seen that is 100% 3D! The flaws you mentioned, I never noticed any. I enlarged this image to full size, and even the curvature of the grass blades is smooth; not like you'd see in a low poly model.


Very well done, and yes it is worthy to hang in any office!

[LAdair]

LAdair, this has to be one of the best images I have ever seen that is 100% 3D! The flaws you mentioned, I never noticed any. I enlarged this image to full size, and even the curvature of the grass blades is smooth; not like you'd see in a low poly model.


Very well done, and yes it is worthy to hang in any office!

Thank you.

As I mentioned in my reply to DanaTA, I made a few strategic changes to the set. The grass in the foreground is from Hemlock Folly. I added SubD and set it to 2, and then I copied the materials from the grass clump to the Hemlock Folly grass, (image-free,) to tie it in with the set. Some of the blades from that object intersected each other and the tree, so I corrected those in Photoshop. That you can't tell I made those corrections feels really good!

[DanaTA]

I did a winter scene with a lot of instances a couple of year ago for a Christmas card cover.  But it wasn't Iray.  I just used regular 3DL lights.  Colored the light to make it a blue, moonlit, scene.  Maybe I'll post it.  I don't think it goes here, though.  It's not that large.  I'll check it out.


Dana

[DanaTA]

Yeah, it falls short...only 1800 x 1125.  I'll post it in the Showoff thread.


Dana

[Llola Lane]

Thank you all.

It's 100% 3D render, with a few minor touchups in Photoshop. The sky and clouds background/lighting is an HDRI;The set is "The Harpwood Trail - Mallard Pond".

I think I have that set... I'm thinking it is an Iray render?  How long did it take to 'cook'?

[LAdair]

I think I have that set... I'm thinking it is an Iray render?  How long did it take to 'cook'?

Yes, I rendered in Iray. I let the scene render to 5000 samples. It took right around 25 hours with one GTX 1080.

The set comes with materials for both Iray and 3Delight.

[Llola Lane]

Yes, I rendered in Iray. I let the scene render to 5000 samples. It took right around 25 hours with one GTX 1080.

The set comes with materials for both Iray and 3Delight.

OMG!!! 25 hours?  I couldn't live without my computer for that long... lol.  Never mind.. I'll stick with 3Delight... I looked and I do have the trail but not the pond add on.  I may play with it this weekend.  ;) 

[LAdair]

OMG!!! 25 hours?  I couldn't live without my computer for that long... lol.  Never mind.. I'll stick with 3Delight... I looked and I do have the trail but not the pond add on.  I may play with it this weekend.  ;)

That's why I have two computers; One for rendering, and one for everything else!



I wasn't getting anything else done, when I was doing 3D on this computer. It was barely capable of running DS, and even 3Delight renders took days. It was not uncommon for me to wait a week for an image to render using CPU Only. And boy, was it hard to wait!
Now with the Beast, most renders take a few hours. But this image was a special case, with all those instances, high translucency for all the leaves, lamh hair converted to OBJ on the buck, refraction and caustics in the water… Etc., etc., etc. (Movie reference…)

[DanaTA]

25 hours?  I have a Core2 Duo, both cores running at 3.0 GHz, and an old nVidia card with, I'm told, about 32 cores.  That scene would probably have taken a week for my computer.      I'd love to upgrade, but no money for such a project.


Dana