I have been working on this image since summer, and now, after 73 hours
of rendering, it's finally ready enough to be posted here.

I guess I have to render still another version, as there are some
problems with this one: for example, I have no idea what causes the
white lines on the sails. It is due to fog-media, but I don't now why.
POV3.7b29 makes them white, with 3.6 they are more brown but still visible.

Another problem is the water: I had cool waves but focal blur did
something bad to them.. I'll have to fix that too.

But, before I render this in full size, I would like to hear any
comments and critics you guys have. With lots media, trees, grass,
radiosity and focal blur, this one takes lots of time to render
(95:54:47 Rendering line 91 of 720, 67276 rad. samples on zbxt.net) so I
would like to make it as good as I can before I wait some months for it
to render :P

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'stage_00585.png' (328 KB)

Preview of image 'stage_00585.png'

On Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:18:31 +0300, Arttu Voutilainen
<blizzara.REM0VE7H!S### [at] zbxtSP4MM3Rnet> wrote:

>But, before I render this in full size, I would like to hear any
>comments and critics you guys have.

Your image is very attractive. The focal blur gives it a pointillist look. I
look forward to seeing the final and fixed version.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Nice composition, nice trees, nice sky. :-)

The sails on the ship are bugging me--they're much too flat. If there's 
any wind at all, they're going to be slightly curved (and if there's 
not, they're going to be dangling and wrinkled).

The focal blur is quite grainy--you'll need to take your blur_samples 
much higher in the final version, but you probably know this already.

-- 
William Tracy
afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu

The life of a Japanese cosplayer at Comike possesses strange 
similarities to that of the free range chicken.
     -- Shirt Guy Dom

Post a reply to this message

> I have no idea what causes the white lines on the sails. It is due to
> fog-media, but I don't now why.

What are the sails made from? I've seen similar artifacts in my own work when
using sphere_sweeps and other parametrics (which I've found is often due to
rounding/precision errors). Scaling the entire scene several times larger often
fixes that sort of thing for me.

Okay, the critique: the near shoreline looks a bit too geometric (faceted) to me
agaisnt the water, and I think the grass is too uniformly green.

Overall a nice scene though, very tranquil.

-Rob

Post a reply to this message

William Tracy <wtr### [at] calpolyedu> wrote:
> Nice composition, nice trees, nice sky. :-)
>
> The sails on the ship are bugging me--they're much too flat. If there's
> any wind at all, they're going to be slightly curved (and if there's
> not, they're going to be dangling and wrinkled).
>
> The focal blur is quite grainy--you'll need to take your blur_samples
> much higher in the final version, but you probably know this already.

Gee, man!  The render time was already 72 hours for quite low resolution, let
alone with higher blur_samples.  Without proper hardware, 3D rendering can be
quite a pain...

Post a reply to this message

Arttu Voutilainen <blizzara.REM0VE7H!S### [at] zbxtSP4MM3Rnet> wrote:
> I have been working on this image since summer, and now, after 73 hours
> of rendering, it's finally ready enough to be posted here.

The colors and lighting remind me of Maxfield Parrish; nicely done.

I wish I could offer a suggestion about the 'lines,' but without seeing your
scene code, it would be a shot in the dark.  Do you have any overlapping
media-filled objects in the scene? Or is it just a single fog or atmospheric
media?

Ken W.

Post a reply to this message

Very nice composition indeed. In addition to some of the comments already 
offered, I have doubts about the sun and the glare on the horizon. They seem 
not to be in phase. I would suggest to take out the visible sun sphere.
(I don't suppose it represents the Moon??  :-)  )

Thomas

Post a reply to this message

Arttu Voutilainen nous illumina en ce 2008-10-25 17:18 -->
> I have been working on this image since summer, and now, after 73 hours
> of rendering, it's finally ready enough to be posted here.
> 
> I guess I have to render still another version, as there are some
> problems with this one: for example, I have no idea what causes the
> white lines on the sails. It is due to fog-media, but I don't now why.
> POV3.7b29 makes them white, with 3.6 they are more brown but still visible.
> 
> Another problem is the water: I had cool waves but focal blur did
> something bad to them.. I'll have to fix that too.
> 
> But, before I render this in full size, I would like to hear any
> comments and critics you guys have. With lots media, trees, grass,
> radiosity and focal blur, this one takes lots of time to render
> (95:54:47 Rendering line 91 of 720, 67276 rad. samples on zbxt.net) so I
> would like to make it as good as I can before I wait some months for it
> to render :P
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
Try a test rander without focal blur nor radiosity.
In that render, use a partly transparent texture for your media container. You 
may discover that those lines are where the media container intersect the sails.

If that's the case, try altering the container's shape or position so that it 
never intersect the sails. If you use a plane, just place it higher so that it's 
placed over the masts.

For your focal blur, try a smaller aperture.
You may also do away with it and use a blured transparency just for the lower 
part. In that kind of scene, focal blur should be minimal, if present at all, 
and only visibly affect the extreme foreground.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Benjamin Franklin

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Gee, man!  The render time was already 72 hours for quite low resolution, let
> alone with higher blur_samples.

Aren't I a bastard? ;-)

I look at the shoreline in the extreme foreground, and I see random blue 
and green pixels sprinkled around, which bugs me. With higher samples, 
you'll get more of a smooth gradient.

Another option would be to tweak the aperture, reducing the amount of 
blur, and reducing the number of samples needed to eliminate the grain.

Then again, some people are fine with the grain. You decide whether the 
render time is worthwhile. :-)

BTW, now that you mention it, what hardware is this running on?

-- 
William Tracy
afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu

(10:16:43 PM) Ryuho: but they are physically turned off
(10:16:58 PM) Ryuho: so you can't connect to them right now
(10:16:58 PM) DanaG: I wonder if you could ssh-tunnel wake-on-lan packets.
     -- seen on #cplug

Post a reply to this message

Hi Arttu,

Very nice image.  I love sunset scenes, and I like the mood and subject of your
image.  You've done really well with media.

That said, I offer a few things that I would do:

With such atrocious render times, I would actually drop the media--there's
nothing in this image that could not be achieved with a good skysphere and fog.
 In fact, a good skysphere could probably even offer a more realistic and
dramatic result.

I would also drop the focal blur.  I agree with the others--focal blur in this
image would be minimal, and it would be easier to simply add a little blur to
the foreground later in GIMP or Photoshop.  I think you'll find that focal blur
is the cause of the majority of your render time.

I think your greens are too green and too homogeneous.  My recommendation would
be to drop it down to something like rgb <.1,.2,.0>, but use a cells pigment
with turbulence 1, lambda 10 to get some nice, realistic variation.  I would
apply this to both the tree leaves and the grass.  I know you mentioned grass
being in the render, but I can's see it (perhaps because the focal blur is
obscuring it).  If it is there, I would make it much taller and more irregular.
 For the foreground, I think you need to add some quite tall grass and
vegetation.  Gilles Tran has several varieties of grass-like plants that you
could add.

I don't know what method you used to create the terrain, but I think adding some
more irregularity and character would add a lot.  When I create terrain, I
usually use an isosurface or a pattern-generated heightfield using a function
based on something like this:

function {
  pattern {
    wrinkles
    poly_wave 3
  }
}

Or, you could start with the terrain you have, but use trace to drop in
isosurface rocks and boulders along the banks of the river to get a bank that
doesn't simply slope straight into the water.

Those are my suggestions; I hope you find them helpful--I look forward to seeing
what you come up with.

Kirk

Post a reply to this message