Hi all.

This is my first 'real' image posting in quite awhile. It's frame 1 of a complex
animation scene I've been working on since *forever.* The animated elements are
finally complete, but the *look* that I'm after is still only about 75% there.
So I continue to refine it (the bathysphere especially, as it needs more
textures.)

Rendered in v3.6.2, it has atmospheric media, focal blur, heightfields, multiple
trace() operations, swimming fish, waving grass, plus about 6,800 other objects.
The animation is going to take a *long* time to render on my old-but-trusty
single-core Windows machine.

The stone 'face' at lower right is part of a full girl mesh model--a
dancer--that I downloaded *years* ago--and I've forgotten where I got it or who
originally made it. (The girl object was called "enfant", if that rings a bell
with anyone.)

Like most animations I suppose, this static frame doesn't really do the scene
justice. There are lots of moving elements--well, otherwise there wouldn't be
any point in animating it!  ;-)

Just wanted to throw this out there for comments.

Ken

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Attachments:
Download 'undersea_1.jpg' (205 KB)

Preview of image 'undersea_1.jpg'

Very nice!

Even if single cored, I think that the image itself will much improve 
with the use of v3.7 RC6. You may have to tweak a number of things then 
but worthwhile. For instance, while not mandatory, the use of srgb would 
enrich the colours of the image.

Thomas

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> Very nice!
>
> Even if single cored, I think that the image itself will much improve
> with the use of v3.7 RC6. You may have to tweak a number of things then
> but worthwhile. For instance, while not mandatory, the use of srgb would
> enrich the colours of the image.


Thanks. The one thing about this scene that has given me the most trouble is the
atmosphere and its density/brightness. Not a technical issue, but an aesthetic
one. The scene is supposed to be murky and somewhat dark, but getting *just* the
right balance has been an on-going struggle. Every time I render a test of the
scene, I want to tweak those qualities. And that usually means tweaking the
objects' textures too--their color saturation, brightness, and ambient values--
in order to get everything to 'match' visually. It's quite a tedious process;
and the scene still doesn't look quite the way I want it to. (One reason for
that is because of a choice I made: I want to keep the number of lights in
the scene to an absolute minimum, to cut down on render time. Trying to
compensate for that limitation has been difficult!)

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On 4-12-2012 11:24, Kenneth wrote:
> Thanks. The one thing about this scene that has given me the most trouble is the
> atmosphere and its density/brightness. Not a technical issue, but an aesthetic
> one. The scene is supposed to be murky and somewhat dark, but getting *just* the
> right balance has been an on-going struggle. Every time I render a test of the
> scene, I want to tweak those qualities. And that usually means tweaking the
> objects' textures too--their color saturation, brightness, and ambient values--
> in order to get everything to 'match' visually. It's quite a tedious process;
> and the scene still doesn't look quite the way I want it to. (One reason for
> that is because of a choice I made: I want to keep the number of lights in
> the scene to an absolute minimum, to cut down on render time. Trying to
> compensate for that limitation has been difficult!)

I think that underwater scenes are very difficult to do because of this 
interaction between media and object colours. If I am correct, this can 
be rather extreme. The /natural/ colours lighted by the environment are 
very subdued but when lighted by a lamp for instance, the colours become 
very bright. I remember a scene by Jim Charter (shark) a couple of years 
ago, which showed a nice render.

Thomas

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
that limitation has been difficult!)
>
> I think that underwater scenes are very difficult to do because of this
> interaction between media and object colours. If I am correct, this can
> be rather extreme. The /natural/ colours lighted by the environment are
> very subdued but when lighted by a lamp for instance, the colours become
> very bright. I remember a scene by Jim Charter (shark) a couple of years
> ago, which showed a nice render.
>

Yes! In real life, that does seem to be so. In my scene, when the spotlights
impinge on interesting objects, they look quite colorful (and at the brightness
level I want.) But trying to balance that against their 'unlit' look has been a
real challenge, because of the atmospheric media and its intrinsic murkiness.
(That's basically why I added emission media to the scattering media, to even
things out a bit.)

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"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> that limitation has been difficult!)
> >
> > I think that underwater scenes are very difficult to do because of this
> > interaction between media and object colours. If I am correct, this can
> > be rather extreme. The /natural/ colours lighted by the environment are
> > very subdued but when lighted by a lamp for instance, the colours become
> > very bright. I remember a scene by Jim Charter (shark) a couple of years
> > ago, which showed a nice render.
> >
>
> Yes! In real life, that does seem to be so. In my scene, when the spotlights
> impinge on interesting objects, they look quite colorful (and at the brightness
> level I want.) But trying to balance that against their 'unlit' look has been a
> real challenge, because of the atmospheric media and its intrinsic murkiness.
> (That's basically why I added emission media to the scattering media, to even
> things out a bit.)

I never dived, so I have no RL experience. The only comparisions I have are TV
documentations. But good renderings of underwater scenes are "The Guardian" by
Johnny Yip, the winner of the POVCOMP-Competition 2004 of course, and a picture
by Glenn McCarter from the IRTC-round April 2009 "Galleon's Reef". The source
for the first is still available (follow the links at the POVCOMP site). The
source for the second is lost, since the IRTC sources are only available now for
the first phase up to 2006. Glenn had published the sources 2009 and I still
have them. Fortunatelly he had published the sources under a cc-license, so if
you will have them I can put them into the p-b-sf.

Best regards,
Michael

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"MichaelJF" <mi-### [at] t-onlinede> wrote:

>
> I never dived, so I have no RL experience. The only comparisions I have are TV
> documentations.

Same here (except for some snorkeling I did, off the coast of Florida. But that
was only in relatively shallow water, maybe 15-20 feet.)

> But good renderings of underwater scenes are "The Guardian" by
> Johnny Yip, the winner of the POVCOMP-Competition 2004 of course...

That's a great one! Very beautiful and realistic. For my own scene, I'm trying
for more of a 'fantasy' look (kind of artificial), sort of what I *think* it
should look like ;-) The whole scene has a fantasy feel to it--which my still
shot doesn't really convey, as it's very early in the animation. Some funny
things happen later, which throws realism out the window!

> ...and a picture by Glenn McCarter from the IRTC-round April 2009 "Galleon's
> Reef".

I don't think I've seen that one (or don't remember it.) Is the image itself up
online anywhere now?

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"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> That's a great one! Very beautiful and realistic. For my own scene, I'm trying
> for more of a 'fantasy' look (kind of artificial), sort of what I *think* it
> should look like ;-) The whole scene has a fantasy feel to it--which my still
> shot doesn't really convey, as it's very early in the animation. Some funny
> things happen later, which throws realism out the window!

That lessens the call for reality here. My first impression was, that the
scattering is a little bit to strong or the water a little bit to clear.
something between this.

>
> > ...and a picture by Glenn McCarter from the IRTC-round April 2009 "Galleon's
> > Reef".
>
> I don't think I've seen that one (or don't remember it.) Is the image itself up
> online anywhere now?

No, I fear not. The IRTC-data are available for the period from 1996 to 2006
(there is still a link at www.irtc.org). There are some underwater scenes which
can still be rendered. But as you can imagine the artists were limited due to
the resources at this times. After 2006 the IRTC was on "hiatus" and had a short
revival 2009 and 2010. The images and sources of this second period seems to be
vanished from the net completelly. I have collected some of the first two rounds
but then was stopped due to the final death of the IRTC. I reconsidered my offer
to post Glenns code to the p-b-sf. I think it's not a good idea to post code
from others to the public even given with a cc-licence. But I hope your e-mail
account is working...

Best regards,
Michael

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Here's the same shot, but I emptied all the fog out of the studio and turned on
the (shadowless) work lights  ;-)

To show the various objects and their textures more clearly; and the rather
extreme differences in the brightness levels of things, just to try and get the
scene-WITH-atmospheric-media to look 'balanced' (more or less.)

BTW, I've since lightened-up the scene a bit; my original posted image looks too
dark now, even to me. I must have changed something prior to rendering it, and
not in a good way. :-/

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Attachments:
Download 'studio_view_with_lights.jpg' (392 KB)

Preview of image 'studio_view_with_lights.jpg'

"MichaelJF" <mi-### [at] t-onlinede> wrote:
>
> I think it's not a good idea to post code
> from others to the public even given with a cc-licence. But I hope your e-mail
> account is working...
>

Yes indeed.  (And thanks for the email.)

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