My first outside render

[sonofmickel]

The trees are from Vue5 directly imported into the scene. Grass is a planar map found on web. 1 area light and 1 spot light(to open up the doorway a little bit). Oh, Advanced camera was used.

Critiques are welcome.

[manholoz]

Looks nice and cheerful!
My only concern would be the walkway, it seems too plain. Even if it is of concrete, some joints (so it doesn't crack with temperature shifts) would be necessary.
Good job on the render.

[virtualcomposer]

If you need concrete textures, go to the member freebies and there are a ton of concrete textures and others that you can take for free.

[sonofmickel]

Thanks for the infos. I did have bigger cracks in there on my first test render but they were too big, now they are too small. Freebies!!! I love freebies!!! I will check out the members downloads, have they got the collection as a single download yet?

Any crits on lighting?

[Mitja]

Any crits on lighting?
Actually, yes.
I think your grass texture is too light, and your house and trees too dark, you should find a compromise between them.
Are you using GI? If not, you should try interpolated final gather. And if you're already using it (although the picture is so dark I would say you aren't), boost up the intensity value.
As for the grass texture, you have to absolutely "preprocess" it to be a bit darker.
And finally, if you render to hdr or exr, you can tweak and tonemap the picture in post to adjust lighting, if needed (usually it is!).

I hope this helps, somehow! Cheers

[sonofmickel]

manholoz! I just checked out your portfolio. Nice stuff there for sure! 1 area light? I am trying this out with my scene but it is still really dark.

Final gather 200%, 5 indirect bounces, 10 RPE, 16 secondary. My area light is scaled huge to fit over the scene.

Hmmm...more time is needed to get to your level.

[Mitja]

10 rpe is too low. It wouldn't solve the problem though... I would rise it to at least 128 anyway.
Are you using skylight or sunsky textured environment by dpont? (better sunsky, it's the new one)

[Iain]

As Mitja says, all that's needed for a scene like this is a light for the sun (an Area Light at about 6m is good) and Skylight or Sunsky from DPont.

Add Sunspot to your light and make the time 12-2 pm to suit your scene.

[sonofmickel]

Cranked up the GI to 128, looks a lot smoother now. No post on this either. Render time was about 16 min on a quad 2.66 Mactel. That is too long, I have too many polys 280,000 because of the Vue trees. I will try some clipmap trees and see how that looks.

Any more crits?

Thanks for being honest.:thumbsup:

[Mitja]

It is still a bit dark, imho. But much better. Replace the sky texture with sunsky plugin, you won't regret!
Your render times are indeed huge. If you render at this res, it should be done in a few minutes, even with a dual core.
Three things come to mind:
-AA settings
-other GI settings you haven't posted
-tree's leaves: clipmapping them is much better than putting the alpha in the transparency channel.
And, of course, the ray recursion level, could be lowered.

[sonofmickel]

OK. Skylight is in! 4.5 minutes. I clipmapped everything in the scene as far as plants go. What a drawn-out, insane process clipmapping is! I will say it again. What a drawn-out, insane process clipmapping is! Why not have clipmapping work globally for instances? Am I just too stupid to figure this out? It works on the transparency channel. Why not include clipmap channel in the surface editor as well? Yes, I have just finished reading the rants from years ago-why not fixed yet?!

More crits?

Oh, would Happy Digitals' HD Instance solve the clip mapping problem

[virtualcomposer]

That skylight makes all the difference. The other pictures had lighting that looked like it was being lit by set lights. This is much better.

[Iain]

I don't really understand why you've done that with the trees.

A background photo would look much more realistic and add nothing to the set up/render time.

You only need 3d trees when you're animating or you want good foreground foliage.

[sonofmickel]

I am doing that with the trees because I have Vue5 Infinite and only a few good trees with alphas. I guess I am being too lazy to knock out my own trees right now. I will check the web for some better freebies. The free trees I have leave a halo around the alphas=doesn't look good. If I get a paying gig I will surely buy some Marlin trees or something like that. Any better ideas for getting nice trees and bushes with alphas? With the current setup and GI at 300% I am getting renders in the 4 min range. I can only try to get better.:)

[Mitja]

The free trees I have leave a halo around the alphas=doesn't look good.
The halo is, probably, due to the (white?) bg color of the tree. It happend to me too, but if you paint the bg to a dark greeen color, everything should be fine, just fine...
Anyway, Iain wasn't referring to better quality 3d trees, but to a simple foto of a landscape. Take a look at his portfolio and you'll understand.
One last thing, try to desaturate the grass, or maybe try to find a better one.

[laci]

Hi Sonofmickel!

Would You tell me, where can I find the grass map? (first picture.)
Very nice!!!

Thanks

[sonofmickel]

Grass is from Got3D.com