UltraScenery - new territory [Commercial]

Llola Lane

Artini said:

Another render of Britain 4...

Awesome Artini ... I almost expect a fish to jump up in the water ;)

Dave Savage

Llola Lane said:

Oh I looooooooooooove cemetaries... but I'm sure when I was in England, exploring cemetaries, none of the monuments were standing straight up!  lol  Well done.

Hahaha... Good point! But maybe this is a posher cemetery. It's well out of the way of urban areas as we see here. 

barbult

Dave Savage said:

And I don't mean to spam the thread but I think the results I'm getting are worth sharing here.

And doing this one has given me an idea for another using the Ultra Scenery Junction (Dirt Track 3).

We welcome everything anybody has to share here, so post all you want!

DreamWeever

Apparently, I am in a mood for ruins lol, this is using one of the island settings with the Oaks, I still haven't had a chance to pick up the Briton stuff yet but it on my wishlist

Artini

Llola Lane said:

Artini said:

Another render of Britain 4...

Awesome Artini ... I almost expect a fish to jump up in the water ;)

Thanks a lot. I am exploring different light settings to avoid strange looking reflections in USC renders.

 

paulawp (marahzen)

Artini said:

Llola Lane said:

Artini said:

Another render of Britain 4...

Awesome Artini ... I almost expect a fish to jump up in the water ;)

Thanks a lot. I am exploring different light settings to avoid strange looking reflections in USC renders.

 

I've been working on a project lately to catalog all of the various Render Settings I have - often which came with different products - to find interesting new ones to try with USC and elsewhere.  

lou_harper

Dave Savage said:

And I don't mean to spam the thread but I think the results I'm getting are worth sharing here.

And doing this one has given me an idea for another using the Ultra Scenery Junction (Dirt Track 3).

I saw this one and the other one in your gallery. They look sweet! What lighting do you use?

lou_harper

Martinjfrost said:

I dont use fog in Iray ( or at least didnt here as i wanted more control of where the fog went and how) I save out canvases for distance and then use that for both the distance map for focus in Photoshop and then also re adjusted versions of the map as masks for fog layers in photoshop - usually an overall haze layer with a gradient black to white set to screen, and then what ever god rays i want, ground fog etc on top of that, all at very low opacity and the masks also have the distnace blur added to them so that they sit properly. That way i feel i have much more control over the image and can edit and change things in a very non destructive manner.  If your confedent in an image editor and can use masks and depth maps in it it means you can change out the areas of foucus etc really easily using the raw images rendered in ds.  

Sorry to dig up this old post but I have questions.

From what I know of Canvases, you select certain object to be in one canvas. Like in a scene I would do foreground, middleground, and background each as a separate canvas. But with a complex environment like Ultrascenery, full of instances how do you pick what should be in a canvas?

Dave Savage

lou_harper said:

I saw this one and the other one in your gallery. They look sweet! What lighting do you use?

Hi Lou and thanks.

For these ones I used the default environment for the ambient light and a single distant light set to a warm pinky-yellow colour to mimic the sun.

As a rule when lighting a scene, I start with complete darkness. So I switch everything off, set background to black and render looking to see that I get nothing but solid black.
Then switch the lighting on one bit at a time to see the exact effect each light source is having on the scene.

Then tweak from there to get a good balance.

Dave Savage

lou_harper said:

Sorry to dig up this old post but I have questions.

From what I know of Canvases, you select certain object to be in one canvas. Like in a scene I would do foreground, middleground, and background each as a separate canvas. But with a complex environment like Ultrascenery, full of instances how do you pick what should be in a canvas?

From what I understand, you do a canvas of the whole scene only you change the type of canvas to "Depth" and then the further away from the camera objects are in the scene will render white and the closer will be black.
Though as it's creating an .exr file it will all just look completely white until you take it to the imaging editor.

When you import the .exr file into Photoshop or other imaging editor, you need to convert the HDRI using "Equalise Histogram" and then set that layer to 'Screen' with your regular scene render layer underneath.

You can get really as complex as you need using layer masks to get maximum control, but this is just a simple way.

Hope this helps.

Artini

Dave Savage said:

lou_harper said:

I saw this one and the other one in your gallery. They look sweet! What lighting do you use?

Hi Lou and thanks.

For these ones I used the default environment for the ambient light and a single distant light set to a warm pinky-yellow colour to mimic the sun.

As a rule when lighting a scene, I start with complete darkness. So I switch everything off, set background to black and render looking to see that I get nothing but solid black.
Then switch the lighting on one bit at a time to see the exact effect each light source is having on the scene.

Then tweak from there to get a good balance.

Great images and great tips. Thanks for sharing.

 

Artini

Dave Savage said:

lou_harper said:

Sorry to dig up this old post but I have questions.

From what I know of Canvases, you select certain object to be in one canvas. Like in a scene I would do foreground, middleground, and background each as a separate canvas. But with a complex environment like Ultrascenery, full of instances how do you pick what should be in a canvas?

From what I understand, you do a canvas of the whole scene only you change the type of canvas to "Depth" and then the further away from the camera objects are in the scene will render white and the closer will be black.
Though as it's creating an .exr file it will all just look completely white until you take it to the imaging editor.

When you import the .exr file into Photoshop or other imaging editor, you need to convert the HDRI using "Equalise Histogram" and then set that layer to 'Screen' with your regular scene render layer underneath.

You can get really as complex as you need using layer masks to get maximum control, but this is just a simple way.

Hope this helps.

Another great tips - awesome and thanks for sharing.

 

Dave Savage

Further to my post above about Canvases of Depth information. I tried it on my latest render which also uses the Ultra Scenery Britain set.

So the first pic is the depth layer saved out from Daz Studio and imported into Photoshop.
The second pic is the render how it was after I'd done all the processing I wanted.
The third pic is a composit of the first and second pics with the Depth layer set to Linear Dodge with the opacity dialed down to 30%. I could have made the misty background a lot lighter if I'd kept the layer at 100%.

So you can get a lot of control doing it this way. You can also use the same Depth layer to adjust Depth of Field and several other things that would be depth related.

So bringing this back to the thread subject: Yes you can use it for adding mist to Ultra Scenery renders.

Hope this helps.

Martinjfrost

This one is a project that on my end is nearing completion but will be passed on to the magical hands of Howie soon, so this is a very early teaser.

Another adventure for me in desert flora, using alienator to put it in to some sort of an ecosyste,. so watch this thread..... some time in the next few months ......... fingers crossed.

Kind of a last hurahh before i pack my bags and head off to pantoland and be head of wardrobe for a wicked queen and a bunch of dwarfs over the christmas period. 

Im also very tempted to try and get my hands on that rather fabulous wild west steam train that popped up in the store recenelty.... or do antother test scene (play) with some wild horses.... hmmmmmm ;-)

Click on the image for a larger version.  

Martinjfrost

Dave Savage said:

Further to my post above about Canvases of Depth information. I tried it on my latest render which also uses the Ultra Scenery Britain set.

So the first pic is the depth layer saved out from Daz Studio and imported into Photoshop.
The second pic is the render how it was after I'd done all the processing I wanted.
The third pic is a composit of the first and second pics with the Depth layer set to Linear Dodge with the opacity dialed down to 30%. I could have made the misty background a lot lighter if I'd kept the layer at 100%.

So you can get a lot of control doing it this way. You can also use the same Depth layer to adjust Depth of Field and several other things that would be depth related.

So bringing this back to the thread subject: Yes you can use it for adding mist to Ultra Scenery renders.

Hope this helps.

When doing this ( and this is pretty much how i always add mist and fog and atrmousphere/ air texture) you need to make sure that you ahve any volumetric clouds/ fog or ground fog turned off as this really messes up the depth and distance masks. The way i do this if im using vbds or voumetrics is to render the image with them having made sure ive saved it and the camera im using, then go back and turn off/ delet all fog, mist and volumetrics in both the enviroment tab and the scene tab depending on where they are, rename your save out image and then just enable the depth/distance and any other canveses you want, that will render them without messing up the volumetrics or visa versa.  

lou_harper

Dave Savage said:

lou_harper said:

Sorry to dig up this old post but I have questions.

From what I know of Canvases, you select certain object to be in one canvas. Like in a scene I would do foreground, middleground, and background each as a separate canvas. But with a complex environment like Ultrascenery, full of instances how do you pick what should be in a canvas?

From what I understand, you do a canvas of the whole scene only you change the type of canvas to "Depth" and then the further away from the camera objects are in the scene will render white and the closer will be black.
Though as it's creating an .exr file it will all just look completely white until you take it to the imaging editor.

When you import the .exr file into Photoshop or other imaging editor, you need to convert the HDRI using "Equalise Histogram" and then set that layer to 'Screen' with your regular scene render layer underneath.

You can get really as complex as you need using layer masks to get maximum control, but this is just a simple way.

Hope this helps.

 Interesting!

"...set that layer to 'Screen' with your regular scene render layer underneath."  Does this mean that you render the scene twice–once with canvas and once normal, or am I misunderstanding?

lou_harper

Martinjfrost said:

This one is a project that on my end is nearing completion but will be passed on to the magical hands of Howie soon, so this is a very early teaser.

Another adventure for me in desert flora, using alienator to put it in to some sort of an ecosyste,. so watch this thread..... some time in the next few months ......... fingers crossed.

Kind of a last hurahh before i pack my bags and head off to pantoland and be head of wardrobe for a wicked queen and a bunch of dwarfs over the christmas period.

Will it be a kind of American Southwest high desert environment? That's what it reminds me of.

And panto... So British. :P 

Dave Savage

lou_harper said:

 Interesting!

"...set that layer to 'Screen' with your regular scene render layer underneath."  Does this mean that you render the scene twice–once with canvas and once normal, or am I misunderstanding?

Yes, do a regular render how you usually would and a 'Depth' render canvas. Then composit them together in an image editor.

Also note that Martin recommends turning off any volumetrics for the depth render. I didn't know about that so will have to test a few more things now.

Dave Savage

Martinjfrost said:

This one is a project that on my end is nearing completion....

Looks great.... 

"Where's the mountain lion?"
"It's behind you!!!"
"Oh no it isn't"
"Oh yes it is"

paulawp (marahzen)

Martinjfrost said:

This one is a project that on my end is nearing completion but will be passed on to the magical hands of Howie soon, so this is a very early teaser.

Another adventure for me in desert flora, using alienator to put it in to some sort of an ecosyste,. so watch this thread..... some time in the next few months ......... fingers crossed.

Kind of a last hurahh before i pack my bags and head off to pantoland and be head of wardrobe for a wicked queen and a bunch of dwarfs over the christmas period. 

Im also very tempted to try and get my hands on that rather fabulous wild west steam train that popped up in the store recenelty.... or do antother test scene (play) with some wild horses.... hmmmmmm ;-)

Click on the image for a larger version.  

Woohoo! One of my biggest wish list items for the USC world ... Just take my money now. :) 

paulawp (marahzen)

I'm calling it "Chance Discovery."

... And as soon as I post it, I spot the annoying flaw. At first glance, I thought the grass under the bridge was coming through the wooden slat but, no. Easily fixed, just overlooked it at this late hour.

Martinjfrost

Here is how i set up my depth maps.

As already said if i have no volumetrics in the scene  I render to disk having set the canvases to Beauty ( needed otherwise youll not have a render but your not going to use this) Depth or Distance and any of the others you want. If you are using volumetrics, do your render  then go back turn all of the smoke, fog, clouds or whatever else you have off in both your scene (vdbs etc) and your envirments tab in render settings. Then (and this is important) rename the image your about to render to disk something like image name-depth so and in canvases just select the depth/distnace etc and render away. You will not get a pretty pic for this as you didnt render a beauty layer but you will get the maps you need. 

Render and import in to photoshop/ other image editor. The canvases will come in to (photoshop) overexposed so you need to knock that back down using an adjustment layer, then copy all layers and import in to your image alpha channel ( for photoshop this is what the lense blur filter uses to read the image and add blur) then go in to your fiters>Blut>LensBlur and you should be off and running. You can adjust the depth distance maps to make masks for mist and fog etc too buy using adjustments>exposture and tweaking the levels.  

Ive attached some slides made as part of a tutorial i did which should help explain it. 

lou_harper

Dave Savage said:

lou_harper said:

 Interesting!

"...set that layer to 'Screen' with your regular scene render layer underneath."  Does this mean that you render the scene twice–once with canvas and once normal, or am I misunderstanding?

Yes, do a regular render how you usually would and a 'Depth' render canvas. Then composit them together in an image editor.

Also note that Martin recommends turning off any volumetrics for the depth render. I didn't know about that so will have to test a few more things now.

Thank you! I think I got the gist of it now. Now I just need to get my PC back from repairs. Brand new, had it only for a few months and the hard drive died.

Daventaki

Martinjfrost said:

 

Ive attached some slides made as part of a tutorial i did which should help explain it. 

Is the tutorial still available?

 

Artini

Britain preset 2...

and 2 postprocessed images...

alexhcowley

lou_harper said:

Dave Savage said:

lou_harper said:

 Interesting!

"...set that layer to 'Screen' with your regular scene render layer underneath."  Does this mean that you render the scene twice–once with canvas and once normal, or am I misunderstanding?

Yes, do a regular render how you usually would and a 'Depth' render canvas. Then composit them together in an image editor.

Also note that Martin recommends turning off any volumetrics for the depth render. I didn't know about that so will have to test a few more things now.

Thank you! I think I got the gist of it now. Now I just need to get my PC back from repairs. Brand new, had it only for a few months and the hard drive died.

Sadly, you have become a victim of what is formally termed Statistical Scatter. Most hard drives last for years, a tiny minority last for even longer and a another tiny minority fail within a few months. 

Cheers,

Alex. 

memcneil70

Martinjfrost said:

This one is a project that on my end is nearing completion but will be passed on to the magical hands of Howie soon, so this is a very early teaser.

Another adventure for me in desert flora, using alienator to put it in to some sort of an ecosyste,. so watch this thread..... some time in the next few months ......... fingers crossed.

Kind of a last hurahh before i pack my bags and head off to pantoland and be head of wardrobe for a wicked queen and a bunch of dwarfs over the christmas period. 

Im also very tempted to try and get my hands on that rather fabulous wild west steam train that popped up in the store recenelty.... or do antother test scene (play) with some wild horses.... hmmmmmm ;-)

Click on the image for a larger version.  

This reminds me of the Mojave desert after a rainstorm in the spring, and all the flowers burst out for a brief time. Not the exact ecology but very close to the effect. It looks more like Arizona I think. Lovely and I will be right there for it.

Mary

PS: Love all the tutorial discussions and the Butterfly Cottage is gorgeous. The deer reminded me of one that stopped me in my tracks litterally on the way to work, standing in the road. Would not move.

MelanieL

Finally today I got the chance to try out Britain Botanica. I'm loving the bluebells preset especially. Here's two views of the same Spring scene and an Autumn version too.

Llola Lane

Daventaki said:

Martinjfrost said:

 

Ive attached some slides made as part of a tutorial i did which should help explain it. 

Is the tutorial still available?

 

I second that question :)

Dave Savage

MelanieL said:

Finally today I got the chance to try out Britain Botanica. I'm loving the bluebells preset especially. Here's two views of the same Spring scene and an Autumn version too.

Fabulous... Those horses and riders look great too. All very realistic.