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Locomotive 2317, And Environment.


paint

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Hey Paint,

The Train Engine Car is looking even better. Its going to be a lot of work I think. On your vex shaded scene. I think I would consider using HDRI lighting if I were you. The reason I say this is because the lighting looks really flat in the picture. Another thing you will defantly want to do is add a displacement into the fabric of that cloth. Right now you can't see the threading pattern running through the cloth so it looks pretty fake without it. The cheese needs more work. Its too flat it does not have any detail within the cheese. Keep up the good work chica.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

hence why i was only focusing on the wine, glass, and bread .. :P

it's not technically lit yet .. but HDRI might be fun . i'll have to do some reading on that though.. any links are appriciated.

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Hey Chica,

The bread is pretty good. The wine bottle is harder to tell. I think the wine glass could be better on the reflective and refraction parts of the shader. The HDRI lighting in Houdini is actually pretty easy thankfully. All you do is load the HDRI image into the Light Reflection Map in the OBJ section. I would recommend using a probe image as it is spherical and will cover every angle of light accurately.

HDRI in Houdini

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

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still chugging:

updates this for week, :

getting all textures ready.. ignore the maps there their as place holders,

I havn't gotten to photoshop yet, and GIMP and i have a very rocky relationship. :unsure:

tain996.jpg

spend some time trying to set up fans and collisons and a few forces for the particals ,

poptnetdrivingwith%20fansandect.jpg

I decided to use sprites to make up for render time and i need to add another sets 5 particals.

2 for the boilers on the frount, in times sessession,

2 on the tender as out lets for steam ,

and no i am not 100% sure why there located there but it's on the actual train

so I am putting them in. :P

1 on the whistle.

so 6 total with the main steam on the frount..

here's a referance

the other 3 are going to be occasinal steam blasts , based on $FF from certain frames ,

lasting Aprox. 30 to 60 frames in bursts.

we should be covering L-systems this week for the environment(trees)

and i'll probly be rendering in passes and compositing in NUKE. hopefully by the end of the week ...

2317_9_10_06.jpg

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  • 1 month later...

ok ended up using trees on grids.

well current progress is here.

comp1.jpg

camera angle1

still having shader issues but at this point I'll have to work on them at home..

the moving cameras don't render the tender correctly...

were done Wednesday and I fly home Sunday..

so this weeks goal is to get a reasonable output with some cleanup in the (pre)final comp..

I'll post more as i finish and will hopefully get a .mov up by next Wednesday.

lot of work ended up going into this .

( I tryed to include a little bit of everything in the package as we learned it, VEX,Chops, Pops, ect..)

chops are behaving now, I'm happy with the movement in the wheels ,

the particals are doing what i needed them to do as far as the shape and the movement..

I still need to work on the lighting..

and i have about 3 pages of notes where i need to work on little things.. or where their was some little render errors , but part of that was decided that not all of the computers her were quite behaving correctly.. and the .hip to this is rather massive.

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Congratulations on your project working out the way you wanted. Good job!

What are your shader issues? Can we help?

at this point i only have a day left so ,

i'm going to contuine on this problem next week,

(so not too much rush)

I asked Ray and he didn't have a any ideas either..

I'm almost wondering if it is a mantra error..

It's only effecting the tender.

and only on the moving cameras..

post-1391-1161123525_thumb.jpg

post-1391-1161123535_thumb.jpg

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hey.

that problem on i3D-layer, or on train-layer?

( for me looks like your i3D doing that :D

train.. oh their sprites.

just not fully worked over sprites..

super-sample is still at 3 ,

I thought about that too.

but it's fine on a static camera..

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Hey Paint,

Yeah I have run into that problem before. Make sure you do not have overlapping shaders. If you are not combining shaders properly then they compete for which one will show and you get a bunch of squares like that. Make sure you are assigning your shaders with groups and then then in the SOP Shader Node apply each shader to each group mind you this would not be the top overall shader entry but instead where you can add and remove additional shaders. Sorry if I didn't explain that well.

The angle of the image plane trees on those last shots was much better. The pervious shot had too much of angle to it and it was obvious that the trees were image planes which killed the effect. Your lighting is not bad at all. I like your effects I think you did well them particularly considering they were sprites. The train model did not look bad at all but your topology is not good. You don't want N-Gons in your model.

The displacement shading needs more work, but I have to be honest its really tricky and very difficult to do a realistic fully procedural wood shaders. Its about as hard as doing a fully procedural realistic skin shader with all the details. It can be done but its pretty hard and most people can't pull it off. A lot of times what people do is texture paint the wood, and or skin. The dirt can be done successfully either way texture painting it or procedurally.

You need to use a Depth of Field, DOF, in your camera because you have DOF in your background image. So in order to get them to match and make sense you need to do a DOF that matches the camera of the background image. Trial and error work because I seriously doubt you know the camera settings that were used to take that picture. We are rarely give them it seems even in production. lol

Best of Luck,

Nate Nesler

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Hey Paint,

Yeah I have run into that problem before. Make sure you do not have overlapping shaders. If you are not combining shaders properly then they compete for which one will show and you get a bunch of squares like that. Make sure you are assigning your shaders with groups and then then in the SOP Shader Node apply each shader to each group mind you this would not be the top overall shader entry but instead where you can add and remove additional shaders. Sorry if I didn't explain that well.

see thats what was weird.. they ARE, broken into groups then applyed,

eh, i'll be back in ATL, monday,

if you want you can come overand look at the file, you'll probly see something I missed...

The angle of the image plane trees on those last shots was much better. The pervious shot had too much of angle to it and it was obvious that the trees were image planes which killed the effect. Your lighting is not bad at all. I like your effects I think you did well them particularly considering they were sprites. The train model did not look bad at all but your topology is not good. You don't want N-Gons in your model.

the trees I would like to at some point get them locked to faceing the camera. right now there just placed. I was considering, birthing particals and sticking off-set sprites on it.. but then they would turn too much. i though maybe... setting then up with 3 or more interesecting planes ... and copy stamping them...

The displacement shading needs more work, but I have to be honest its really tricky and very difficult to do a realistic fully procedural wood shaders. Its about as hard as doing a fully procedural realistic skin shader with all the details. It can be done but its pretty hard and most people can't pull it off. A lot of times what people do is texture paint the wood, and or skin. The dirt can be done successfully either way texture painting it or procedurally.

yup thats on my list of needs work, but this was only really the first time I've played with vex to this extent..

if the terain was smaller, i was going to paint it.

I tend to perfer painting and mapping, but it was just too big.

by the end I am seriously considering re-modeling it.

You need to use a Depth of Field, DOF, in your camera because you have DOF in your background image. So in order to get them to match and make sense you need to do a DOF that matches the camera of the background image. Trial and error work because I seriously doubt you know the camera settings that were used to take that picture. We are rarely give them it seems even in production. lol

Best of Luck,

Nate Nesler

actully...

Photo Properties

summary details

Make Canon Model Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT

Aperture Value f/13 Color Space Uncalibrated

Exposure Bias Value 0.00 EV Exposure Program Manual

Flash No Flash Focal Length 18.00 mm

ISO 400 Metering Mode Average

Shutter Speed Value 1/320 sec Date/Time 07/01/2006 06:41:35 AM

but I reworked it in photoshop, and I reallly need to work on camera and lighting..and how to convert that to usefull data as I think being placed on a sphere it changes the image anyway.

Ie. my 35mm lens gets distored to something more like a 60mm or something.

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Hey Paint,

The weekends are better for me. Something like Saturday or Sunday. Wow you have the actual camera settings that rare. lol I would have to look at it if it is broken into groups and still doing it. Thats odd if the groups do not overlap anywhere.

Well actually you might try looking up DEM maps and then download free software that will translate them from a DEM to a TIFF. Then use the TIFF as a displacement map inside of Houdini with a VEX SOP and/or VEX Displacement shader. The result will be that you can Extract a realistic mountain range environment. The other way you could do it is use ZBrush and load the texture in on a plane and then select the image colors as a mask and then the inflate the details. I would do something like 10 inflate 5 smooth. Do this until you get the desired results. Then you can texture paint the ground with projection master in ZBrush rather quickly and it would only take you an hour or so. The other option is to use Terragen professional and have it export out a displacement map for you to bring into ZBrush or Houdini. The DEM will be more accurate though since it is based on the high maps of an actual physical location.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

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back home finally ;)

ok ,the only thing I have at my disposal right now is houdini App, and my photoshopCS2 stuff..

I'm a quirky one and I try really hard to get my licenses in order..

today i'm getting most of this sorted out in the home desktop...

so, PM when a good time on the wekend is if you don't mind dogs, and can deal with a disordered house.. (it's been a bachlor pad for 4 months while I was away.and my offic appears to of become a storage closet. :( )

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  • 2 months later...

reel 12 28 06

might want to turn down your speakers.... :unsure:

I did finally fix the shader. part was just myself to tired to realize it WAS an over lapping shader hiding in the tree, and I think the update of Houdini helped....or maybe it was sleep... :huh:

rendering It required me cannibalizing my PC to do it or it would of been up sooner..

ended up putting my extra gig ram in the BF computer because his gaming machine has the better mobo/proc and vidcard.. so now it has those perks plus 3 gigs , that I have been having trouble taking back, although he has been kicking butt on his BF2 server <_<

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