Couple of early W.I.P pics

#20

Hmmm…the “speed hazer” shader is not just a fog shader, in case noone has noticed that, yet…hehehe…uhm, sorry, I should finally make all the tutorials. It actually is a volume shader and not just a steam, fog, smoke volume shader, but actually a solid volume shader! And because of it, it procedurally can be instructed to render volumes of any shaper or form, which in turn can be generated in any way, controlled by imagemaps or only noises or whatever. On top of that it has an “input” that allows for a shading shader to get hooked up, like the basic shader for instance! This means that the volume that the speed hazer has defined can be shaded just like any other geometry with pretty much everything (except translucency I think…yeah…none of that)! The volume can be defined in 3d space alone by it’s parameters already, but with the proper textures applied you can very clearly define where this solid volume is supposed to be!
…now what does this mean. Hmmmm…this means, if you can think of a good way to make procedurals look like grass, you could get ridd of all your transparent polygons and simply use a textured volume for the areas you’d like to have covered. Particularely if you only have a flat ground, it should in theory be super easy and will most likely be plenty of times faster, I’m sure!
I’m still planning to eventually go a whole lot more crazy with volume type of renderings. it’s sometimes stunning how fast that can be made to run!
Anyway, you might want to have a peak into it, but I’m not sure if you will be able to get something going with it right away. Just play a little and see what happens. Of course you should use an empty scene for playing first!
If I find time, I’ll prepare some examples again!

Taron

#21

Ayyyyy carramba! Sorry, guys, I just had to notice that something must have changed ever since I wrote the Speed Hazer, which makes the raymarching not working anymore…I need to examine that now…sorry. It still works fine for the fog and ground fog right now, but no worries, I’ll get the rest working again in no time. Darned… :banghead:

#22

I didn’t take that as a bad thing :slight_smile: I just bought an X360 with Project Gotham Racing 3 recently and I realise that my render isn’t that much better looking :confused: Just means I’ll either need to find ways to improve it, or stick to animating instead :stuck_out_tongue:

OT - it’s quite frightening what the recent realtime engines can do. Most X360 titles are using ‘fake’ HDR / Depth of field / decent looking motion blur. Crytek’s engine is probably the most impressive - http://uk.media.pc.ign.com/media/694/694190/imgs_1.html

The 2nd image and the last are probably the best examples with the sss on the heads / plants

#23

Shouldn’t you change it’s name to ’ volume / voxel shader ’ then ? I guess this is like Jules old request of the ’ basic shader ’ being renamed since it’s far, far from being basic :slight_smile:

It does sound vey cool though. When you get the raymarching working again, I’ll see if I can get grass out of it ( might be able to with Thomas’s AoN Grid 1D shader with some noise input into the linewidth / rotation ).

#24

Another update to the still image. It’s getting there, but I’ve just realised the tree leaves aren’t casting any shadows anymore :confused:

#25

Looks very cool! Getting better and better!

The Speed Hazer’s solid volume rendering (voxels if you will) actually isn’t “broken” as I’ve noticed, only that it previously had to overcome a limitation that is gone now and I didn’t update that “work around”. So in the next revision it’ll be all super-peachy again! :smiley:

You could already play with the solid rendering, but I’ve also renamed two inputs to make it more clear in the upcoming version! (value = density, density = global density). It currently only renders against objects or ground and not the background, but the upcoming version renders against empty backgrounds as well… …just like it should’ve.

#26

:slight_smile: I’l try and play around with it over the next few days.

Just noticed that for some odd reason, it’s translucency that’s causing the trees leaves to not cast a shadow anymore, even though they have a UV mapped texture in the transparency channel :confused: No doubt user error on my behalf somewhere, but I’ll post a few images shortly anyway.

EDIT : Changing the transluceny mode to UnLimit from Uniform fixes it.

#27

i think this is the most impressive messiah render i have seen to date.

#28

:surprised thanks stooch :blush:

I personally feel that I’ve quite a bit to go before I get the same render quality that Taron, Wegg, Thomas and a few others have achieved, but I appreciate the compliment:)

Btw, that image above has been slightly filtered in Gimp. This is a straight M:S render, with the white value set at 0.55. I started off wrongly when I surfaced most of the things in the scene as I was playing around with GI settings, so with a white value of 1.0 it’s too dark.

#29

nah, i think your quality is easily on par, you just have a different style. But we all know that an artist is his own worst critic, so if you say so then i shall agree.

#30

how about some motion blur on those wheels.

#31

I’ll redo the render over the weekend stooch.

Here’s a preview avi of the first camera in the anim. Didn’t use GI to render this, just some distant lights, so that’s why it looks poorer quality than the still render. Fairly happy with the camera, just need to tweak the motion slightly at the beginning - slower zoom in over the first 1-2 secs. And the tyre smoke’s missing as well… :

http://www.savefile.com/files/5704211 - 3.56mb

( sound unashamedly ripped from GT4 )

Any comments are welcome

#32

Almost forgot, does anyone know how you access a shaders value output through expressions ? I’d much prefer to use a fractal texture as the noise generator for the camera shake, as my effots so far with random numbers in an expression aren’t ideal.

#33

Good stuff so far :thumbsup:

I like the sunny feel and the environment. Just missing a bit of movement on the overhanging palm leaves as the shot starts. My eye goes there before the car comes and it looks a bit static.

The camera and car animation is really cool!  No crits on that from me.

I love the scene’s shadow interaction with the car. It livens the scene up.

edit: Of course the static leaves could easily be solved by trimming the in point on this video clip so the eye is immediately caught by the car.

#34

Not able to play it on Windows Media Player - What codec are you using?

#35

I’ll send you my camera shaker node if you like. It is a node that you parent your camera under, so it might work without destroying your camera motion.

#36

Thanks. The movement on the palm leaves will go in last, there’s plenty of other things I need to finish first :slight_smile:

I’ll probably add another car into the anim to make it a bit more interesting to watch, as it’ll probably only appeal to Fiat Coupe nuts atm :slight_smile:

#37

It’s compressed with the XVid video codec, and just plain pcm for the audio.

#38

Thanks Alex, I’ll give it a try and see what it’s like. Atm I’m using 2 sliders to fade a noise expression onto the camera’s heading / pitch, but it’s a bit constant in its’ jiggle rate ( maths was NEVER my strong point at school :blush: )

#39

Here you go MoodyB. http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=3475967#post3475967
EDIT: I changed the content of this post so I have only one post to update for changes. Please follow the above link to get to the file links.

Oh and for your case it should be possible to parent your camera under the shaker null. Haven’t tested it but should work. You might want to be carefull with the rotational shaking, as your camera will probably not be at the correct rotational position for it to work. Or you just copy your animation to the individual channels of my setup. :slight_smile:

Hope you like it. :bounce: