Reproduce a real life picture

#1

Hello Everyone :wavey:

I need to reproduce a photography from nationnal geographic by using vue 7 :

So this is the footage

And here is my early crappy result test :

So as you probably see there is a lot of difference with the shape of the mountains and also how the snow is applied on it .

The problem is that i am quiete new to vue , i played a bit with the terran editor , material editor and atmosphere editor

So i’m looking for tutorial or help about material editor , , to maybe paint myself the snow on the mountains , if its possible to export the moutain models and alpha .
Also if it’s possible to export the zdepth cause the fog is not so good in vue .

Also if you have some advice about how i should do this work don’t hesitate .

Sorry if my english seems quiete woobly , it is not my mother language :blush:

It will be gentle of you if you could help me :wavey:

thanks :slight_smile:

#2

The best advice I can offer is to make the most of the tutorials at GeekatPlay:

http://www.geekatplay.com/tutorials.php

Good luck

#3

If you want to paint the snow manually on the mountains, you’d probably have to create a UV map (simpy projected from top view, might already work). But this cannot be done inside VUE, afaik. So you have to export the terrain in a format which can be read by another app: OBJ is probably the best choice here. Then open the file with UVmapper, for example, and create the UV layout. Save as image and open it with PS or Gimp, or whatever you prefer. Paint the texture. Back in VUE, go to the material editor, add an image node, and load the texture. This should work, but I don’t know how good the results will be. :wink:

It should be possible to create the same effect with an appropriate distribution function, but you really have to know the material editor pretty well. So the geekatplay tutorials, mentioned earlier, are really obligatory.

Zdepth is rendered every time you render an image to screen or in the main viewport; simply click on the little [Z] button in the title bar of your render window.

What do you mean: “if its possible to export the moutain models and alpha”? Export the models as models (OBJ, or whatever) or as an image? For the former, simply select the terrain you’d like to export --> file menu --> export object (remember to adjust to the desired mesh resolution).
If you want to get an image you have to render in multi-pass. Refer to the manual for this :wink:

From what I see so far, the mountains don’t look that bad. With a little tweaking here and there (hint: try the filter node) you should get what you’re looking for. The only thing what occurs to me is that it will be really hard to get the correct shape of that iceberg thing to the right. Haven’t seen such a terrain coming straight out of VUE. You could give it a shot with the VUE rocks. But I would rather try to model the iceberg externally and then import the mesh. It’s just more accurate.

Keep us posted on your progress :slight_smile:

#4

That’s some good advice. I would HIGHLY recommend going through the tutorials at “geekatplay.com” and also looking at the galleries at places renderosity.com.

As to the snow ice burg, I would think using a mountain formation and changing it’s material would get a darn close to exact replica. I have seen snow and ice done this way several times. You want to do a terrain, sculpt the rock formation to resemble your ice in the photo, then just use the bump, lighting and materials to change to snow. The bumps will add some depth to the snow and edge texture (or should), the lighting will reflect not just the environment but also get the “wetness” of the snow/ice.

Note, I would also suggest checking out the Vue marketplace on their web site. They have several materials for snow, ice, etc. you can use if you don’t want to paint it.

Also, you can do as the poster above said and simply export your Zdepth map to Photoshop. I am using Photoshop CS4 “Extended” and also recommend it as it’s a quite valuable tool. You can also get your depth of field setup using this too.

Hope you have success, post a link to the picture when you have it done.

#5

Hi

Thanks for your answers

So for the painting , i think i will just play with the material editor to have a better result even if its not exactly the same repartition of snow and rocks

I will first try to use a combination of different terrain with a correct material for the iceberg to see where i can go

But if the result is not good enought i will probably do the model into 3dsmax and zbrush then import it into vue

So i have check already some of the tutorials on geekatplay.com as you requested and started to work on my scene

So here is the update after some hours of works , still wip as i’m still learning the software, and trying to find the rights setting for atmospheres and materials

But of course , in the end i will do some refine and compositing into photoshop

#6

Well, that’s quite an improvement :thumbsup:

The water comes out really nice.

The iceberg isn’t that bad either. An idea which just pops into my mind… You’re using a standard terrain, right? You could try to smooth out those steps and then apply a bump function and set it to displace the terrain – increases the render time significantly! I’m thinking Basic Repeater with some kind of Voronoi noise base (maybe 2 steps, and a scaling factor of 0.5) plus an appropriate Turbulence node, all that combined with a very subtle Perlin fractal node, possibly set to ridged. The whole function stretched a bit along the z-axis (up). But I’m just guessing here. :wink:

Keep going!

#7

thanks for our advice

i will try to make it by adding the fonction on the terrain if i find everything you told me such as the basic repeter :stuck_out_tongue:

by the way i try to add some ice material but when rendering it make freeze vue

is there a way to solve this problem ?

#8

Oh, sorry. I think, I was a little fast here… The displacement function I was talking about, has nothing to do with the terrain, but with its material.
What I was trying to say, was that you open the terrain editor and “erode” it.
Then you go to the Material editor’s “Bumps” tab and open the function editor. The “Basic Repeater” is one of the possible fractal nodes. What it does is, it takes a base noise (e.g. perlin) and repeats it up to 5 (6?) times, while scaling and overlaying every increment, creating a quasi fractal. Quasi, because it doesn’t repeat infinitely, so the amount of detail is limited :wink:

Hope this helps :wink:

#9

ok so i restarted the icebergs models and fill the layout

so now it should be only material and atmoshpere tune up i hope

I didn’t have tried yet your method for the moment but i will probably do it soon

for the moment i took the displacement from the ice material and apply it to the snow

here is what i have , its getting a bit more close i hope

by the way , is there a fog material that i could apply to a box , something very dense , to hide one part of the mountain?

thanks :slight_smile:

#10

I think, you’re looking for Volumetric Materials, but rather applied to a MetaCloud instead of a cube.

Great progress on the image, so far. You’re learning fast! :slight_smile:

#11

What´s the purpose/idea behind the have to create this?

Does it have to be all in vue? Im thinking of sculpting the right side icecliff by using other
3d programs to exactly model it from the photo by using the photo as reference.

Otherwise I would probably sculpt it with the terrain brush tool in top view and then rotate the terrain towards the camera to match up, you could try zymmetric terrains etc.

Is this for still or animation?

Ohh and then there´s those people in the boat, poser or try to find some free human models.

Michael

#12

it is for a school exam , the image is for still
i tried to make the iceberg into max or zbrush but result wasn’t concluante
so i made a 3d render of the closest i could get , then now i’m actually painting over it , using also the image reference on the iceberg

from left to right :

real picture
3d render
wip painting

#13

update after some hours of work
still wip of course :

#14

Coming together very nicely… :thumbsup:

#15

Looking great!
Actually, I like your iceberg better than the original one :smiley:

I’d say, you’ve already got a pretty close match.
Keep it up! :slight_smile:

#16

Well first of all, it´s been improving very much since the first image, but I don´t think the iceberg look better than the original one, matter of taste perhaps.
Anyway…since it´s supposed to reproduce the real life picture, I think there´s to much
procedurals on the right side iceberg, feels to much like procedural crumple texture or bump.

if you study the original iceberg, it has more of a flatten, chiseled surface that gives an impression of that small ice parts been coming off, sliding off the whole piece and therefore
gives a chiseled look.

I think you could get closer to that if you were to model that completly if you could and are allowed to in another program, use the original image as background and trace the model from that and extrude bevel some of those parts to get depth, I would do it in lightwave for example.

of course you might not have access to that or maybe you just are supposed to do it all in vue, in that case Ill try and use the terrains brush sculpt tools, try different brush image maps, like a hard contrast brush perhaps, you can easy create brush images in photoshop
and save out and use in vue.

Ohh and by the way, the water seems like it´s only a copy from the original water?
wouldnt it be more of a challenge to create it in vue as close as you can?

and then of course there´s the boat missing, and some poser people perhaps.

keep up the good work.

Michael

I

#17

Well, if using vue terrains, it´s hard to do such overhangs like the ones in the image.
Take the left foreground iceberg for an example… in the picture, you can see a line going through it, with some overhangs over it…In your picture there aren´t any overhangs on the left Iceberg.
There are a lot of things like this in the original image, which aren´t in your one.
Just look at each part separatly and compare them, try to get those deatails into your image, render it again, and once your´re satisfied with it, you can look at another part of the picture.

Hope this helps^^.

#18

ah the last picture is very nice. :thumbsup:

#19

Your most current version is nice, but it appears to be a composite of the original photo along with some Vue elements. (The water & some icebergs are from the original).

Your method is a great way to learn Vue, but be aware not to use your image commercially unless you have permission from the copyright holder.

#20

hi all

thanks for all your comments
about the iceberg modelling , i couldn’t change it any more cause i was already into the post production process , but i tryied in several way to get something close of it into 3d : using max , zbrush , photo dipslace , but the result wasn’t concluante at all . So i decided to paint over it once i have the best closest render i could get into vue

so here is probably the final image :

I hope you like it :slight_smile:

Also for fun , a new angle of view

Concerning the debat about which part of the original image is into my composition , here is a render without :

Also as its for a school work it isn’t for any commercial use , and also reproduce a picture isn’t really something artistical interresting , but more technical .
But as it’s the first time i have to do a realistic work , i take a lot of plaisure and time to do it :slight_smile:

Once again let me thank you all for your critics and advices which helped me a lot to do this work :slight_smile: