Rivendell, Full CGI animation

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Hey!

I came across this today, the quality is just incredible

Vray for 3Ds Max and ACES 1.2

Credits,
- Andrea Panenero (Buildings 3D modeling)
- Lars Wemmje (Compositing)
- Arvid Schneider (Waterfall Simulation)
- Steffen Hampel (all the rest & grading)

[flino2004]

It looks good but obviously is CG. It's too far away for my taste...impossible to see details to really say wow!

[Muhammed_Hamed]

I think they followed the same artistic style in the movies, they did a great job in that
They could have aimed at more realistic look if they wanted to, Steffen and Arvid are lighting leads at ILM Vanc

Same goes for Blur's style in their Valorant work, not realistic yet very unique .. I love this style as well

[haniel1107]

looks great and after a lot of work ... many details
love the waterfalls the most….

would love to know in which dimension or scale such a project is done
would you do this with realistic dimensions? Is a tree 5m or 5cm?

[sirio76]

Many parts of the software needs correct scale to work properly so there’s no reason to use unrealistic scale (unless you want to achieve specific looks like miniatures etc).
Also physical size doesn’t affect render time or RAM consumption.

[haniel1107]

I thought so, too but wasn‘t sure… looks like a lot of polygons and a lot of particles for the waterfalls…
I always come to a point where things get too difficult with large areas… even with 128ram …
but frankly, never tried to work with proxies..

[sirio76]

It’s only a matter of scene management/optimization If you work wisely with instanced geometry, proxies, etc a scene like that can fit easily in less than 64GB, vrscene can help to manage the file easily. Water simulations can take a lot of resources but as far as I can see are just mapped planes. In general a million polygons will always take the same resources to render, no matter if comes from an object large 1cm or 10km

[haniel1107]

I'm sure you're right, but depending on the purpose and the scene, it remains challenging, plus displacements and motion blur at animations.. (at least with my skills ) ...

waterfalls, you think it‘s mapped? looks really good..

[sirio76]

If you look at the clay render you will see that waterfalls looks like mapped planes
Quite often motion blur is added in post for that kind of scenes. Lately I’ve played with both Vray motion blur and Nuke motion blur post effect for my course and you will be surprised by how good is the result in Nuke. Of course it will not work in every circumstances but many time it will be good enough.
Displacement can use many resources for sure but even there you can save a lot by tuning it properly(default in Vray5 are not ideal IMO), once tuned it will tassellate geometry adaptively only where needed, it will save tons of RAM and render faster. Here is an example made on a really old Vrayforc4d (V5 doesn’t have edge shader). As you can see Vray displacement can do amazing thing and be extremely efficient, but unfortunately you really need to know exactly how it works to get the best out of it.
I’m quite familiar with large (architectural) scenes so if you need help to optimize you projects feel free to ask

[haniel1107]

Kind offer and absolut helpful… thanks!

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Waterfalls are simulated in Houdini, real world scale is necessary for this(also for SSS, fur and physical camera to work properly, and bunch of other things). In production you usually stick to real world scale (except when you deal with planets and outer space maybe, there are some hacks)
I have spent one year in VFX, could only talk about my own experience. I always stick to real world scale, I think it can affect memory consumption as some controls take into account the physcial size.. but it shouldn't be a massive difference
If you guys use Discord, Arvid and Steffen hang around in this server https://discord.gg/QPn9nV8y
You could ask them directly

[haniel1107]

yeah, real world scales for planets could be a problem...
..thanks for the discord link

[spencerrayfitch]

Absolutely beautiful.. Inspiring piece!

[jrozansky]

Loved it! As a simple SketchUp for vray user, this is leaps more complicated than the projects I undertake. What are the different programs you use to make this?

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Loved it! As a simple SketchUp for vray user, this is leaps more complicated than the projects I undertake. What are the different programs you use to make this?

Hello!

They used V-Ray for 3Ds Max and Nuke for comp mostly, the waterfalls has been simulated in Houdini
As complex as this might seem, Steffan used many of the traditional V-Ray lighting and shading tools, similar tools you have in SketchUp like area light directionality, SSS, physical sky..etc

Best,
Muhammed