Aerial School WIP

[sea2stars]

Here's a project I just started on. I'm getting very little direction from the staff and working from a crappy Revit model, so right now I don't plan on getting close to the buildings. I'm still debating on whether to model more detail into the site mesh or take care of it with more site textures.

Forest Pro instanced meshes, 80/20 mix of conifer/deciduous trees, about 84,000 trees. I'm going to have to edit out the aerial treeline shadows; way too dark.

[MHenry]

Looks good. I think a sharper contrast on your render as far as the shadowing goes would work better with your background aerial image which has a lot of strong contrast already.

[sea2stars]

Hrm. Do you think I'd be better off getting the contrast for both to match in the render and then tweak the finals in post?

[3DMK]

What Lighting set-up are you using???
I think Vray Sun/sky will give you more contrast in your render [if your not already using it]

Regarding GI-

Details seem a little flat.
Try using LC as secondary bounce & Brute Force as Primary as this will pick up the details more & give more contrast as well. You won't need many subdivisions for the brute force as you won't see much grain amongst the trees.

Materials-
Do the trees have reflection on the leaves??? All leaves have reflection to some degree and conifers are particularly reflective. This will help give more detail to the trees as well.

All the best
Jamie

[bakbek]

Here's a project I just started on. I'm getting very little direction from the staff and working from a crappy Revit model, so right now I don't plan on getting close to the buildings. I'm still debating on whether to model more detail into the site mesh or take care of it with more site textures.

Forest Pro instanced meshes, 80/20 mix of conifer/deciduous trees, about 84,000 trees. I'm going to have to edit out the aerial treeline shadows; way too dark.

very nice, what do you use for the tree meshes (onyx?) i would try to add some more color variance in them

[sea2stars]

3DMK

- Vray Sun and a VraySky in a VrayLight Dome
- I'm using IRR/LC right now for fear of increased render times Brute Force might impose on an animation, but I'll play around with that once I get back up to speed on the project; back from vacation
- The trees only have highlights at the moment. I'm a bit concerned about flicker, but I'll have to play with the settings


bakbek
- The deciduous is an Onyx tree and the conifer is a modified free Onyx tree. I tried using a modified Onyx conifer but the render time was atrocious.

Thanks for the feedback!