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Canyonlake
Experiment with a photograph for the sky. No sun, a radial lights the sky and the landscape. The shadows are brightened by my Woolball2 HDRI. The free models of the Mississippi Steamboat and the Countryhouse are from Mindland Graphics (http://www.mindlandgraphics.com/models.html) and the aspen tree is from DAZ3D. Boat and house are lit inside by radials. The base for the material for the mountains is from David.
Loading unique views4,958 unverified legacy hits3.5 archived rating2007-05-26 added
Comments 7
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For sky backdrops you can always disable the materials ability to recieve shadows in the mat lab. I'd also kill it's ability to cast shadows if you've not already - and use the image as an alpha and set that to control the transparency and ambient. This then gives a lot of options and variations on ways of controlling the appearance of the sky - eg, with transparency the colour of the sky behind then can have an effect, and with ambient (provided no other materials being used have ambient response) then the sky can be made to "glow" with an ambient colour.
Yeah, the mat for the mountain is a bit out of place here, so is the whole landscape. I set out do use a photograph for the sky and concentrated too much on that. Haze is set white, it comes orange and the glow is to strong. The radial for the sun is slightly yellow and as far as it illuminates the sky-photo, I am very pleased, at least very near to the real thing. It is set at 4, 5 was too bright and 4.5 not possible. The HDRI has a blue tint but I should have - as David points out - shielded off a part of its light. I actually wanted the near cliff at right being much darker. But the HDRI also lights the upper part of the photograph and I was limitted in reducing its intensity.
Everything is great in this image except the cliff mat. Those diagonal lines are way too regular making it look unnatural and it may just be me but the ambience looks a tad too high. Otherwise it's a beautiful scene. 4/5
They are all right! The sky is very beautiful. I can see myself in that scene. Mountains and trees are my favorites. Great work!
The sky looks excellent, blends very nicely. Think maybe the haze is a little too glowing. And I have to agree with the comments concerning the ground material. Overall the lighting level seems good. Possibly could do with some deeper shadow regions appearing, this could be achieved by shielding the sceene from the IBL off camera. The lit boat and building give the image a very cozy feel. The presence of the river boat and the exceedingly steep sheer shoreline reminds me of Phillip Jose Farmers, Fablous River Boat, second in the Riverworld series. Good work.
. I agree either the haze or texture is a miss, looks kind off flat, hmmmmmm. Looking at just the boat very realistic, sky, and tree too. Everything else, not so much. Haze should be white or blue a bit, in my opinion. Oh! Do you have cast shadows on for that radial light????
hmm There's something very nice about this scene. The sky is great. The lighting for the rest of the scene seems close to right but something is amiss, perhaps it's the haze. Oddly, the landscape feels a touch flat to me. I do not know this hdr but I wonder how it is affecting the scene. the material for the mountians seems a bit regular. the water id great, the boat and dock look great. Generally the scene is super effective, I just wonder about the indirect light. What color was the radial used for the sky?