[HD Remake] Midgar sewers

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Hi folks,

I've started to work on one scene of the Midgar sewers (colne_be3). One of the big changes for me when it comes to make that scene is that I've decided to switch to Blender's "new" rendering engine called Cycles, after the recommendations from anaho. Cycles has many cool features, most of all to make realistic rendering of the light interactions with objects (indirect lighting and such), which would also make my stuff more consistent with the works made by people who use 3ds, for instance. The downside of it (for the moment) is that materials and texturing are quite different from doing it with Blender internal rendering, so I have to relearn how to texture. For that matter, apologies to anaho about some past mis-communication when we were talking about texturing, as I was unaware about how you do it in Cycles back then.
Also, when you have a crappy computer, it's difficult to make tests with "complicated" lighting because it takes hours to make a "somewhat noise-free" image. Anyways, this is what I have at the moment:

This render has been resized to 50% before I uploaded the picture. Rendering this took about 5:30 h (which gives you an idea of how crappy the computer is), I had only 100 samples. As far as texturing goes, I'm pretty happy with what I've done so far with the bricks, the red tiles and the concrete parts (though I don't understand why I have this small patch of very clear and shiny tiles- I'll have to correct that). The metal ducts may need some revisions, while the concrete sewer pipes have been textured very hastily (I'll add some muck, moss and stuff later).
So... that's it for the moment. And as a side note, I hope things to improve a lot in the next few weeks because I've just ordered my new desktop (i7 core, 16 Gb ram)  MWAHAHA :evil:
 
Like I said much nicer lights and shadows plus better looking bumps. Looks so much better, with so much less effort, does it not ?

Two things:

1.) Use the MingW64-build for twice the render speed ( only in CPU-mode) if you have a 64-bit Windows: http://builder.blender.org/download/

2.) I seriously hope that regardless of your processor choice you settled for an nVidia card in your new rig. Not being a fanboy here, but most GPU-renderers only run on nVidia-hardware (for good reason), and Cycles is no exception here. Get at least something like a GTX670, 4GB version recommended. If you can find a used GTX580 3GB locally for about 200€, that is in working condition, get it instead. It is a steal for the money if you are doing GPGPU-tasks.
 
Like I said much nicer lights and shadows plus better looking bumps. Looks so much better, with so much less effort, does it not ?

Two things:

1.) Use the MingW64-build for twice the render speed ( only in CPU-mode) if you have a 64-bit Windows: http://builder.blender.org/download/

2.) I seriously hope that regardless of your processor choice you settled for an nVidia card in your new rig. Not being a fanboy here, but most GPU-renderers only run on nVidia-hardware (for good reason), and Cycles is no exception here. Get at least something like a GTX670, 4GB version recommended. If you can find a used GTX580 3GB locally for about 200€, that is in working condition, get it instead. It is a steal for the money if you are doing GPGPU-tasks.
Click to expand...
Yeah, Cycles looks much better when it comes from lighting and shadows. Soft shadows come out realistically without having to tune parameters, and indirect lighting is so much of an improvement compared to (badly) faking it with ambient lighting. Bumpmaps are also better. Texturing seems a bit difficult for me at this point, but I guess it's because I'm still in the learning curve. Mostly, with blender internal I used to do a lot of texturing with procedurals and preset projections (cubic, tube...) which are not yet supported in Cycles. Thus I've already started to run into the same issues you were having about low-res textures.
Then, for my new rig I'll have a basic nvidia graphic card. I didn't want to get a machine for gaming (I play on PS), so I'll probably settle for CPU rendering (thanks for the tip about that blender build) but the graphic card should be enough to handle the "real-time render preview" thing, which should make the work much easier. I knew I had to settle for nvidia after having read so much about compatibility issues of blender with other graphic cards, plus nvidia was the default choice I had on that computer build. Anyway, I'm looking forward to playing with this new toy.
 
Sweet stuff dude, I wish I had the time to work on these scenes again :(.
 
Hey Sapphire,

Do you have by any chance any remnant of your Midgar model? As I pointed out in the Midgar remake thread, I thought of using renders of your Midgar models along a panoramic view in order to build HDR images for lighting scenes we make in Midgar. That'd be awesome. Would that be possible or is your Midgar model gone to dust?
 
Hi folks,

Just making a progress update... I think that I will be sticking to Cycles from now on, it's so much better! Especially since now I have a computer to handle it  :P
5gl.png

Though at this point, I think there are only the trash bags and the boot that I would consider completely done. I had lots of fun making the trash bags - a real cloth simulation feast! I revised the concrete and the orange tiles textures, but they still lack all the dirt and grime. I made some quick textures on the pipes, but I'll have to revise these. I'm rather ahppy with the bricks, but it isn't necessarily a final version (dirtmap notwithstanding). So, still a lot of work to be done: more trash objects, more texturing, and the lighting to be revised (this image is made with a huge ceiling light, which won't be in the final version - it reduces render times and allow for a better view on the objects). Oh, and I intend to top this with a fluid simulation, though I'll leave that for last  :P
 
That looks fairly realistic .. grime hmmm it would be nice to create a filth simulation to layer dirt and grime over time :D

Is it possible to fix objects (merge into a new object I guess) once placed in a scene then use a 'spray' approach to add the grime?
I remember someone using the output of a kinect and painting the texture data onto objects in his scene (something similar)..

Bricks did come out pretty well, unfortunately those bags look a bit too 'fresh' that doesn't mean they don't look realistic. Anyhow nice job did you use radiosity to generate the ambient light (or is that what you were refering too in 'cycles'?).

Cyb
 
I wish there could be a "dirt & grime simulator"! Making a scene dirty and aged is tedious and a bit difficult. In Blender, you could do some "texture painting" where you directly paint on your object in your 3d viewport, that's a bit similar to what you've mentioned. I've used that quite a bit in the item shop scene (mds5_i), it's particularly useful when you want to add grime on a precise location on your surface (something you can hardly do with procedurals). Another very good technique is to generate a dirt map based on ambient occlusion textures, it's a bit tedious because you need to bake the ambient occlusion of every single object under Blender internal rendering engine.
By the way, in my opinion, it's not really the bags that are too fresh (they're satisfyingly realistic in my view), but rather the concrete underneath that is too clean. The brick texture is actually a bit deformed and low-res, but you need to zoom (beyond the x 5 target resolution) to notice that.
About the lighting: "Cycles" is Blender's alternate (newer and better) rendering engine, based on raytracing, which accounts for all the indirect light coming from bounces on the objects (anaho has been using it for a while - it's fairly close to renderers from other 3d modelling software). Thus no need to have "ambient lighting" as with the Blender internal. You can also (as I did here) create walls which have the light bounce on them, yet make them invisible to the camera. Pretty nifty stuff!
 
That looks simply amazing... all of this stuff does. Like, trying to touch the screen nice. I really just can't help but wonder who put the trash bags there....
 
Grime simulator would be nice xD, try looking for dirt, grime, weathering shader's maybe there are some out there for blender.

Who knows i knows max has plenty. For example
 
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Unfortunately any simulation has it's caveats for example dirt and grime would require fluid flow analysis (Yes exciting but think about it dust flows in the atmosphere and muck flows in other fluids like water, water can handle larger amounts of dirt that's all). Each fluid changes how the material deposites out. For example alluvial fans in a river are muck from upstream the same goes with the "fine filth" deposited by water tricking and surging through sewers. This is a water runoff sewer obviously.

Dirt color(s) is dependant on source and volume. Not sure how one would simulate that satisfactorally, it's a non trivial thing.
You have fluid flow (CFD) and you have numerous boundary conditions in the fluid flow. Not only that the fluid is changing (IE as the liquid slows more material is deposited out and it varies depending on the material density thus many color variations) you need a source for the material (pigmentation I suppose) but that will vary depending on flow rate etc. Oddly some material tends to flow on the surface of the water than IN the water and other visa versa (this also leads to stratification in fluids).

That's just an off the top of my head thing too. :D

Their is some on the subject per sea on wikipedia :D


cyb
 
Hi guys,

Just a small progress update on this scene, as I'm looking for some advice about texturing with Cycles...
So, below is where I am at. I still need to add a bunch of trash objects (papers, bags, empty containers, debris, small rocks) and add grime and dirt on the bricks and the concrete.
doy.png


Now, I have the feeling something is off about how the walls and floor interact with the light. I am not sure what, though. 2 things I'm unsure off:
- I have set the green bricks and the concrete with purely diffuse shaders. Should I integrate some kind of glossy shaders as well? I thought diffuse-only made more sense, physically, but the contrast with how the orange tiles interact with the light is odd. Or perhaps should I lower the glossy factor of these orange tiles?
- The light feels too even. I only have 4 lamps based on meshed objects (2 of them being visible), but it gives a lighting very similar to an ambient light setting (while I have no such setting). Should I set the lighting objects with angle-dependent lighting? I thought of using something like this http://blenderartists.org/forum/sho...-Like-Lights-in-Cycles-Architectural-Lighting but I'm not sure.

I'll appreciate some tips on the subject.
 
Hi guys,

Just a small progress update on this scene, as I'm looking for some advice about texturing with Cycles...
So, below is where I am at. I still need to add a bunch of trash objects (papers, bags, empty containers, debris, small rocks) and add grime and dirt on the bricks and the concrete.


Now, I have the feeling something is off about how the walls and floor interact with the light. I am not sure what, though. 2 things I'm unsure off:
- I have set the green bricks and the concrete with purely diffuse shaders. Should I integrate some kind of glossy shaders as well? I thought diffuse-only made more sense, physically, but the contrast with how the orange tiles interact with the light is odd. Or perhaps should I lower the glossy factor of these orange tiles?
- The light feels too even. I only have 4 lamps based on meshed objects (2 of them being visible), but it gives a lighting very similar to an ambient light setting (while I have no such setting). Should I set the lighting objects with angle-dependent lighting? I thought of using something like this http://blenderartists.org/forum/sho...-Like-Lights-in-Cycles-Architectural-Lighting but I'm not sure.

I'll appreciate some tips on the subject.
Click to expand...
Well my memory serves hopefully.

Diffuse lighting was a 'short cut' invented by early render designers to simulate radiosity (because they hadn't really thought of it probably). This sets a fixed illuminance of a surface.  However illuminated surfaces radiate light, and do so in an uneven manner. In the first posting it appeared you had saturated both diffuse and radiant lighting. I suggest reducing the diffuse to just visible (IE render it with diffuse first and make the scene JUST visible) then add in the radiant lighting and direct lighting and see how it looks afterward.

I'll spare you a long discussion of lighting models ... hehehe

Cyb
 
The lighting difference between the last image and the previous one is that, in the previous (which looks more illuminated), there's an additional big area light near the ceiling (which I've put only for testing purposes). This area light allows me to have a good idea of how the textures look like with very few light samples (i.e. 10 samples are enough). Without it, I would need about 600 samples to get something relatively noise-free (the last image was made with 1500 samples).
Then, what you call "radiant" is physically related to specular reflections. Diffuse reflections are rather even in space, while specular reflections are direction-dependent (they're mirror-like). In Blender's Cycles, specular reflections are mostly driven by setting "Glossy" shaders in the materials properties (there's even an Anisotropy shader for simulating reflections on brushed metal). This Glossy shader has additional settings accounting for the surface roughness. Physically speaking, a very rough surface only yields diffuse reflections, a somewhat rough surface has a bit of glossy reflections, and the more polished a surface, the more it tends to behave like a mirror. I'll try to play around with the inclusion of a glossy shader for the concrete and the bricks and see what happens. However, from "real-life" observations, I don't think I've seen specular reflections from concrete or bricks (at best they would be reflections from gravels showing at the surface, which doesn't happen in most concrete).
 
Apparently it's become fashion to come out of hibernation, so here's my turn. As a matter of fact, I ditched my side-job, which gives me a bit more free time, meaning I can get back on track with modelling scenes with Blender.
So, here's the update, I've done quite a bit of work on texturing. I had to rework all my UVs to be able to bake ambient occlusion textures and add all the other grime textures.
cniw.png

This image is done with a sort of floodlight, it's not with the final lighting (the final lighting takes ages to render because I need thousands of samples). What remains to be done is:
- Make a lot of trash objects, and litter the scene with them using particle systems
- Make a fluid simulation
Until then, I hope you enjoy what I've come up with so far.
 
Hi folks,

Here's an update on my works on colne_be3, before I'm off for 2 weeks of vacations.
Since last time, progress can be summarized by:
- Addition of populations of fine gravel (particle systems). However most of this detail is barely pixel-sized.
- Texturing of the posters
- Addition of a few ladder bars to make the whole scene a bit more sensible (it matches the walkmesh besides).
- Addition of many trash objects: 3 plastic bags, 1 large folded tarp, 3 soda bottles, one empty gallon of milk (not clearly visible because that's where my render is noisy.
- Fluid simulation: I had some trouble with it initially, because the scene needed to be scaled down for the fluid sim to work, despite the scale of the fluid sim is not supposed to be dependent on the scene scale (normally, a parameter within the Fluid Domain properties should take care of that). Thus my notice on SpooX's stickied thread. I made a long bake (750 frames) that took about 11 hours, so that it'd correspond to 30 seconds of flow.
- I tried to do some texturing, with the idea of modelling a muddy flow with a bit of foam on the surface. I fiddled with this for a couple of hours, I believe it can be improved. If you have ideas about how to improve it, be my guest. At the moment: the mud-flow texture is basically an arrangement of a diffuse shader with a glass shader (with IOR set to water properties). The Diffuse/Glass overlay is controlled by a noise-like (cloud-like) texture and color ramps, so that white areas would show white froth and almost purely diffuse shading, and the dark areas would show glass (water) in majority with a tint of brown mud (via diffuse shader) in approx. 75/25 glass-to-diffuse ratio. 

o6jl.png


Some comments about this render (obviously not final):
- Rendered with a "fill light" with only 50 samples. For final renders, I'll use the yellowish small lamps (missing on this render) but it will take ungodly amounts of samples to make it noise-free (I'm guessing about 5000, at least).
- I will have to re-run my fluid simulation. As it was set up, I originally placed a volume of liquid to make a "pre-filling" of the canal, but this "pre-filling wasn't very useful and built up too much water in the bottom of the canal (as you can see, for one thing, one of the steps of the stairs is submerged, and some debris/trash is submerged as well while I would like them to poke through the water surface).
- I will have to devise of a trick regarding my foam on the mud flow surface. As it is now, the noise-like (cloud-like) texture which controls the presence of the foam is based on overall object generated coordinates. Given this setting, this texture will be static. However, eventually I will want to make several renders to animate the flow (thanks to Palmer, I know the original version had 8 frames to animate the flow). Therefore, I would very much prefer to have a noise texture whose input is based on the object geometry (normals?) which would evolve with each frame. I have pretty much no idea about how to do that (never used the "Geometry" nodes), so again suggestions are welcome. If you wish to tinker with this texture, you can find the node setup here (texture images referenced at cgtextures.com): http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/96/95fv.png/.

So, that's it for now, I hope you like it.

[EDIT]: Just before I go (my flight's in a couple of hours), I think I solved the issue about generating foam depending on the geometry. Basically, I placed a Geometry node and connected the "Normal" value to the input of the noise-like (cloud-like) texture. I made a small animated gif that shows how it looks, and I'm quite happy with it. I hope you'll enjoy.

mrbf.gif
 
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To my layperson eyes, absolutely brilliant. You are getting really good at this
 
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