Re: Valinor scene in Blender

YouTube · Post by **Lúthien** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 1:50 pm

http://img.skitch.com/20080915-t264rnej ... 2jatn5.jpg

YouTube · Post by **Lúthien** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 12:42 am

http://img.skitch.com/20080920-jad786md ... ayugbt.jpg

the first patches hi-res scenery. You can tell by that there is, in places, much more detail, while other places are still more pixelated ..

http://img.skitch.com/20080920-qk2d765f ... j5u129.jpg

it is fun job but very time consuming. I hit upon all sorts of issues and questions that I never gave any thought before .. like how to shape a mountain so that it looks "high"?
It is not just the height. It also has to look "craggy". Low mountains hills are rounded, because they are usually older and hence eroded, but also because they are covered in vegetation that tends to fuzz it over and cover the angularity. so in order to look high it had to be way more linear and angular, instead of the classic sort of 'bump', but then just larger.
this does not go for Taniquetil, since that is much more spikey than the others and rather unique in shape. I mean the mountains that I circled in the second screen shot.

YouTube · Post by **Lúthien** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 1:42 am

I finished te high res meshes for Taniquetil and most of the Pélori around it on the Belegaer coast . The rest is less critical, but it will still be some time bf it is done ..

here are some shots. First one in the twilight lighing, which I showed to Eruannlass, and she asked if I could turn it up a bit, which I did for the others (it's very convenient to have a Sun with a Brightness and Direction control on it :-) ) .. with varying angles of sunlight to show all the terrain.
http://img.skitch.com/20080924-f6hidkpn ... eyyd15.jpg
http://img.skitch.com/20080924-cmdgjh86 ... fxc3y7.jpg
http://img.skitch.com/20080924-4p9pjmea ... u672nq.jpg
http://img.skitch.com/20080924-fenimcjp ... 1c2ns5.jpg
http://img.skitch.com/20080925-qyuwi7uw ... 6wrmjh.jpg

YouTube · Post by **Lúthien** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 4:43 pm

some more details filled in, and I found out that making a panorama is easy as what. It is just a setting in blender.

these are thumbnails, I put the large versions on my website
You can also click on the thumbnails. The wonders of html!

http://img.skitch.com/20080925-n1ism7s6 ... 2ur9j9.jpg

http://img.skitch.com/20080925-1r1grsf3 ... qgttgx.jpg

http://img.skitch.com/20080925-cpkhhnp4 ... w6sqpw.jpg

if you are wondering why the mountains at the right are light, and the ones left are dark, that is because the light is coming from the North. I know, that's not what it should be, but it is done to show the most possible structure. And because these are almost 360 degree panoramas the lighting behaves a bit strange. Also, in Blender, you do not see the light source directly. Only reflected light is visible. So in order to make a Sun, I'd need to create two things ... something that looks like the Sun, and a light that behaves like the Sun, and put them in the same place.

The foreground is very much pixelated because it is very close by: it's the mound, where I put the camera on.Eventually, there wil be a high resolution piece of the mound, with the Trees, covering that. I already found a very realistic way of imaging grass ...
http://home.pjwarez.com/grass.jpg

Post by **Eruannlass** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:38 pm

Great work, Gwathel nin!
I'll have to figure out how to print out the entire panorama one of these days and frame it! Absolutely beautiful! can't wait to see the finished product!

Eruannlass

YouTube · Post by **Lúthien** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:43 pm

<- happy

YouTube · Post by **Lúthien** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 2:02 pm

http://img.skitch.com/20081005-mk7hcy7e ... gpj1mb.jpg
http://img.skitch.com/20081005-diumjj78 ... yga93s.jpg
http://img.skitch.com/20081005-tq46nirm ... issck5.jpg

Post by **Eruannlass** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 10:40 pm

Very beautiful, gwathel nin! Keep up the great work!

Eruannlass

YouTube · Post by **Lúthien** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 3:22 am

Now working on the last mountains ... to the right (i.e. south) of Tirion as see from the Trees

http://img.skitch.com/20081011-ef5buhqs ... c4tdye.jpg

nearly done with this part. Then I can start on the Trees themselves, looking forward to that!

YouTube · Post by **Lúthien** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 1:59 am

Elo! The new version of Blender has the atmospheric / sky rendering built in so it does scattering of light in the air itself, which allows for realism like these sunrise scenes:

http://img.skitch.com/20081020-b53spr5b ... ir4q6x.png
http://img.skitch.com/20081019-qexx1e3c ... 526ux8.png

Behold: the first rising of the Sun!

YouTube · Post by **Lúthien** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 8:53 pm

and now for some grass on Corollairë, and the lights of the trees - though not the trees themselves yet:

http://img.skitch.com/20081020-jxxef4yg ... mq9g55.png]

I'll have to turn the lights up a bit, but it is a complex going together of mist, air settings, sky settings, horizon colour, lamps, suns, reflection, raytracing etc etc

and it is a huge mesh bc of all these grass stalks

Post by **Niennildi Oarnen** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 9:13 pm

This is really coming together, Luthien! I am very impressed.

YouTube · Post by **Lúthien** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 2:50 am

Pozdrav, hrabar posjetitelja iz istočne Europe! Moje srce pjeva magičan s radošću, jer je pozornost posvećena je prima od svog trajna duh!

Поздрав, Храбар посетилаца из Европом! Моје срце пјева магичан с радошћу, јер је пажња посвећена је прима од свог трајна дух!

Lúthien

Post by **Niennildi Oarnen** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 5:19 am

We are now truly multi-lingual!!

YouTube · Post by **Lúthien** » Tue Oct 28, 2008 12:10 am

So, let's make our Bosnian friend happy with the first attempts at the Trees themselves. I played around a bit with two different and virtually undocumented tree generator scripts. They're a bit hard to get used to, but that'll be ok in time. For now, I just took existing models of an Elm for Laurelin and a Beech for Telperion and did spend the time figuring out how the light is best visualised .. and those settings are all covariant: turn up one light, increase specularity / reflectivity of the leaves blah blah ...

Anyway, here's a first attempt of the scene as it should be eventually. I'm not yet there by far: there must me (foresty-) structure on the plains, more color-structure in the mountains, for some reason Taniquetil has lost his sheen so I have to redo that .. some more haze I think ... the trees themselves need to be different, at least MUCH larger in appearance.

I would appreciate comments / suggestions, especially about the trees.

http://img.skitch.com/20081028-fyjw4g96 ... 9754wt.jpg]