Cenote

[quadspinner]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a new personal scene.

A scene of tropical exploration, a kind of "Lara Croft meets Far Cry 3" concept. Created in the wee hours of the winter months. Took a total of approx. 20-25 hours to create.

Created with 3dsmax + Corona 1.7. The scene relies HEAVILY on displacement, and Corona shone through in that one! The new Light solver did some great magic too.

The full version of the image is available here:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nVgE9

You can read the making of here: https://www.artstation.com/quadspinner/blog/geB/making-of-cenote

[NicolasC]

Very nice ! you must have had fun doing this one :)
Congrats !

[quadspinner]

Thanks! :) Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

[NicolasC]

I'm just wondering something, from a geological point of view. Shouldn't the rock stripes on the left be mainly horizontal instead of vertical ? the orientation of the others made me wondering that ... just asking ;)

[quadspinner]

Yes, in a cenote made of limestone, that would definitely be the case. I took some artistic license and added a lot of granite, and a high level of rock folding to make it look more dramatic and exotic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fold_(geology)

[NicolasC]

Ok, thanks for the link, very interesting ! The "asymmetric angular fold" is pretty impressive.
Keep up the great work :)

[mikedugenio]

Wow. When I see the Making-Off and the transformation from the white curvy surfaces into the rock it is really amazing a difference displacement can do.

Nice work man

[plusvisual]

Beautiful! How did you do your rocks? I've been trying to figure out an efficient workflow and am just tip-toeing into ZBrush, would love to know how others do it!

[quadspinner]

Beautiful! How did you do your rocks? I've been trying to figure out an efficient workflow and am just tip-toeing into ZBrush, would love to know how others do it!

Thank you.

Check out the "Making of" in my original post. I used displacement maps on curved surfaces.

Here's the material itself. Most of the values are driven by the PBR maps.

[plusvisual]

Beautiful! How did you do your rocks? I've been trying to figure out an efficient workflow and am just tip-toeing into ZBrush, would love to know how others do it!

Thank you.

Check out the "Making of" in my original post. I used displacement maps on curved surfaces.

Here's the material itself. Most of the values are driven by the PBR maps.

Haha thanks for the patient reply, I totally missed the link! Great work!

What was the memory usage looking like after that? I wonder if it would be useful to use a displace modifier on the geometry to generate geometry before hand, and then use bump to get the finer details? I've found that using 32-bit displacement to be amazing, but it absolutely chews through memory.

[quadspinner]

What was the memory usage looking like after that? I wonder if it would be useful to use a displace modifier on the geometry to generate geometry before hand, and then use bump to get the finer details? I've found that using 32-bit displacement to be amazing, but it absolutely chews through memory.

The displace modifier does not handle high density meshes well, in my experience. It also suffers a tiling issue where the map looks like tiled chunks (possibly from parallel processing junk code). If you need low level displacement without fine details, it should be fine. You can use a bump or normal map for the fine details. But if you need sharp, clear shapes and details, material displacement is the way to go.

I have 32 GB RAM. Never got low-memory warnings from Corona except when I did 2560+ sizes renders. The final render was done on a render farm, so I don't have stats on what memory usage was required for the 4K render.

[plusvisual]

What was the memory usage looking like after that? I wonder if it would be useful to use a displace modifier on the geometry to generate geometry before hand, and then use bump to get the finer details? I've found that using 32-bit displacement to be amazing, but it absolutely chews through memory.

The displace modifier does not handle high density meshes well, in my experience. It also suffers a tiling issue where the map looks like tiled chunks (possibly from parallel processing junk code). If you need low level displacement without fine details, it should be fine. You can use a bump or normal map for the fine details. But if you need sharp, clear shapes and details, material displacement is the way to go.

I have 32 GB RAM. Never got low-memory warnings from Corona except when I did 2560+ sizes renders. The final render was done on a render farm, so I don't have stats on what memory usage was required for the 4K render.

Interesting! Thanks for the reply. Our workstations and farm nodes are all 64gb and we've hit limits with only using a couple 4k 32bit exr displacements textures from Megascans at a 6k render before. We had to do a bit of engine management in order to get them to render - also submitting through Deadline VS in Max saved 7-10gb.

I'm going to pick up some RD textures and test it out! Rocks have been a tough challenge!

[quadspinner]

If you're using screen space displacement, I recommend upping the displacement size from 1px/2px to higher (something like 4px-8px). Depends mainly on how much detail you want, and how big your image is. I've had better results in high resolution renders with lower pixel scale for the displacement.

Also, try converting your EXR into a 16-bit TIFF. If the quality loss isn't that big of a problem, then you'll save a LOT of memory.

RD Textures is awesome! I highly recommend his stuff.

[plusvisual]

If you're using screen space displacement, I recommend upping the displacement size from 1px/2px to higher (something like 4px-8px). Depends mainly on how much detail you want, and how big your image is. I've had better results in high resolution renders with lower pixel scale for the displacement.

Also, try converting your EXR into a 16-bit TIFF. If the quality loss isn't that big of a problem, then you'll save a LOT of memory.

RD Textures is awesome! I highly recommend his stuff.

Awesome, thanks for the advice! I have a project that we can try it out on, I'm excited to see if it works! Will post some results likely mid-feb.

[Hadi]

Stunning image, love the mood.
Can you please send the link to your making of?