POST 9: CG Realism (research)

An Italian CG artist Alessandro Prodan had created a really great looking CG masterpieces of an architectural project. Here are some renders he produced from Maya, Aftereffects and Mental Ray:

For the majority of people, if you didn't ask them if they thought it was CG they would not give it a thought. Fortunately this artist is using the same software as I am so this is the potential for realism.

Here are a few wireframes:

Sebastian

POST 8: Roots and UV Texturing (exp/dev)

Now that there is some realism in the trees I need now to work down the scene to the roots. The roots are another primary element to the scenes. As this 'Prismatic Tree Network' is not going to have any land, the think roots will the flooring for the 'island.' This idea has come about from inspiration of a great concept artist Rob Stromberg.

Rob Stromberg did a significant amount of work for Avatar, basically creating the Pandoran planet. His drawings he did of the gigantic sized trees have had somewhat a great influence on me. Although I do not like my work to be influenced by another, I cannot deny this one. Here are the two main images that keep me infatuated:

As my scene involves just trees being the support of any human activity the trees, branches and roots need to be big and strong. Here are a few trials:

My first attempt was to trace the frozen rivers from my original inspiration from the documentary Earth. This attempt was not successful. I tried laying a devised branch set flat to get the effect. This did not seem successful either. I needed to get back to the drawing pages and explore the ideas again.

 Above shows briefly how the roots can have grown from the island and formed together to create the 'island.'

This is an attempt to workout how the trees interconnect from an arial point of view.

Another drawing of a row of trees. This illustrates how the roots have flattened out so that it is walkable.

I then needed to workout how to create these roots. I know that the programs I were using can only go so far in terms of modeling. To be able to create the roots with the shape intended I needed to use another program - 3D Coat.

As seen above, the roots are created by a set of points (marked as big red balls). These balls can be resized, moved and extruded. When the modeling of the roots are done they then needed to be auto-retopologized. In other words, the roots needed to be reconstructed to a simpler form so that it is not too much information for the computer to process.

Here are a few draft renders of the roots in scene:

The problem after the modeling of the roots is that the bark did not look good at all. So far I have not payed much attention to the bark texture so now I have to address it.

The task that all CG artists have to deal with is the process of something called UV mapping. In essence, the texture that is applied to an object has to be stored in 2D. The challenge is that the object (or model) is 3D. So to mark out the coordinates between the 2D texture map and the3D model you need to mark out seems and unwrap the models geometry into 2D space. When working with an organic object like roots this can be very hard.

The image above I have used a checker material to illustrate how uneven the textures are being coordinated. If the texture was applied perfectly the checkers will all be the same size and be faced flowing in the direction of the roots. This is not the case as parts of the roots the checker is large then smaller at the bottom.

Below the checker image is what it would look like with the bark applied.

I have tried to improve the mapping by trying it on a smaller model of a root and tried rotating parts of the 2D map to go with the flow of the root. This took a lot of time and still does not have the correct flow.

There is a solution to this problem. There is another program that enables painting on the models. You can directly paint textures onto the surface.

This method is faster and a lot easier. With this method I have created the textures:

This model needs more work to be acceptable as being anything near realistic. The root is too smooth, so it needs some distortion. The bark needs to have depth so bumps and displacements need to be applied. These will be developed later in my test scene.

Sebastian

POST 7: Tree Shapes and Concepts (EXP)

I have created a few shapes showing the contrast in overall scale:

The branches look a singular and need more division levels. Here are a few different shapes using a more increased trunk to branch ratio:

My Prismatic Tree idea has extended to a Prismatic Tree Network. In the following image shows how the trees connect from underwater roots that give rise above the surface of the water.

Here is as far as I can illustrate this idea in 3D:

Although I have only illustrated one tree I plan to have a whole connect network of trees that have grown from the ocean or river bed.

Sebastian

POST 6: The Realism of Leaves (RE/DEV)

After many hours of researching I found a solution to create realistic foliage. Although foliage seems like a trivial thing to spend a lot of time on, it is the main element in my project - so I have to get it perfect. I found a blog from Roy Achkar. He explains how to use reflection, refraction, transparency and sub-surface scattering - the main ingredients to make good realistic looking leafs.

Here is a sample of his test.

These trees used a particular material with a daylight lighting. Using the setting he suggests - you can get the right effect.

This image above gives somewhat a good instruction to create the settings. Here is my attempt to create the leaves with just diffuse (texture), bump (mico-detail), reflection, refraction and reflection.

Because I took this shot from a darkened angle I did could not illustrate the difference between the reflection and refraction. The translucency is obvious though. This is probably the most important attribute of the leaf's material.

Here are a few more tests with a fewer leaves:

Because the image above has fewer leaves more light can hit and pass them. This illustrates the power of the material.

These leaves are looking good but they still don't have that organic look that makes the translucency as good as it could be. There is something called sub-surface scattering (SSS). When light hit an object like a car's metallic surface the light bounces straight off of it. On the other hand when light hits an object like wax (e.g. candle wax) the light not only bounces off but bounces inside then out of the wax. This is what gives candles their glow. 'Sub' means below the 'surface' - so in this context we are talking about the light passing the surface of the object into the 'sub-surface.' Light when in the sub-surface scatters and bounces out again to generate that glow.

Most organic object have SSS.

Although there may not be much difference, it will be more obvious in different lighting situations. Here is SSS on the test tree:

Finally here is a large full image of the tree with SSS.

Here a few tests during a sunset setting:

A larger and high resolution image:

Sebastian

POST 5: Growth Of The CG Tree (EXP/DEV)

input here mn

POST 4: Additional Ideas For Scenery

The concept of the trees as far are good but the scenery of the rainforest, it may seem a bit too normal. I have tools available to me that makes fantasy possible. Although I do not want to do something too fanatical, I want to have major realism too.

I remembered a beautiful documentary I watched a while ago called Home. It has some amazing scenery photography. Here are a few:

 

 
 

 No one can deny these shots of mother nature are stunning. The frozen rivers are described as being like "the veins in the body, the branches of a tree, the vessels of the sap that the water gave to the Earth."

The hot springs are called prismatic springs. They contain life's primitive forms of all plant life, Cyanobacteria or "green-blue algae." So from these springs, life ascended. Because of Cyanobacteria all of it's descendants changed the Earth's atmosphere through photosynthesis. Because of this delicately balanced atmosphere life created, more life was able to flourish.

It's stunning that the rich colors of the prismatic springs resembles the richness of life they bought to Earth. In fact it is also beautiful how the brown-orange streams follow out from the spring like the frozen lakes, "like branches of a tree."

This has come as quite an inspiration for my project. My trees are no longer jungle trees, they are prismatic trees. Ooohhhh.. I thought, if the prismatic springs gave life to the plants/trees it would look good to have my trees growing out from it. I want to use the colors of the brown-orange streams as the tree's bark. As the trees ascend upward the bark becomes a darker brown. I am not sure how this will fit into my narrative but aesthetically I think it is good conceptual development.

Sebastian