Macro Leaf Scattering by dburdick
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No AI - This artwork was created entirely by hand or with traditional digital tools.
Description
Vue7.5I: I have been searching for a forumla to render more realisitic looking tree foliage populations - particularly for midrange and distant ecosystems. The fundamental problem is that the leaf alpha maps used in Vue are very harsh in the sense that they create very hard, saturated looking foliage which is fine for closeups, but not very good for midrange/distant renders. So here is a render progression using various leaf material formulas. The bottom two images use a procedural leaf alpha noise I came up with (no image maps - all procedural) which helps to allow the light, atmosphere and surrounding colors to bleed though and create more of a natural scattering effect, particularly in the lower right soft alpha image. Using a soft procedural alpha creates much nicer looking, more natural looking foliage. The downside is that using a soft alpha for the leaf material increases render times by 4x to 5x.
Comments (11)
Superb artwork!
Very interesting as I am trying to learn Vue
very cool... love my vue!
It does look better. I have created my own alpha maps for things. I am not sure what you mean by a soft procedural alpha map. Does that mean the area between the black and white portions of the map got blurred with noise being added?
Interesting. I wasn't aware of this phenomena.
You learn something new every day :) (not so keen on the x4 or x5 render times though! :) )
That is alot of added render time. It does look good though.
Very interesting test Dave. As Chipp I wasn't aware of that. Will keep it in my thoughts (I hope there are some).
Very useful to know, thanks!
Interesting experiment. Your trees look great! It's a shame that the render time is so long, though.
Great work....