photorealism in octane

[clintond]

Hi.

It's been over a year since I last had some fun with Octane, but recently I found a little time to have another go.

The goal this time was a series of images designed to push realism in lighting, while trying to achieve a 'photographed' look.

The plan was to use a single setup, which was lit several different ways.

I'm pretty happy with the results

Some specs:

1x skull object (purchased from TurboSquid) @ 130k tri's.
Skull is instanced approx 10,000 times.
Lighting uses physical sun and sky mainly, although one render uses geo lights.
Renders created with Octane for Maya (love it!); PMC kernel, post bloom/glow (subtle).
Grading and post tweaks handled in Nuke (tweaks were pretty minor, but essential in pushing the realism that extra bit more).
Atmospherics created with a subsurface medium (slowed renders down quite a bit).
Render times... Between 5-15hours (GTX670).

--

[glimpse]

creepy! =) but I really like that greenish one =)

[xxdanbrowne]

Awesome!
I think you hit the mark.
Looks kind of magazine like.

[UnCommonGrafx]

Make the last one greenish and that could work.
Make the greenish one have a godray or two; that would work.

[gordonrobb]

Love these. 4th one (greenish one) my favourite. However, I woul get rid of the lit bits in the background. I think they are more distracting than anything.

[lyyn]

nice work !!!

[lyyn]

nice work !!!

[clintond]

Thanks for the feedback guys

@glimpse
The scene was never meant to be 'creepy', and I completely forget that at first glance it probably looks that way. Though I had a picture in my mind of a 'lost cave' filled with 'something'. The idea was to illuminate that 'something' through cracks in the walls. That 'something' turned out to be a 5$ skull from turbosquid and it seems most people like the greenish image. That's the only one lit with 'studio' lighting. The rest make use of the sun/sky model.

@uncommongrafx
The last one is lit from natural light which is why it has the hue/color-temp that it does. In terms of god rays. As the green image is lit by 'studio' lights, I knocked back the intensity of the atmospheric dust so it only provided an offset to the black. But it was trial and error that got me there. At one point there was more atmos in that render, but it just didn't 'feel' right

@gordonrobb
It's funny you mention the background detail. At first I had nothing back there, but as the frames developed I realised that there was no sense of 'place' within the frame. It was an infinite environment with nothing to constrain it (important for realism). In the end I opted to create some distant walls from piles of skulls, through which pin pricks of light would appear. So yeah, I started where you suggested but time with the image told me it needed more done to the environment for it to work

@lyyn
Thanks!