Minecraft 3d Renders

[Mistyckle]

After helping with some map renders for the server, I have become addicted to making 3d MC renders.
They started out okay, but I'm learning to manipulate them better. It's crazy what you can do and create!

Here is one of my starting out ones. It's okay, but I didn't quite understand what the program was capable of yet.

But now that I understand that it's a lot like having a camera on a tripod, and working with exposure time, light, etc, then I have been trying to do more manipulations of photos.

Here are a couple I did tonight:
(No shaders were used. This was all done in program.)

Bloody Cathedral (I put the sun in the middle of the stained glass to shine through, changed it to red, then gave it volumetric fog so that it would cast light beams coming into the cathedral, and the use of a skymap to give it an apocalyptic feel)

And another one in the cathedral (volumetric fog, higher sun intensity for more sun beams to highlight the enchanting table)

I'll be messing around more with it~ might post more in the future.

 

[Danda]

These look really interesting!

I really like the top one which overlooks central, would love to see some more sometime =]

 

[Kainzo]

After helping with some map renders for the server, I have become addicted to making 3d MC renders.
They started out okay, but I'm learning to manipulate them better. It's crazy what you can do and create!

Here is one of my starting out ones. It's okay, but I didn't quite understand what the program was capable of yet.

But now that I understand that it's a lot like having a camera on a tripod, and working with exposure time, light, etc, then I have been trying to do more manipulations of photos.

Here are a couple I did tonight:
(No shaders were used. This was all done in program.)

Bloody Cathedral (I put the sun in the middle of the stained glass to shine through, changed it to red, then gave it volumetric fog so that it would cast light beams coming into the cathedral, and the use of a skymap to give it an apocalyptic feel)

And another one in the cathedral (volumetric fog, higher sun intensity for more sun beams to highlight the enchanting table)

I'll be messing around more with it~ might post more in the future.

wondrous

 

[savathaflava]

I did one of these last map of Drakenvale. It's somewhat low quality (1000 SPPs, resulting in those little colored pixels on everything), because doing a 30k render would've taken me about 15hrs of 100% CPU load haha.

This is one of the first renders I made, so it lacks a skymap/fog/sunshafts etc.

 

[Mistyckle]

I did one of these last map of Drakenvale. It's somewhat low quality (1000 SPPs, resulting in those little colored pixels on everything), because doing a 30k render would've taken me about 15hrs of 100% CPU load haha.
This is one of the first renders I made, so it lacks a skymap/fog/sunshafts etc.

Yeah, noise is a problem with lower SPP, though I think the only reason yours had it was the emitters (the torches, etc). Nice render though

Most of the ones I do are at about 3k-5k SPP. They take quite a few hours. Not sure when the last time you had used it was but there is a CPU usage setting now. I sometimes use it, sometimes just let it run at full for quicker processing.


Here is one I let run today, as I had stuffs to do:
It ended up being around 10k SPP, because of wanting to emit most of the noise on the emitters.
There is a little trick to it too. And that is to place the sun behind you, set it to low intensity, then the emitter noise isn't as bad as it could be.
Sorry, kinda geeking out over the detail in the program x}


Part of central by waterside at night:

And this is just one of my fave Single player biomes I have:

See, way too addicting xD

 

[savathaflava]

Nice, those are pretty cool. I'd like to try doing some more detailed renders, I've heard people recommend a minimum of 30k SPPs for something like 1920x1080, so that will probably be my next goal.

 

[Mistyckle]

Nice, those are pretty cool. I'd like to try doing some more detailed renders, I've heard people recommend a minimum of 30k SPPs for something like 1920x1080, so that will probably be my next goal.

Honestly, it depends on how much sunlight vs. emitters you have in the picture. Probably would be helpful doing higher SPP, but not always necessary. I would just mess around with it maybe turn off emitters if it's a big piece and just let the sun do the job with slightly higher sun intensity (takes far less SPP for that).

If you go something that large with emitters in the pic, I'd start with 30k, but with the noise, you may find you need to average it around 50k. Idk, just something to mess around with. You will have a high exposure time with the size though.

Good luck and let me know how it turns out! Would love to see it!

 

[LightningCape]

I did one of these last map of Drakenvale. It's somewhat low quality (1000 SPPs, resulting in those little colored pixels on everything), because doing a 30k render would've taken me about 15hrs of 100% CPU load haha.

This is one of the first renders I made, so it lacks a skymap/fog/sunshafts etc.

RIP the most beautiful town on Haven

 

[devotedworker]

After helping with some map renders for the server, I have become addicted to making 3d MC renders.
They started out okay, but I'm learning to manipulate them better. It's crazy what you can do and create!

Here is one of my starting out ones. It's okay, but I didn't quite understand what the program was capable of yet.

But now that I understand that it's a lot like having a camera on a tripod, and working with exposure time, light, etc, then I have been trying to do more manipulations of photos.

Here are a couple I did tonight:
(No shaders were used. This was all done in program.)

Bloody Cathedral (I put the sun in the middle of the stained glass to shine through, changed it to red, then gave it volumetric fog so that it would cast light beams coming into the cathedral, and the use of a skymap to give it an apocalyptic feel)

And another one in the cathedral (volumetric fog, higher sun intensity for more sun beams to highlight the enchanting table)

I'll be messing around more with it~ might post more in the future.

This is just wounderous... :_:

 

[Paul_Bakken]

Very nice! This makes me interested in building again!

 

[savathaflava]

Anyone have any experience with rendering underground images? I've done a couple of our town to practice, but I can't get the lighting quite right. I have my emitters set to about 1.5, so that might need turned up. I'm currently running one at 1024x768 with 10,000 SPP and emitters set to 6.2. ETA about 5hrs, I'll post it here when it's done.

 

[Mistyckle]

Anyone have any experience with rendering underground images? I've done a couple of our town to practice, but I can't get the lighting quite right. I have my emitters set to about 1.5, so that might need turned up. I'm currently running one at 1024x768 with 10,000 SPP and emitters set to 6.2. ETA about 5hrs, I'll post it here when it's done.

View attachment 9881

For images using solely emitters, you may need to go as high as 100k -200k SPP
With an image that large, you may be bumping up further. (You can pause and adjust as you go along).
It might take you a day or two to get a good image.
You may need to bump Ray Depth all the way up. And boost Render Threads a little.
Also the idea of setting your emitters up a bit would help.



This is a good vid on how Path Tracing (and the play of light) works. It really is a lot like photography if you understand the concepts of lighting and how it bounces off the subject. The more you can bounce light around over time, the less noise you will have in your image. Hope it helps!
https://www.udacity.com/course/viewer#!/c-cs291/l-124106593/m-157996677

Can't wait to see it when you're done! Looks like it will make an amazing photo

 

[savathaflava]

Nice, thanks for the tips. The one I have going at 10k is up to 3k so far, the picture noise is considerably lower than my last render already, and the emitter change has helped quite a bit as well. What you mentioned about ray depth is interesting, I'll have to learn a bit more about that. I attempted to max it for a minute on the current render, but it skyrocketed my ETA from 2hrs to 10hrs, so I'll play with that again more in the future.

 

[Mistyckle]

Nice, thanks for the tips. The one I have going at 10k is up to 3k so far, the picture noise is considerably lower than my last render already, and the emitter change has helped quite a bit as well. What you mentioned about ray depth is interesting, I'll have to learn a bit more about that. I attempted to max it for a minute on the current render, but it skyrocketed my ETA from 2hrs to 10hrs, so I'll play with that again more in the future.

Yeah Ray Depth is an attention hog x)

Glad things are working better. Just takes reading and practice~
Best of luck!

 

[savathaflava]

Can the number of render threads be increased past the number of threads in your CPU? I have an i7-4770k with 8 threads, and my render threads were set there by default already.

Also, would using sunlight in an underground image as opposed to emitters be possible? I know emitters slow down the render speed considerably, but I don't know if light would even be visible in an image like this one.

 

[Mistyckle]

Can the number of render threads be increased past the number of threads in your CPU? I have an i7-4770k with 8 threads, and my render threads were set there by default already.

Also, would using sunlight in an underground image as opposed to emitters be possible? I know emitters slow down the render speed considerably, but I don't know if light would even be visible in an image like this one.

I think it goes to default, but you might be able to increase it a little.

And for your pic, I'd knock a block from behind you or a few~ let the sun in, turn down the intensity where you can see everything but doesn't look "lit" by the sun (just a nice glow). This will increase the light available for bouncing around. You can still keep the emitters, so it gives it that underground dungeony feel. It would increase the output time a little but you may get away with that and doing emitters on fewer SPPs.


Here is something I did last night~
I put the sun behind me (so you couldn't see it), turned down the intensity (to about .40),
upped the emitter (the fire~ to about 40) so it looked like a roaring fire.
I set Ray Depth at max.
It didn't take too long to do and only had to do 3k SPP.
The noise is visible mostly if you enlarge it, but looks okay here. I could have set it higher, but had been toying with torches and fire for a day already. lol

I'll probably redo this at some point because I'm not a fan of how some of the textures turned out in the end.
(Wanted more depth in the tree) but! gave me a good idea of focusing on one emitter and what's needed.

 

[savathaflava]

I'm pretty happy with how it came out this time, I had emitters at 6.23, no sunlight, ray depth of 5, and 10k SPP at 1024x768. I'm pretty happy with how it came out, but I think the emitters can probably be halved, those torches are pretty bright. That should also help with reducing the noise further without having to increase the SPP. This one took me approximately 3 hours and 45mins with 90% load and 5gb of ram commited.

 

[savathaflava]

I think it goes to default, but you might be able to increase it a little.

And for your pic, I'd knock a block from behind you or a few~ let the sun in, turn down the intensity where you can see everything but doesn't look "lit" by the sun (just a nice glow). This will increase the light available for bouncing around. You can still keep the emitters, so it gives it that underground dungeony feel. It would increase the output time a little but you may get away with that and doing emitters on fewer SPPs.


Here is something I did last night~
I put the sun behind me (so you couldn't see it), turned down the intensity (to about .40),
upped the emitter (the fire~ to about 40) so it looked like a roaring fire.
I set Ray Depth at max.
It didn't take too long to do and only had to do 3k SPP.
The noise is visible mostly if you enlarge it, but looks okay here. I could have set it higher, but had been toying with torches and fire for a day already. lol

Nice, I love that fire. Also what you said about letting some sunlight in is actually a really good idea, in my next render I'm going to do that with reduced emitters, and increased ray depth. Thanks again for all the help with this, I'm really learning a lot more about making these renders! Going to give my processor a rest for a while now before I start it up again.

 

[Mistyckle]

Nice, I love that fire. Also what you said about letting some sunlight in is actually a really good idea, in my next render I'm going to do that with reduced emitters, and increased ray depth. Thanks again for all the help with this, I'm really learning a lot more about making these renders! Going to give my processor a rest for a while now before I start it up again.

No probs! I've been learning a lot too. It's been a lot of fun :}
Makes me want to build amazing things so I can take some great pics

Thanks for sharing your work! It looks great!

 

[ShadowRavynn]

These look amazing! What program are you guys using?