Twilight Render User Forum

Downloaded this pretty little model from the 3D warehouse and with a few little tweaks to the materials, it was rendered in no time.

Very sharp mate.

Nice work Fletch.

Now I have a question: is there a way to get the ground plain to match up a little better with the HDRI background? While your render looks fine, I remember from when I was able to do something like this, it is difficult to get the perspective of ground plain to blend well / match the perspective of the ground of the HDRI image. In yout render on the right side, it looks slightly elevated but does still look good to me. Again, just wondering how to manage this situation.

Another question (but a different topic): is it just me or has the participation/traffic on the forum been down lately? If so, doe’s anyone have any idea what might be causing it?

I think to an extent, people are catching up on pre lockdown stuff. For a long time there was less to do so posting became easier, now the hard graft of getting back to real life is on.

Motivating people will be difficult for a while too, we are ALL adjusting to this life with Covid in the background. How many went bust over the last two years?

I for one have to replace hardwar and that is going to be tough.

Mike1158 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 11:22 pm I for one have to replace hardwar and that is going to be tough.

Yep, I am in that same situation. My laptop died back in February. Being retired and on a fixed income greatly slows down the ability to replace it. So, for now, I am just able to look at/and reply to forum posts on my iPad.

Anyway, back to Fletch’s render. I think it is good. It did cause me to think about problems I had in the past of trying to match a ground plane to the HDRI background and was hoping someone could post some advice on how to sync things. I bet others have also wrestled with this.

Agreed, myself for one.

I know there is a tut somewhere around somewhere, something to do with grass I think. No, NOT the grass you use as a dsressing for steak but the grass you put on pizza. Seriously?

If I come up with a site wot does reasonablty cheap compnents I'll get back to you.

ntxdave wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 8:36 pm Now I have a question: is there a way to get the ground plain to match up a little better with the HDRI background?

You can use one of three methods. (I prefer alpha mask/photoshop because it's faster for me)

1. use a photo editor to edit the hdri horizon line to be lower or higher to match the sketchup scene or to zoom/out of the hdri
   Subject: Scale an HDR Spherical Image to Match Your Scene (How To)
2. render as-is, then render alpha mask and use photo editor to place background image at full resolution/correct height
   Subject: How to use the Alpha Mask / Alpha Channel
   Subject: Background Image / Picture Using Alpha Mask
3. use the shadow catcher plane.
   Subject: Shadow Catcher or Sky Projection Mapping

Here is a great website with a clear explanation about sky maps.

I wanted this image to be a "quickie" to show that if you have a simple little project and you just want the client to see what it looks like, it doesn't need to be a lot of work. I drew a circle, offset the circle and painted the inner circle with pavers and outside ring with grass.

15 minutes was spent on lighting (load HDRi and diable sun) and materials (apply template and fix some bad texture mapping in the original file) and add a ground plane (2 concentric circles). Render was an hour on Easy 09 with Fastforward denoise enabled.

sky replaced with alpha mask
This camera view is awkward because it is above normal eye height and it's a 2-point perspective mode

Thanks for the links Fletch. I remember going through all of these references before when I was doing things. They are very good and informative. I think at one times or another I have used each of them. Hope the links will help others.