Cinema 4D Tutorial - Creating Abstract Topographic Renders with Octane Scatter Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

what's up everybody its David arrived
here again for another fantastic octane
tutorial brought to you by I design comm
this time we're going to be creating
some beautiful abstract topographic
renders using octane scatter and just a
single cube let's do this thing
[Applause]
alright so here are some renders I've
been creating recently with octane
scatter it's easy to get a variety of
different looks from this kind of
volcano looking structure through to
these more sliced looks to veins and
other interesting nature kind of
patterns and another thing I'd like to
point out is that I'm using these kind
of anamorphic looking bokeh that are
vertical and kind of more well defined
so I'll show you guys how to create that
a little bit later but going through
these it just kind of feels like
cheating because it's so fun to play
around in this world and it's so easy to
get really cool-looking results so this
style was kind of popularized by this
guy named Lee Griggs a few years ago and
he did these renders in Maya and Arnold
and they kind of blew up in the internet
and then at some point Chris Schmidt
recorded a tutorial showing how to do
this in physical render using the hair
module so I realized that this is like
very overdone but I think it's in this
case a really good way to demo octane
scatter and to show some kind of unique
features of how this is done in octane
alright so here we are in our blank
slate cinema4d and octane and I'm going
to add in a plane here and scale it up a
little bit and then I'll add in an
octane daylight which I have a button
here for but you can find it under
objects octane daylight and then I'll
fire this off into the renderer and I'll
rotate this around here so that we get a
little bit more direct light and then I
want to just drop in an octane scatter
which I also have a button for but again
objects octane scatter and finally I
want to create the cube primitive that
we're going to be scattering so here
I'll just drop in a cube and I want it
to be 1 by 200 by 1 so just a really
skinny looking cube here that we're
going to create over a million instances
of
so if I drop this into octane scatter
here it's very much like a c4d cloner
set to object mode so I can choose the
surface distribution and then drop my
plane into the surface and already we've
got a crap-ton of cubes and we can crank
this up to let's go up to 10,000 and you
can see it updates really really quickly
and then we can go up to a hundred
thousand no problem and so this is why I
like doing this kind of technique in
octane because scatter makes it so easy
to handle this vast amount of geometry
without a hitch and it just renders
super fast so the next thing I want you
to pay attention to are these position
scale and distribution parameters so
quickly to demo what these shader
parameters do is just add in a default
c4d noise here and then it looks as if
nothing's happen but we can crank this
minimum slider and it'll start to call
these instances down based on this noise
and then we could do the same thing for
position here and again nothing's
happened until we enter in some kind of
value so I'll just do 222 and now it's
bumping all of these up and if I
actually take this back down you'll be
able to see it a bit better we've got
these kind of peaks and valleys here
that already look pretty interesting so
you can see where this is going and same
thing goes for the scale I'll show you
what this does though in this case the
scale might not be as effective because
this is just kind of thinning out the
cubes in certain areas and that's not
necessarily the look I want in this case
but it's definitely useful for for other
scenes like when you're doing grasses or
like with my city tutorial it was
helpful to have a variety of scale so
we've kind of seen this before but I'm
gonna expand on this a bit too we can
also go in and of course change the
noise type so we could go to an electric
noise and get something a little more
complex so I'll pop this into both of
these here and you'll see this looks
pretty different and then this really
comes together even more when we say we
crank this to a million instances it's
going to take a little bit longer to
render but we're gonna get
much more interesting look so there you
go that's really filling out and you can
see kind of where this would be going
okay I'm just gonna clear that out all
right so I'm gonna take the number of
instances back down to a hundred
thousand so this should update a little
bit more quickly and next I want to show
you just one more little useful feature
here so if I take a look at this plane
here and I'm just going to turn off
octane scatter so we're not seeing it
and it'll hit see to make it editable
and I'll go to my polygons here and I'll
just make some kind of selection and
then I can do shift C and then enter in
set vertex weight so this is just a
quick way to get a vertex map and I'll
set it to 100% now you can see I've got
this vertex map and if you double click
this vertex map you can actually get to
this paint tool which will allow you to
add and subtract from the vertex map so
once we've got that we can actually go
into this octane scatter here and drop
in the vertex map and this will also
limit where these are scattering to and
you can combine that with the techniques
I showed you before so we could have all
this stuff going on but then limit it to
a certain area or certain polygons which
can be super useful all right so I'm
just going to clear these out and we're
gonna start fresh all right so now I
want to use an actual image to drive
this versus these procedural noises and
I think that any kind of topographic or
aerial image works pretty well so I'm
gonna go with this hurricane because
this is a fun one to start out with and
then I'll just take this and drop this
into our position here and already you
can see this kind of interesting swirly
thing we got going on now we can also
call these instances on either side to
create maybe a more interesting look and
again we could take this to a million to
see kind of what our final look would be
this will take a second to update
so that's already pretty neat-looking
you can see whether this is going maybe
I want to pull this a little bit back
and you can see with a million instances
it takes a little bit longer to update
so let's just take this back down a
little bit and then if we wanted to we
can also invert these so sad
inverted went to see 40 octane here and
inverted this we would get kind of the
opposite effect where it's looking more
like this mountain peak if I pull this
in so this is that kind of volcano look
that I showed you before it was just
this inverted hurricane map and again
back to a million so we can see this
final look one thing I'd like to point
out is that you can't control these
textures in here with Octane's node
system so we're kind of stuck with
layers so right now I've got this invert
layer with a hurricane inside of it so
in order to control these we can we can
still add all the octane nodes but we're
doing it through the layer system so I
could have a color correction with the
invert inside of that and then the
hurricane alright next I'd like to
create a bit of a metallic material for
these instances so I can just go to
materials octane glossy material and
I'll take the diffuse all the way down
to black and then I'll take the index up
and give it a little bit of roughness
and take the specular to maybe more of
let's do a blue color let's do a blue
middle here all right so that works
there and then we'll drop that on the
cube and everything's darkened down so
let's boost in a bit more daylight here
bring the power up another thing I like
to do is go into path tracing mode and
that fills in the shadows a little bit
so for this I've been kind of
gravitating towards path tracing and
let's add in our octave camera here and
go to our camera imager and maybe up the
exposure a bit and then go to our
post-processing and add in
that bloom that we all love so much
and now you can see I'm getting a bit of
noise in this area here so if I open up
my octane settings and I undock this
what I like to do with path tracing is
just take the GI clamp all the way down
until it totally destroys any of the
light we've gotten the scene and then
bring it up until it looks good enough
so here we kind of want to bring it up
until we're not seeing much of a change
like after this point we're really not
seeing much it would change so I'd say
just go until it's flooding enough light
in and then call that good and you can
see this will clean up a lot faster and
better this way all right so this starts
to look a lot more interesting when we
create a second instance of this cube
and a second instance of this material
and I'll drop this on the new one and
then change the color and see now we're
getting different sections colored
differently so the reason this is
happening is this if I remove this
shader and the distribution here we
wouldn't actually we would just get a
random distribution but the shader
itself is actually driving where the
different colors appears so say I just
alternate between blue and purple here a
bunch of times
you can see we're going to get this
interesting striped look so from here I
can create a couple more of these so
let's make this one gold drop that on a
couple of these here and then let's do a
red
all right so I'm gonna make one more of
these guys here let's do another blue
and I'll replace this blue up here now
here's a little bit of additional magic
if I pipe in a random color node here
into the specular if we look up here
what's going to happen is we're going to
get all these random colors in this one
section so in between this I can drop a
Gaussian spectrum which will kind of
colorize those before we just had black
and white now we've got some colors
going on and the more I take this width
down the more rainbow it's going to get
and then from there I can add in a color
correction node here and just use this
to shift the hue so say I want more kind
of blues and purples I can go that away
now I can also take this wavelength this
way if I want it to be a thinner slice
of the spectrum so to just get that to
be a little more subtle and then from
there I could crank up the saturation
even more so I could have them really
saturated and then just swing the hue
around and we'll get some different
interesting looks so there you go
there's some kind of Siam and purpley
stuff going on and now let's do the same
thing for one of these purple guys here
I'm not loving how saturated this purple
is so let's just go back to our previous
node here and I can grab these three
right click and copy and go back to the
purple one and then right click and
paste and pipe this into the specular
and then for this one let's just swing
the hue to something slightly different
so let's go this way and maybe let's
take the wavelength up here and let's
zoom in so we can actually see what
we're doing
just bring the width back down and then
let's keep shifting the hue I think I
like those colors there that's looking
interesting to me
and now if we crank this back to a
million again we can kind of check what
this would look like with our high
number of instances that's looking a
little more interesting I don't love the
gold I think I want it to be a little
more orangie so let's tweak that so I'll
just take the specular here and just
kind of shift it a little bit more
Orange I think I like that better all
right so now I'm gonna try to add a bit
more visual interest to the scene I can
duplicate this plane and then turn it on
and then kind of bring it upwards and
now since this isn't the plane getting
scattered onto it'll actually intersect
with the geometry which is what I want
and you can see because we created these
metallic materials they're not
collecting as much light as a standard
material would so this is looking like
really blown out and glowy but that's
just because this daylight is cranked so
high so this is really what's going on
in the scene if you if we kind of bring
it down like that but what I want to do
is maybe leave that there and rotate
this daylight around to get a bit more
of an interesting lighting look going on
so if we bring it around that way and
kind of bring this highlight across I
think this starts to look a little bit
more awesome so from here let's just add
in a texture to this plane and I'm
actually kind of liking this weird blue
glow that we're getting here but what I
want to do is let's turn off scatter for
a second so we can just focus on this
and here I just want to create a simple
displacement material using the same
image that we used before so let's click
on add displacement and then jump into
our displacement and drop in our
hurricane here and I'll take this to 4k
I don't think yeah the resolutions not
even 4k so that's fine
and let's bring this displacement up
okay so this is totally blown out so
what we can do is we could reduce the
daylight or we could just go to our
camera imager which I cranked up before
and kind of bring this exposure back
down and now you can actually see what's
going on we're getting this pretty
sweet-looking displacement hurricane
thing going on almost like like ice
already without even any work we've got
some artifacts on the sides that we can
clean up really easily by just jumping
into our displacement note here let's go
to our node editor this time and instead
of a bitmap material this is not as
controllable let's drop in an image
texture and let's just copy this path
here if I go to the shader I'm going to
copy this path to this and then I'll
replace it and so now we've got our
texture in an image texture node and I
can hit UV transform which will add in a
transform node and in the newest version
of octane this is locked by default
which is awesome and if we just take
this up by 0.01 it'll resolve that
clipping issue which is an issue with
the edge of the picture being treated as
if it's like this extreme displacement
so if you just take this to 1.0 1 that
solves the problem so let's take this
diffuse down and then let's change this
from a diffuse to a glossy material
that's looking pretty crazy though we're
getting these extreme fireflies going on
and that's because it's a little too
glossy so let's just bring up the
roughness and you can see this starts to
smooth out and catch those highlights in
a much more interesting way and then
let's just take the diffuse to more of a
blue cool it kind of looks like ice
right now and then and the index is
already good at 1.3 now real water would
have some subsurface scattering but we
don't need to get into that this is like
cool enough for now so let's trim this
scatter back on and you can see what's
going on now these other materials are
much darker in comparison so either we
need to bring these up or we need to
bring these down too
try to match these all in the same
lighting conditions because right now
these are looking really dingy so let's
go ahead and take this diffuse way down
to try to match all these conditions
together okay and let's bring this
exposure back to where we had it before
which was like 2.6 or so and this
displacement is just way too high so if
I jump back in here let's take this down
to 55 and also I think that was soaking
up a bunch of the light so this is
looking a lot more interesting here and
now maybe we can just take this plane
and bring it up a bit more alright so
first off I think let's do a little bit
of tweaking I think that I brought this
diffuse down a little bit too far so
that brings a little bit more nice
blueness into this water / i / whatever
it is and I still think the displacement
is too high and it's causing some ugly
artifacts that we can see so what we can
do is we can go into this displacement
here and I'm going to choose 25 and if
we want to smooth this out even more
here let me just kind of come on and you
can see these weird look in blocks that
are probably due to the JPEG compression
so what you can do is you can come down
to the filter and go to Gaussian and
then just kind of crank this up so this
is gonna blur the displacement map so
there we go you can see that's totally
affected it though maybe it's too much
let's see what happens it at about 3
yeah we can still see those blocks a
little bit so maybe let's go to 5 I
think that's good enough and that's
keeping the detail that I want so from
out here that looks pretty good and I've
got the feeling like there's not enough
light in this scene we've helped it by
going to path tracing so if I go compare
store render buffer you can see that if
we were in direct lighting here it would
be even darker and a lot of this is due
to the fact that I've chosen this
specular material so if these materials
here had more diffuse in them you would
see that I would totally bring tons of
light in but I kind of wanted that
metallic
thing going on so what I could do is I
could just kind of crank up the
roughness instead and that will kind of
spread that light out a bit more so
let's go compare store render buffer so
this is more roughness and if it's less
you can see it takes longer for the
light to penetrate we get these more
intense highlights which is really cool
but the light doesn't kind of get into
these crevices as much so depending on
which look you like more go for whatever
you want
so another thing I'm noticing is that
these are just kind of D saturated
feeling so what I could do is just come
in here and actually boost the
saturation of the specular a little bit
to get even more of that orange ii vibe
going on and then beyond that i can just
play with my camera imager and maybe add
in a bit more to the gamma here so
that's gonna make it a lot more milky
but then i can come into one of my
favorite presets here which is the
ektachrome 400x CD and that's going to
get way too intense so we can kind of
dial these numbers against each other
but you can see that's adding in a bunch
more contrast and then we kind of want
to work against this super orange that's
brought in so we can go to this white
point here and kind of boost this until
we get back to something a little more
reasonable that's looking a bit pink so
to get it less pink we actually go
towards pink counter-intuitively see
that is looking a little bit better and
let's boost the gamma a bit more and
drop this exposure so you can see that
this is added more light into the scene
and now I'm gonna go back to path
tracing and these crevasses will also
fill in a lot more once remember we're
gonna go up to a million instances so
this is going to be more our final look
and this is obviously a lot more evenly
lit at this point and beyond this I
would just change the actual lighting to
affect it so you can see how altering
the lighting and get totally different
looks and if we want less of a harsh
kind of contrasting light we could
increase the turbidity which is kind of
like
more of an overcast day and then up the
exposure and the power so let me show
you before and after real quick so if I
go compare store render buffer and then
up the turbidity and the power we're
effectively reducing the contrast and
flooding a bit more light into those
kind of cracks so in this case I
actually think I like the more strong
sunlit look so I'm gonna go back I think
that this is looking too rough so maybe
we come in here and take the roughness
down and bring the diffuse a little bit
darker
there we go I'm liking the way that's
looking and now I think I'm gonna go in
and kind of add in more layers of these
cubes so the more we do this the more
kind of variations we're gonna get and
the more striping and to make this less
of a painful process I'll bring this
back down to a hundred thousand
instances and I think I'll just I want
to see more of the red and this is the
fun of it is getting these dramatically
different looks just by a little
experimentation in this case I feel like
I want to lose the yellow that's looking
ugly to me so maybe let's just go in and
completely shift this
and I think I like the look of this
green I think I just want to see more of
it there we go that's looking pretty
sweet to me I feel like we could
potentially reduce the height that these
cubes are getting bumped upwards so
maybe let's go like 125 and see what
that looks like now that's gonna bury
itself down in here so at this point we
can either move this plane down or this
plane upwards so this is the one that's
being scattered on so let's just kind of
shove this up through there and we could
even rotate this around by 90 degrees to
get a totally different look so that to
me looks even more interesting almost
like this crazy whirlpool now one thing
that's really gonna bring this together
is some shallow depth of field so let's
come into our camera imager here and go
to our thin lens and just start cranking
this guy here this aperture and I want
to take it to maybe fifteen might be too
much but I kind of like this look
because it combines this complexity that
we expect to see on a massive scale with
something that looks pretty small at the
same time because of how the depth of
field is now I want to turn off
autofocus so I can actually pick where
my focus point is because I want to see
this Ridge here a little bit better so
that kind of gives it this nice split
between out-of-focus here and here but
not here and to lose the black off the
edges what I could do is I could just
duplicate this plane and scale it up
maybe bring it down a bit and this is
just a total cheat to kind of extend the
bounds here so that we're when we're
looking off the side we're not seeing
pure black and now we're also probably
gonna want to push in a bit and find a
composition in here somewhere I'm gonna
pick focus on this Ridge here finally
I'm going to boost our instances back to
a million because I'm happy with this
composition and I'm not going to be
doing a whole lot of tweaking past this
with the camera
now you can see how much more light this
brought in by upping those instances
so let's come into our camera imager and
just drop the exposure
okay now I'm feeling like this is
actually too many instances because I
want to sense those actual cubed
primitives and sense that it's being
made up by these individual kind of
grains versus this look here which is
almost too solid so I'm going to take
this back down to 200,000 instead of
100,000 and the other thing I'd like to
do is I'm gonna totally backtrack and
change this to a higher displacement
setting so I'm gonna go to something
like 180 and because I think I like the
dimensionality that this is giving us
and now if I boost these planes back
upwards here we can kind of bring that
water surface back into play and now I'm
gonna kind of come around here and let's
let's zoom in so I can hold down to and
right-click and now we should be able to
actually sense that these are individual
little guys that are making up a bigger
picture which is what I want so that's
looking pretty cool to me I think I want
to pick focus a little bit further up
here and now let's talk about bokeh so
if I come to my thin lens tab here there
are a bunch of controls for bokeh that
will make it look a lot more interesting
so for one if we crank this aperture
edge all the way up
I'll let this refine for a second and
then I'll go to compare store render
buffer and now I'll take it back down
and let that refine so if I do this ad
wipe hopefully you'll be able to see
that with the higher aperture edge it
really defines these bokeh a lot more
they look more circular and we get a
clearer kind of outer rim with a thinner
inner circle and to me that looks more
photographic and interesting in many
cases and the other thing that I'd like
to do here is I'm going to take this
aperture aspect ratio to two and this is
from Yan ercel I saw his stream the
other day on learn squared that you can
make these anamorphic looking bokeh by
stretching the aspect ratio to two to
one and if you've ever actually seen an
anamorphic lens it has an oval-shaped
aperture and what that does is it
stretches out the bokeh to this kind of
elongated vertical look and we're used
to seeing this in really high-end films
we're used to seeing these kind of
stretched out bokeh and if you've ever
seen any JJ Abrams film you know the
bokeh are stretched and there's also
these obvious anamorphic lens flares
because of some other property of the
anamorphic lens that it stretches out
the flares like this so we intrinsically
are used to this look and we like it so
I think it's pretty cool to be able to
take this look and place it into our
renders so you can kind of see these
bokeh are starting to get stretched it's
subtle
now if I want to make this even more
overt I'll just bring this way up and
you can see how elongated this is
starting to get so we don't want this
much but to gives us this really nice
subtle look another thing we can do
though is if we want we could take the
bokeh roundedness down to zero and now
this bokeh side count will take effect
where we get these hexagonal bokeh I'll
crank up the aperture edge so you can
see this a little bit better but now
that this bokeh roundedness is down to
zero
this side count will take effect and
many lenses have this kind of hexagonal
aperture so to see this better I could
just duplicate this daylight for a
second and rotate it around until it's
kind of blasting the camera a bit more
and now here in a second we should be
able to see these kind of take shape a
bit better
okay so I've zoomed in a bunch and
brought the camera around to a different
angle so there should be a lot more
obvious now with these hexagonal bokeh
but I'm gonna go back to where I was
which was here and I'm gonna go back to
my favorite anamorphic bokeh change the
light back to where it was
take the book around in this back up to
one and the aperture aspect ratio back
up to two alright so let's do a quick
aside about rendering this with adaptive
sampling so if we look right now
I can set my samples to something like
5,000 for instance and I'm just going to
speed this up and let this render all
the way to 5,000 samples so we can see
kind of a base example of what this
image would look like in terms of the
noise without adaptive sampling so we're
just gonna let it brute-force up to
5,000 samples and it says it's going to
take about nine minutes
all right so I've slogged through this
nine minutes here and we've hit 5,000
samples and so this is 5,000 samples
across the board it's treating every
pixel in this image equally and if I
were to render this same image in the
picture viewer at 1920 by 1080 it would
take at least twice this time so we're
looking at least 20 to 25 minutes per
frame at these settings and if you look
this image is still pretty noisy in
certain areas so I would never be able
to truly clean up this noise you can see
if i zoom in here we've got some noise
in these shadows it's not too bad and
for an animation you know this amount of
noise would be fine
but 20 minutes per frame is kind of
absurd and I'm on to 980ti right now if
I were on my rig with four 980ti s that
would be half the time so it'd be maybe
like 10 or 12 minutes per frame that's
still a lot so we can actually improve
this with adaptive sampling let's go to
compare store render buffer so we kind
of keep a memory of this state all right
so let's turn on adaptive sampling and
I'm going to start with a really high
noise threshold and right here we've got
the minimum samples of 256 that means
it's going to go through 256 samples
treating every pixel identically and
that's kind of like a safety so that we
know that everything's getting at least
treated to some degree with samples but
past that it's going to use this noise
threshold to determine certain parts of
the image are clean and certain parts
are still noisy and it'll just focus on
those noisy areas so if you see as we're
past 256 some of these areas are going
to start to go green and once they're
green octane is saying don't focus on
this anymore
we're going to focus all of our samples
on the parts of the image that are still
noisy so this whole water area which is
much less detailed then all these little
individual kind of cubes is gonna go
green first because there are a lot
fewer bounces to calculate and there's a
lot less intricacy going on in there so
we're gonna see this all kind of getting
taken over by green first and then
octane is going to ignore those areas
because we've set this threshold so high
this is going to quickly all go green
okay so we haven't even hit 5,000
samples and now it's done at two minutes
now the question is are we actually
cleaner than before so if we can able
our a B comparison and the answer is no
this is actually much noisier than
before because it hit that threshold
which was too high so we want to kind of
bring this down if we were down at zero
this would be back to our original model
it's as if that wasn't on at all but if
we're around say point one let's see
what happens I'll refresh this render so
we can see
okay we still haven't hit 250
now we're starting to see that green
take over much of the image and so
octane will be able to focus on just
these really noisy parts but because
we've set that adaptive sample a lot
lower you can see that now it's actually
focusing much more tightly on these
areas in here and in the bokeh that are
really noisy cool so it's already done
at 2 minutes and 13 seconds and it
blasted through the rest of those
samples now let's compare it to before
getting closer still not quite there
let's try to bring that sample noise
threshold even lower let's go to 0.05
and I'll refresh
okay now it's got a much bigger chunk
that it thinks is noisy so it's going to
take a little bit longer but just on
this section so this is kind of an
optimizing process figuring out where to
put that noise threshold that you're
going to get the most bang for your buck
essentially
okay so now something interesting has
happened it's hit this max samples and
this is as much as it's cleaned up so if
we go back to main you can go back to
our compare enable a/b comparison and
now we should see that these two results
are pretty comparable but we're only at
417 versus the nine minutes from before
now here's another thing we can do
because we ran out of samples we can
just boost this say we boost this to
something crazy like 25 thousand this is
gonna keep rendering but it's going to
continue focusing on just these small
areas so these will clean up and it's
going to blast through these samples a
lot faster so let's let this run for a
second
now with just a few more seconds it's
really cleaned up these areas and it's
no longer even focusing up in this Ridge
up here that we were looking because
it's considered clean and it's just
getting these last few little bits that
are really noisy and you can see we're
plowing through these samples at a
really really fast rate so at this point
I can't even see the little bits that
it's focusing on but it's gonna finish
at about five minutes and 30 seconds and
that's gonna get us an extremely clean
result and a much better result than the
one we had before all right so now I'm
going to show you how I would get that
kind of sliced look so we want to change
this from surface distribution to vertex
but the issue is that I'm cloning on to
a plane that's been made editable and I
did that because I was showing you some
vertex map stuff but I want to use a
plane where I can control the segments
easily so I'm just going to bring in a
new plane I'm going to drop it
underneath the one that we're cloning
onto right now and I'm going to reset
the PSR and we'll just use this instead
and now we want to scale this plane up
we got the position right but not the
scale so at this point we want to add in
the maximum number of segments so I'm
just going to max this out on one of
these axes here and now you can see that
we're getting this kind of interesting
sliced look in this case I don't think
it makes sense to have this whole cut
out so let's go back to our octane
scanner here and reduce this and then we
can bring this up too so we're not
actually using this image to remove any
of the instances now if we want an even
more intense kind of slicing going on we
can just go back to our plane and maybe
give it 50 segments and in the case
where it's not updating properly you can
just tick off octane scatter and then
turn it back on and there we go
so let's widen out our focal length here
and maybe reduce the amount of Shalott
up the field so let's go to our thin
lens here and go down to 5 and this is
kind of cool here maybe we could also
try switching these numbers around so
say we do 55 and max this one out and
again just jog this so it updates
properly this is kind of another
interesting look here and maybe we take
the plane that's being cloned on - and
bring these up out of the water a little
bit further so this plane here
and we can rotate our daylight around
North offset here until we get a
different look and then maybe just also
rotate it by hand
okay now we're getting some interesting
backlight but it's too high I want it to
be more on the horizon so we get that
kind of orange II light coming in
there we go see now that's starting to
feel a little sunset II now maybe we can
just play around with the North offset
here and bring it around to the side so
that it's just kind of backlighting this
whole setup here and to me that looks a
little bit more interesting and I just
came in here and found a slightly
different composition that allowed me to
see the individual building blocks a
little bit better and now maybe I feel
like I want to put this back down into
the water a bit more and then actually
boost the overall displacement
essentially so let's take this up to
like 250 and then drop this down further
we could do a really long lens look by
holding down to and right clicking and
then pull way out and then we're gonna
have to adjust the focus
so let's make this super EXTREME and now
you notice that everything looks like
it's in focus because we've gone so far
away so at this point we're gonna have
to compensate with the shallow depth of
field and probably crank this up a lot
more so there's 25 on the aperture and
let me move my little gizmo for the
light in here a little bit more and we
can make this even lower in the sky till
we get something pretty like that and I
don't like how much red there is in here
so I can kind of just mix these up and
totally change around the distribution
okay so I'm liking this but I'm not
loving how the colors are so what I can
do is I can just duplicate these like
crazy and just keep on going and you can
see it gets thinner and thinner up top
until I've got a lot more different
colors okay and I can just move around
and get a bunch of different interesting
looks this way maybe all reduce the
amount of shallow depth-of-field at this
point
I think I'm liking this composition a
little bit better I like having this
around the outside it's pretty
interesting but now I've lost that light
so I can just probably swing this around
until we pick it back up but now the
issue is I don't love how much it's
blowing out the scene so maybe I kind of
raise it up a little bit so at that
angle it's a lot more subtle and now
again if I just rotate it on the North
offset I can kind of play around with
where that's hitting the water liking
those little sparkles in there and then
I could probably just take down my gamma
a little bit or the exposure and reveal
that a little bit more and maybe we'll
give this a lot of contrast like this
but then a lot more bloom
all right so here's our final result
with this but here's what's so fun is
that I can just switch this back to
surface and we get our other look with
this same lighting setup and composition
and focal length and all the stuff that
we've done we could even play with
cranking this up past a million
instances for this angle now and get a
totally different interesting look so
here's where this gets really fun is
when you just start trying out different
images you've got the whole thing rigged
up but you just want to pop in a
completely different image so what I'm
gonna do is I'm gonna use some of these
maps from our friend the French monkey
so if you look he's got these landscape
kits TFM style calm or retina pack so
retina pack is the one that I'm gonna
use and they're these just grayscale
maps from world machine that he's
generated really really pretty stuff so
I'm gonna go and grab those here all
right so let's try one of these like
this one and this is going to totally
redistribute the way that the colors are
sorted so we'll see that here in a
second
there you go and let's just drop this in
to this one as well and for these I
think I'm gonna lose the water surface
so let's see which plane this is on so
it's on plane three let's just get rid
of the water surface for the others cool
and so now we've got this very unique
world to play around in if I tilt down
and kind of see into these valleys here
maybe for this one I won't make it so
displaced so I could take this and maybe
set it down to a hundred
so that's looking pretty cool right
there and maybe I don't want this to be
a ridge maybe I want it to be valley so
I could just go and invert this see 40
octane invert okay
so this is going to totally change our
setup here so I think that looks pretty
awesome and I could maybe widen the
camera lens by holding down to and right
clicking you can see our overall
structure we've got going here and now
we can kind of pull on in and bury
ourselves in this and now obviously we
want to pick focus on something and now
our shallot of the field is too much so
let's take it down to five let's pick
focus there
cool that's pretty interesting let's
mess around with the lighting real quick
and let's take this back down to a
hundred thousand so it's not bogging
down so much there we go
now let's rotate our daylight around
maybe let's just try messing with the
North offset first see if we see
anything coming in there we go we've got
some red light beaming in let's boost
the power and then let's just start to
rotate it
you
you
all right so I've found a camera angle
that I like and now I can just kind of
play with the lighting here
so I'll rotate around this daylight and
now we can get some really interesting
looking shadows almost like the Grand
Canyon I could boost the power and now I
just want to rotate this around until
I'm seeing this really strong high light
coming in and if I don't want it to be
so blown I can increase the turbidity
which will kind of decrease the contrast
of the scene a little bit so maybe
that's nice I like seeing this kind of
rim off of these structures here if I
wanted to I could change the Sun color
to be less orange and then we get more
of this kind of brighter daylight look
though in this case I kind of like the
orange and if I want to see maybe some
bigger patterns and bigger stripes I
could reduce the numbers of these cubes
this worked for our previous scene but
in this case we might want some bigger
patterns maybe I want a blue one on top
so let's kind of play around with this
let's try green
or we could try one of the purple ones
which actually has one of those random
color nodes in it so we'll get a bunch
of different colors on the top and see
now we've got all this color variation
on top which is kind of interesting all
right let's try a totally different map
and see what we get all sorts of really
cool stuff to choose from here let's try
something like this one and sometimes
it's fun to just let another an entirely
different map drive the color patterns
so here we've got a very different
looking image just because we're driving
the color with this other image here so
I'm gonna pop this in here and see what
we get and this is why I love this so
much because I didn't do anything except
switch the image and now we've got this
crazy-looking stuff going on here this
is why it feels like cheating to me all
right so I saved this frame out but
let's move around the scene and see what
else we can find
and just by rotating down we're getting
a ton of prettiness here let's maybe
reduce the shallow depth-of-field down
to something like seven
there we go I think I'm liking that more
so already this is another super nice
composition
so there are just so many different
shots we can find in here I really enjoy
this process because it feels like
creating a set and then going out to
this other world and being a
photographer and finding different
pictures and compositions within that
place
all right just for fun let's try one
last one let's go for something like
this
and now we're getting these beautiful
vein-like structures and the sun's
hitting it at this really nice angle so
that about does it for this technique I
hope you have fun going out and creating
your own kind of renders with these
weird scatter compositions so we've
learned in a lot more detail how to use
octane scatter how adaptive sampling
works and some tricks with shallow depth
of field and bokeh thanks a ton for
watching and I can't wait to see your
creative take on this technique