Real world photography for landing pics

Martin Turner

I'm interested in knowing what people's experiences are of using real world photography as landing pictures. We've been looking at this for some time.

Pros of using real world pictures:

Overall much more realism
Shots can be incredibly detailed
Grass and vegetation never looks right when done in Bryce etc.
Overcomes the 'flat' look of a lot of initially promising 3d pictures.
There are some incredibly weird futuristic-looking things around if you look for them

Cons of using real world pictures:
Often hard to get far enough away to get the same field of view as we are used to on landing pics
May be hard to give a consistent look when some landing pics are 3d generated and others are real world
May look too 21st century
All landscapes may look as if they're from the same climate
Pictures can look 'soft' by comparison with relatively sharp Bryce or other 3d pictures

We started shooting prospective landing pics on 35mm film, and later moved on to digital SLR. One of the problems we've encountered is that sampling down from 6.1mpixel really mashes the quality, so we've tended to crop rather than to downsample. This makes the problem of field of view even worse, though, unless you're shooting from a high place in very unhazy conditions. Recently, though, we invested in a fisheye lens which turns out to be ideal if you crop around the centre, and, if used judiciously, can be used to contort rather mundane 21st century girder architecture into something of the far future.

Anyway, I wanted to know what everyone else's experiences or opinions were - and also of hybrid 3d and real world.

Nb - I am talking about using own pictures, rather than raiding the internet of scanning magazines, which, of course, is a breach of someone's copyright unless specified otherwise (heck, elsewise I'd just go to National Geographic).

Regards

Martin

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Nick Anderson

I really would love to see this idea implemented in a plugin. Of course not all of us live in places where the terrain, weather, and climates vary much. Personal experience has taught me that you can find really beautiful shots around bodies of water with regional diversity. Rocky cliffs, sandy beaches, and tree-lined shores are all often located on a single lake. The problem is then finding a way to take a picture so you can add structures. Different angles might be helpful.

My final call is if you really want to do this and are willing to sacrifice some time driving/flying you move to California. Within a reasonable distance of... oh let's Orange Country you have Death Valley, Redwood Forests, the Sierra Mountains, the Salton Sea, the Pacific Ocean, Lake Tahoe, and for a 4-6 hour plane fight Hawaiian Volcanic activity. Always remember I am behind you on this one.

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slouch

Quote

Often hard to get far enough away to get the same field of view as we are used to on landing pics

I think a more abstract approach to landing pics would be a welcome change, as the scenic panorama views get a bit tired after awhile. 'Oh look, another mountain, ocean, river, sunset, sparse vegetation pic.' If you have the means, and the subject matter, some odd angled/close-up photos would be most excellent. This way, you don't need to have the Rocky Mountains or Amazon rainforest in your backyard to get good shots. A decent public park, sculpture park, or trip to a nearby city or forest reserve will do.

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Arturo

I would think that going for microphotography would also yield some very interesting material. A micro close-up of a series of wind ripples in the sand can be turned into a vast desert. A ground level micro-pic of almost anything in your backyard could be made into alien looking landscape. Not to mention close-ups of various bugs and creepy-crawlies being candidates for aliens. Even indoor micros of floor level scenes good be doctored to become believable landscapes. And I'm sure that a fertile imagination could find fruitful micro-photo hunting in a basement or attic.

sparky

I've always been all for real world pictures. There are so many weird places on earth, that you can get a full variety of planets (except a gas planet...) You just have to start asking everyone for their best pics, and then you can get stuff that's from all over, not just your backyard. But if you use real world pics, I think you have to use them for all the landing pics. Otherwise it'll just look weird.

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Guest_UE_Research & Development_*

You don't have to go far for good photographs to use. For example, I recently went to some place in Pennsylvania where there are a lot of waterfalls (I don't remember what it's called). There's a place in which there's a really large waterfall, foliage resembling that which you'd find in a tropical place, and I managed to get off a really nice picture which will serve very well as an uninhabited planetary image. As well, the Longwood Gardens in southern Pennsylvania are a really nice place to take pictures, especially early in the morning, when there are few visitors to 'damage' your shots.

Otherwise, photography is a very suitable supplement to 3D-rendered images, which may look (unsuitably) posed or not convey the proper ambience.

I have to disagree with sparky when it comes to an 'all-or-none' approach. When all the filter settings that some cameras are capable of are considered, combined with the power of a manipulation program such as Photoshop and the sheer variety of ways that images can be posed, I strongly feel that there does not necessarily have to be a discrepancy between the two methods.

Now hand-drawn...that's a completely different story ;).

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(This message has been edited by UE_Research & Development (edited 06-27-2004).)

Martin Turner

I've just had a go at the Micro-photography angle, but I'm not sure if it's really working for me.

I do a lot of micro, using a Nikkor Micro 55mm on a D100, which gives an effective magnification of 1:1 of the object onto the physical CCD - in other words, pretty serious.

Even so, über-sharp f32 photos of the carpet at minimum range still look like carpet, and the same thing of my rubber plant still looks like the leaves of a rubber plant, which is hardly inspiring.

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Arturo

Actually I had something like 2X to 10X magnification in mind. At those scales things can appear other worldly. I was thinking of some old National Geographics examples that I dimly recall. Or maybe it was "Honey, I shrunk the kids". But I'm no photographer, so it may be a waste of time.

Modesty Blaise

There will be trouble if you wan to create cityscapes and the like... Implementing atificial objects into a real picture is HARD.. Lightning is wrong etc. So if you wan to use real pictures keep all of them real..unless you want an unimaginable load of work.

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This one is really well done... but probably a time consuming task . Now try to do that in Photoshop.
And creating a city in the picure would be even worse.

Though nothing will look as good if you pull it of

Though a sort of comic/real picture combination could look good.

Real pictures used as textures on 3D terrains.. haven´t tried this, but it should work..Maybe not in Bryce though.

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seant

Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**I'm interested in knowing what people's experiences are of using real world photography as landing pictures. We've been looking at this for some time.
**

We've? Are you working with a group, or is that the royal we?

I've thought about real world images as well. While there is always the threat of infringing a copywrite, the use of real world photos opens up a whole world off goodness; not just visually, but biologically as well. I guess because I am trained as a biologist, I think about what "plants" would be like if they evolved on other planets. The physical rules about surface area for photosynthesis and water movement remain constant (though you'd have to make sure you don't put Redwood like trees on a planet which has a greater mass than Earth's), but the spectral output of the local sun would be different, allowing for a diverse range of plant colours.

One could even have a mix of invasive Earth style plants alongside native flora.

This is why I never get very far in making plugins.... I get too caught up in the details. Sigh.

Re: diverse climates. You could put out a call to people on the board for images of specific terrains. Maybe it would be worth while to set up a site of real world photos that others could use for plugin landing images? I'd be willing set host such a site as I already use gallery for other things (http://phair.csh.rit...lery/albums.php).

With something like gallery, different subcategories could be made so one could look at just waterfalls or just desert, whatever. Oh! If such a database of images existed, it'd be possible to write a small utility that would randomly choose images from the site and make the number of spobs you define. Then the user would just have to provide the description. That's getting a bit ahead of things, though....

It's all about the novel generation of plugins.

-STH

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(This message has been edited by seant (edited 06-28-2004).)

Martin Turner

Quote

Originally posted by modesty_blaise_us:
http://www.ambrosias...ML/001591.html#
This one is really well done... but probably a time consuming task . Now try to do that in Photoshop.
And creating a city in the picure would be even worse.

Maybe I'm missing the point, but I don't think the artist used real world photography in this one, unless I misunderstood his text.

I agree it's a really nice picture.

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Guest_UE_Research & Development_*

He definitely used Terragen. He even states so explicitly in the post.

Quote

The terrain was decent, but It was always hard to get not fake-looking clouds and lighting. I've always liked sunsets and canyons, so this is the result. I used the render (which took around 4 hours) as a background plate, and then I put the fighters in the scene and lit it.

(Emphasis is mine.)

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mrxak

Ah. Interesting you should bring this up. I did a bit of photography myself for a similar purpose (and also interesting, I did this on a trip in CA). However, rather than take scenes, I took textures. The idea is that I'll take real-world textures and apply them to 3D models. Some ground here, some rocks there, and you start to get a much more realistic scene. I got a lot of good bark and stone. I'm still looking for some good metals, but I'll probably end up using photoshop for that.

Weepul 884

Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
Cons of using real world pictures:
Often hard to get far enough away to get the same field of view as we are used to on landing pics
May be hard to give a consistent look when some landing pics are 3d generated and others are real world
May look too 21st century
All landscapes may look as if they're from the same climate

Agreed. Finding some of the really weird, alien, non-terran landscapes that exist on this planet would require some extensive traveling.

Quote

**Pictures can look 'soft' by comparison with relatively sharp Bryce or other 3d pictures

We started shooting prospective landing pics on 35mm film, and later moved on to digital SLR. One of the problems we've encountered is that sampling down from 6.1mpixel really mashes the quality, so we've tended to crop rather than to downsample. This makes the problem of field of view even worse, though, unless you're shooting from a high place in very unhazy conditions.**

Now that's just backwards. I've recently gotten heavily into photography (in knowledge, moderately in activity), so I think I should know what I'm talking about. All digital cameras, except those with Foveon X3-type sensors (currently the Sigma SD-9 and SD-10) use a Bayer-pattern color filter on the sensor; each sensor site is either red, green, or blue (with 2x as many green as the others, since green captures the most luminosity information, which is what gives the most important detail information for the human eye) and the full-size image is then interpolated from this mosaic of single-color "pixels" into full-color pixels. Furthermore, most sensors have an anti-aliasing filter in front, too, which slightly blurs the image before it reaches the sensor, so that fine details don't fall on only one of the color sensors and produce odd colors and moire pattern artifacts. At 100%, all Bayer-patterned-sensor-produced images should look slightly soft, and even with advanced sharpening programs would never look as sharp as a render...or a downsampled image.

When you resize an image such as this to be smaller, all the fine details are averaged together to produce a smooth resized image (when done with a program like Photoshop, not using the "nearest neighbor" method, which just cuts out every X pixels rather than averaging). What happens then is that you end up with at least 2 green and 1 red&blue; sensor sites for every pixel, giving what appears to be true sharpness and color detail. Also, any noise that's in the image will be somewhat averaged out.

If anything, a downsampled image should be smoother and more crisp than a 100% crop. I personally have a Canon 10D, and producing example images to support my claims would be easy, if you want me to.

Quote

Anyway, I wanted to know what everyone else's experiences or opinions were - and also of hybrid 3d and real world.

Photorealistic rendering and compositing is difficult, and there is a lack of landscape without modern human constructs around...I could find some if I travelled a bit, I suppose.

Quote

Originally posted by Arturo:
Actually I had something like 2X to 10X magnification in mind.

Reaching those magnifications can be difficult; a 1:1 macro lens, with a 1.4x teleconverter and on a 1.6x crop-factor sensor (ie. the sensor is smaller than a normal 35mm negative, meaning you're blowing up the image a lens projects more when viewing) would give 2.24X lifesize. There are special lenses made, or you can use accessories, that let you get to those kinds of magnifications, but it's rather difficult and expensive (not that DSLRs are inexpensive :p). Probably the easiest way is reversing lenses (either a lower focal length mounted backwards in front of a longer focal length, magnification = the ratio of the two focal lengths, or just a low-focal length lens mounted backward directly to the camera body). Assuming you can get there, though, the depth of field becomes extremely shallow. I don't think you'd be able to take a picture at that kind of magnification that has a full depth of field and looks like a landscape; no matter what you do it'll be shallow enough to look like you took a photo of a small object.

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(This message has been edited by Weepul 884 (edited 06-28-2004).)

pipeline

We'd considered using photos, but afew things held us back:

We weren't photographers, and so our results were poor
Compositing is hard , and even the best of movies or stills usually look fake (even today!)
It's hard to get alien worlds on earth
It would have taken us a very very long time to get anywhere near good enough at the whole process to have something useable

That said, a lot of our Bryce stuff is shocking... really shockingly bad. However, the scenes that are the worst are those done by non-graphics people generously donating their time to help out the poor overworked graphics bods. One of those non-pros was even using a monitor with a busted blue gun, so he had only red and green to play with. Amazing he did anything at all, really. Some of our later stuff is very nice, but it took longer.

That's the thing, really. The nicer our scenes, the longer it took to make them, and the costlier the tools. The bad ones were really cranked out, and it shows... but, then again, we shipped. Someone once said that artworks are never finished, only abandoned. It goes sort of like that for games; never finished, only released.

best always,

Dave @ ATMOS

Regulus

I say go for it, if you can make it work. Photographic landing pics always looked awful in EV/O because of the 256 color limit; fortunately this isn't an issue in Nova. Just remember to use JPEG or JPEG 2000 compression on them in BlitZen, so as not to slaughter your resource fork with the file size.

However, one thing that I always wanted to see on landing pics wasn't the planet per se (naturalistic mountainscapes, flowing creeks and whatnot) but something specific pertaining to your location there. You accomoplished this to a pretty nice extent in Frozen Heart, but now that EVN's spob limit is much higher, it would be nice to see different settings around a planet - slick, modern first-world space port, grungry crime district, university, dig site, historical locations, statues and monuments, game reserves, ghost towns - there's all sorts of stuff you could do to make the universe richer. Some of it can be photographic, some of it rendered and some of it composited.

As for your images looking same-y, remember that all of Lord of the Rings was shot in a country about as big as yours, and while New Zealand may be blessed with impressive ecological diversity, you also are able to call on others to contribute photos for your project. I live in the pacific northwest which has some really amazing terrain; and I'm sure there are plenty of noirishly lit cityscapes to be had in New York and Tokyo. Remember, not every world you land at is going to be high tech and futuristic - it would make sense of more backwater worlds had archiecture that looked 20th century.

I wonder what sort of economic forces would make the average Rigellian or Magellan city different - in my dreams, anyway, Magella is the hellish beurocracy from Gilliam's "Brazil".

-reg

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sparky

you can definetly find some pretty alien looking places on earth. Ever been to a lava feild? Flown over Greenland? Seen Utah's rock formations? There is some weird stuff out there.

Of course, it would be really expensive to fly all over the world.

If you want to use real world pics, I could look through some of my pictures (I've been to a lot of places, and if I remember right, have some good landscape pics) and share them with you.

adding civilization would be a lot harder, since it would have to be photoreal.

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(This message has been edited by sparky (edited 06-29-2004).)

Modesty Blaise

Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**Maybe I'm missing the point, but I don't think the artist used real world photography in this one, unless I misunderstood his text.

I agree it's a really nice picture.

**

He/she didnt use a real world photography, you are completely ringt. But the same problems are present here. That´s my point....
The background is a seperate picture.

And if you want it too look real, you´ll need similar lightning. Reflections etc. Which is difficult to achieve unless you have some good information about the light at the location you took the picture.

This is the way you would have to implement a real world photo too.

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Martin Turner

Quote

Originally posted by Weepul 884:
**Reaching those magnifications can be difficult; a 1:1 macro lens, with a 1.4x teleconverter and on a 1.6x crop-factor sensor (ie. the sensor is smaller than a normal 35mm negative, meaning you're blowing up the image a lens projects more when viewing) would give 2.24X lifesize. There are special lenses made, or you can use accessories, that let you get to those kinds of magnifications, but it's rather difficult and expensive (not that DSLRs are inexpensive:p ). Probably the easiest way is reversing lenses (either a lower focal length mounted backwards in front of a longer focal length, magnification = the ratio of the two focal lengths, or just a low-focal length lens mounted backward directly to the camera body). Assuming you can get there, though, the depth of field becomes extremely shallow. I don't think you'd be able to take a picture at that kind of magnification that has a full depth of field and looks like a landscape; no matter what you do it'll be shallow enough to look like you took a photo of a small object.

**

I should just offer one correction - the 'magnification factor' of a CCD doesn't apply to macro photography. If you have a 1:1 lens, the object will still be 1:1 on an APS sized CCD or the larger 35mm film - it's just that less of it will be on the the CCD. The 'magnification factor' is really a short-hand for reduced field of view which makes the lens appear to be 1.5 times as long. Otherwise I agree entirely with this post.

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Juan

Quote

Originally posted by modesty_blaise_us:
**
He/she didnt use a real world photography, you are completely ringt. But the same problems are present here. That´s my point....
The background is a seperate picture.

And if you want it too look real, you´ll need similar lightning. Reflections etc. Which is difficult to achieve unless you have some good information about the light at the location you took the picture.

This is the way you would have to implement a real world photo too.
**

Terragen allows using real map data to generate scenes, which can be useful to get nearly-real-detailed landscapes.
Introducing additional models is a hard work as you say, but the next version of (url="http://"http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen")terragen(/url) with allow model import, so you'll be able to place your own model in the generated terrain model and render all together.

(url="http://"http://www.jreyes13.net/warlock/pictures/real6_sunset2.jpg")Here(/url) is a nice render I did with terragen using real elevation data and little work with light and textures.
Take a look at what_is_the_matrix image, it's far better than mine.

Juan

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