The Wizard's Tower I | RenderHub Forum

ObscuroArcanum · 2024-03-14T08:07:14-04:00

"Go to the Wizard's Tower, they said. Get the Fire Shard, they said. It'll be easy, they said. There hasn't been a dragon sighting for centuries!" This is my first entry to the Dragon Lore contest. This is my first project for 2024, the first project I've done in nearly 2 years (RL has been awful the last couple of years!) and it's the most ambitious project I've attempted, but the theme was too much to resist. Inspiration hit me like a cinderblock to the skull, so all I needed to do was strap myself in and go along for the ride. It came together quite smoothly, with only a few hiccups and one or two deviations from the original concept. This was a happy accident from the larger project. I spent a lot of time working with only the Tank visible because the full scene exceeded the memory of my PC and the rest needed to be turned off while I worked. I ended up staring at this view for so long that it became a keeper. I really liked the 'lone warrior stumbling onto a group of sleeping dragons and wishing they'd never got out of bed that morning' look. The memory issues also meant this was an absolute nightmare to render. Even after scaling down the textures, deleting what wasn't needing and hiding elements to render in sections, it wasn't enough to wrangle the size back to allow the Denoiser to kick in. I also made the mistake of rendering this version out at my preferred 4K working size and the render times were horrific. 16 hours, 17 hours, 18 and 19 hours! And in 38 degree heat... with no air-con! I think it's safe to say that I've incinerated my PC getting this beast rendered. Thankfully, rendering at 4K and scaling down managed to soften the worst of the noise. I also polished a little in Photoshop to help reduce it a little more, but without trashing the atmospherics. Time was getting away from me, so I was only able to get this version and another rendered out, neither of which is my original concept. The second one is pretty close though. Thank you for looking. Good luck to the other contestants!