Portal

[schmeerlap]

Made the portal mesh in XenoDream. Gave it an onyx-looking procedural texture in Terragen, (had to uncheck "raytrace objects" in the render parameters before it showed).

John

[domdib]

Nice onyx! - although for true onyxy goodness, perhaps some reflectivity?

Strange lighting - how did you do it?

[schmeerlap]

It's got some reflection (0.25) at the default index of refraction of 1.33. I didn't want too much reflectivity as that would begin to obscure the texture.
I darkened the haze horizon colour and lowered the saturation level of the blue sky density. But I think you're referring to the slightly harsh tonemapped lighting I've given the scene. I did that using Photoshop's Highlight and Shadows Adjustment. That results in a pseudo hdr/tonemapped effect.

John

[inkydigit]

love the rocks/ground, and that is a cool object, nice texturing too!

[choronr]

Now this is very good. I like all the elements, especially the sky and color of the mountains. And, that portal would be great for one-way trips - thinking about the dwellers in our White House.

[Oshyan]

Interesting that Raytrace Objects caused a problem here. What happened when it was turned on? The entire object would not render, or just the texture that you put on it?

- Oshyan

[schmeerlap]

Interesting that Raytrace Objects caused a problem here. What happened when it was turned on? The entire object would not render, or just the texture that you put on it?

- Oshyan

I used a power fractal attached to a default shader's colour function parameter. I checked it out tonight, and I've included the results of renders with Ray Trace Objects checked and unchecked (I used a hideous combination of light and dark blue colours for high and low colour on full-on contrast). As you can see, when you leave RTO checked the contrast is much diminished compared to when you render with RTO unchecked. In my scene I used a lot less contrast between high and low colours, so when I first rendered with RTO checked I just got a washed out bone colour.

[Oshyan]

Interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if the raytraced result is the more "correct" one though. What detail level did you use when rendering the non-raytraced one?

- Oshyan

[Dune]

IMO if you use the input for a color PF, it'll only change the range of base color, so you might as well leave it white/black. If you want color over the base color you'd have to prick a surface shader in the default output (between the 2 nodes), and work from there with all possibilities. Or did I get you wrong?

---Dune

[j meyer]

Hi,
to me it seems to be related with/the same as:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8291.0
In some cases you can get around that by clever use of UV-mapping
in relation to the chosen point of view,though.(if no uv seams are visible
in your pic it should work).
J.

[schmeerlap]

Oshyan:
In the blue portal test both Ray Trace Objects checked, and unchecked renders were at the same render detail quality of 0.6.
I've done another test with renders at 0.9 render detail as per original scene and same colour settings in the power fractal. This time I disabled the Reflective Shader so that its effects didn't distort the colouring from the power fractal. I've attached the results along with my power fractal settings.
Of course once I start post processing in Photoshop the difference in texture contrast between the two renders becomes exaggerated.
Seems to be the same as what j meyer experienced with his model. Although my mesh is exported straight from XenoDream into Terragen, and as far as I'm aware there is no UV mapping on it.

[Hetzen]

You seem to have a really sharp cutoff in colouration in this scene. I think I'd like to see a thicker atmosphere around your portal to give it more scale compared to your trees, and your clouds look too knocked back. Nothing wrong with the composition, or modelling. It just doesn't blend right.

[schmeerlap]

You seem to have a really sharp cutoff in colouration in this scene. I think I'd like to see a thicker atmosphere around your portal to give it more scale compared to your trees, and your clouds look too knocked back. Nothing wrong with the composition, or modelling. It just doesn't blend right.

I agree, that does make sense; more atmospherics around the object will better integrate it into the scene and establish its size and distance more accurately. Also the post processing I did on the scene inadvertently seems to have dried up the haze to some degree resulting in an unnatural starkness.

John