Canyon with Vegetation

[RArcher]

Continued experiments with my last canyon setup.  This time with vegetation hanging off the sides and some trees at the bottom.  So many great viewpoints possible in this canyon.  The only postwork this time was a curves adjustment.

[Upon Infinity]

Nice work!  How do you make a canyon?

[FrankB]

Looks great, Ryan! How did you make the vegetation below the overhanging parts of the terrain? Or is this an optical illusion?

Regards,
Frank

[Tangled-Universe]

Great work Ryan, really like this. The displaced canyon walls are well done. It doesn't have weird spikes and pretty balanced amplitudes. I find that the hardest to do.

Frank, the vegetation is probably using the relatively new lean function for populations in combination with regular slope restriction.

[FrankB]

yeah, but (although I haven't tried), I wasn't aware that it will be able to sample slopes of less than -90 degrees???

[Tangled-Universe]

I managed to get that before and without the lean factor function. Check my inside deep forest image.

[inkydigit]

looks excellent Ryan!

[RArcher]

Thanks guys.  I was a bit worried about the vegetation not populating on the undersides as well Frank, but it didn't seem to be an issue.  I did mess around with the new options (which are fantastic!) to get the stuff on the wall to stick out correctly.

@UponInfinity - There are quite a few different ways to create canyons.  You can do it procedurally with the blue nodes, or with two parallel heightfields, or likely many other ways as well.  I would take a look here first as the definitive source for canyons: http://www.nwdanet.com/buy/7-preset-packs/36-canyon-and-rock-surface-pack-by-tu 

[TheBadger]

Another great image! I would like to see it completely covered in green plants too.

On a side note. I bought T-U's canyons pack the same day I bought RArchers dirt pack, that was the day I bought Terragen.
I only recently became confident enough to alter the dirt pack. It will probably be another two years before I'm confident enough to mess with the canyons

The canyons pack is very nice though. Theres a lot in there to play with. Dirt pack is darn useful too.

[RArcher]

Bigger version - hopefully not too many compression artifacts.  Increased the haze density considerably and changed some render settings.  Nothing changed with the vegetation yet.

[Jo Kariboo]

Very nice and big. I like the detail and the natural light.

[RArcher]

So many people are making night scenes I couldn't resist.  Disabled the sun, switched enviro light to Ambient Occlusion and slapped in a star field.  Pointed up.

[Dune]

It's contagious, isn't it? I prefer the day scene though, great stone structures and the GI under the left overhang is really nice (makes me wanna do a canyon as well). Although on my monitor the whole is quite washed out. What trees are those in front?

[Upon Infinity]

Is ambient occlusion better than GI for bouncing light off a specific object?

[Tangled-Universe]

Is ambient occlusion better than GI for bouncing light off a specific object?

Here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_occlusion