A cliff somewhere in Oceania -> v3 @ page 2

[RArcher]

Really great Martin!  I really like the vertical white textures as it adds a very realistic look.  Also the water looks pretty much perfect to me.  Some of the vegetation looks a little too clean and almost plastic, but I know you are just working with the stock Xfrog stuff.

[Dune]

I agree with Ryan about the latter, it was my first impression too that they are very clean. But some PF over it can do wonders.

[Tangled-Universe]

Thanks guys

Yeah they look too plastic, I know.
It's actually not XFrog stock settings.
Those aren't setup with any reflectivity and most of them with 96% translucency.
Something they may actually have too look into as you can't really use them straight out of the box this way.

Good idea Ulco to use a PF to reduce the clean look. I'll try that tonight.

At the moment I'm rendering a new version with more mossy looking grass and with 3 huge ivy's

[TheBadger]

Hi TU

Thanks for the in depth response.

I was also curious about the plants near the waters edge. I don't think I have seen grass like that here before. They do look like moss at this distance.
Which plants are they, and did you have to anything *extra* to them out of the box to get them to work like they are? I am always on the look out for plant objects I could use as moss!

[Tangled-Universe]

Hi Michael,

I use Walli's grasses as moss. I don't know the exact models right now, but if you like I can post them later.
Just make them very small and use a very dense population. Also, as moss tends to follow the contours of a terrain more than grass, increase the lean to normal effect.
All shader settings are untouched.

For the coming render I've resize the grasses to min size = 0.2 and max size = 0.4 and density is ~0.08.
Make sure to use the smallest population size as possible, because with these densities it can take quite a while to populate.
The lean to normal is set to 0.8 and the instances don't lean below 10 degrees slope and have reduced lean below 20 degrees slope.
The default settings (0.5, 45 degr, 90 degr) result in mild leaning and only on quite steep slopes.

Cheers,
Martin

[TheBadger]

Thanks martin.

Now that you have said it, I think it is "ND01_Grass3". I have it and like it a lot. I have tried to use it as moss and got ok results. The results you have here are much better.
But now that you have made me think about it. I have not tried to do anything like this since the update. The lean to normals are really working here!

All I need now is the ability to populate an object and I can finish my maze world enviro. Come to think of it, do you, or does anyone know, if you can at least populate a TG2 native object? For example a plane object? That could work for simple things * like a wall*!

[Tangled-Universe]

Since you can replace the planet object with a plane object and also can populate that then I think the answer to your question is YES.

[Tangled-Universe]

Next iteration. Perhaps a bit too contrasted and saturated, but still experimenting...

There's a setting in the rendernode I forgot to increase and I'm curious who will notice it...it should be fairly easy to spot.

[Hetzen]

This is really coming together. Water Detail?

I'd be tempted to have a hack at that ivy geometry to remove some of the lower right third stalks to show some more of that awesome rock texture you've got.

[Tangled-Universe]

Thanks Jon

This is really coming together. Detail?

I'd be tempted to have a hack at that ivy geometry to remove some of the lower right third stalks to show some more of that awesome rock texture you've got.

What do you mean, detail? Want to know some settings?

I have grown a couple of ivy's, perhaps I can choose another one which should expose some more of the rock.
I still think the rock can use a bit more detail and roughness though?

[Hetzen]

  I edited my post whilst you typed. Water detail is back on that standard 0.25 setting I'm guessing.

I think your ivy growth is fine. I'd probably want to take the ivy obj into Max and remove the stems where there's little foilage in the lower right third.

The rock displacement roughness to me looks right, although an experiment in blending the reflectivity with a low contrast PF might bare fruits?

The plant population is getting 'unnoticeably' natural. Great scene mate.

[Tangled-Universe]

That sounds like a good idea of just chopping some geometry off...hopefully that's pretty straightforward to do, you know how much a noob I am

You were pretty close with your guess about the water. That's what's off here.
The reason the water looks a bit strange, especially on the left, is that there's no ray detail region padding enabled. I forgot that.
The reflections are based on poorly subdivided geometry just outside of the frustum.

For the reflections on the bare rock I think I will just reduce the spread/roughness instead of a PF.
At the moment it's a bit too wet looking compared to the vegetation (which became plastic looking after modifications) so reducing it a bit in general this way maybe quicker and more effective. I'll see.

I just got a supercool cloudfunction working which creates vapor in/above the vegetation
All based on terrain displacement driven altitude offset of the cloud layer.
It's slow because it uses the compute terrain output instead of an image based mask through an image map shader.

[Hetzen]

I just got a supercool cloudfunction working which creates vapor in/above the vegetation
All based on terrain displacement driven altitude offset of the cloud layer.
It's slow because it uses the compute terrain output instead of an image based mask through an image map shader.

Look forward to seeing that. Displacement to vector might be a useful node if you have any problems translating planet displacement to cloud.

[Tangled-Universe]

That's exactly what I did and therefore the reason it is slow, despite that I'm using a localized cloud.
This took 15 minutes or so with only GI 1/2/6, while I want to render this with GI 3/6/4. I guess I will have to tune it down a bit to not have it render into eternity.

I use 'compute terrain -> displacement shader to vector -> length to scalar -> colour adjust -> altitude offset'. The colour adjust isn't necessary but it can be used to tweak the contrast (rate of altitude change) of the altitude offset function.

Going to sleep now, will render it overnight and see how it looks as a whole.

Cheers,
Martin

[Hetzen]

Look forward to seeing it in the morning.