Lonely Lakes

[Tangled-Universe]

I find this one of the hardest things to do with TG2. Getting color variation to work nicely for every distance.
A good example which shows this is when you map a tile-able photo of a rocktexture on your terrain.
In the foreground you can see contrasts of colours and details, as in the photo.
However, in real life, over distance, those details and contrasts blur out and the rocktexture gets a monochromatic look, as if it is mostly 1 colour.
Not in TG2 though. There the texture gets noisy over distance.
I hope this improves greatly with future TG2 releases. I don't know why this happens. Perhaps it's because AA is based on luminance and still tries to preserve the highlights from the texture which makes the details. Or it is because of texture-filtering somewhere in the render-pipeline.
Reading this may seem to make it look like a good thing, that it preserves the contrast and detail, but in case of large-scale texturing it is a big pain.

Yeah. This is true. It's something that I found doesn't happen in Mojoworld. Mojoworld does in fact reduce surface displacements at distance (that's not too good but you can adjust it = longer render times) but there also seems to be a softness which gives the scene a sense of great distance. TG2 seems to retain noise going into distance which spoils the sense of distance. I don't really know why and what the solutions are.

In TG2 the noise is there no matter if surface has displacement or not so that's not the issue. It's colour.

That's a correct observation, I think.

TG2 applies LOD-adjustment over distance. The further away from the camera the few subdivisions the renderer makes.

[RichTwo]

Now that's got potential!  There's so much detail that can be seen. Yeah there's some predictability in the minor displacements, and I know what you're trying to do.  What TG2 is infamous for is that trying to break up a Voronoi pattern is a hit-or-miss tactic. I've tried it all: distribution, surface layering, fractal breakups - nothing worked.  I have experimented by tweaking warp shaders into doing some halfway decent results (and God knows I'm never satisfied...) but even that is again hit-or-miss.

Dune did pretty well with his 10m Cracks file.  Brilliant in simplicity and looks terrific from a fair distance but getting in close shows things you don't really want - mostly due to the redirect shaders embedded.  So far there's no dependable way of getting a true "natural" look on a global scale.  The best I've ever done is with my Planet Creator, and even that has its limits. Looks great from afar, but like crap close up.

I say do not give up - Ryan, isn't it?  We haven't conversed in awhile.  I'm old and I forget.  You are trying at least to pioneer the real potential of TG2 right down to its bare bones.  I always look forward to seeing what you come up with.

[efflux]

I'm got some new directions on the go now.

Some new images will eventually appear.

What's happening is that I'm moving up in scale, specifically with terrains. The terrain on this planet works well up to a certain height. Next step is to move into larger variations but keep the cliffs etc. One aim would be to create kind of ocean shorelines but retain cliffs. this is easier said than done.

The side product of this is that I'm not happy with atmosphere and sense of space and distance.

There are a few reasons Mojo is so good at this vast scale thing. One is the flow of the fractals. That can be somewhat worked on in TG2. The next thing is that complex surface textures in TG2 don't seem to receed very well. This is most obvious at very low angles. However, Mojoworld does have a tendency to not have sharp detailed textures at close range so it's swings and roundabouts.

One major deal I'm finding is that Haze glow can damage this sense of space. In other apps the haze doesn't have this reaction to light. That's why there is a large sense of clear open space. In TG2, too much haze glow makes the haze glow around the sun. Less haze glow seems to even this out and open up the space. Glow in Blue Sky and clouds is OK though.

This leads to the next thing. Reducing the role of Haze to handle everything. I'm testing using haze with very extreme exponential i.e. very low Haze exp height settings to make the haze thick at ground level then quickly disappearing. Reduced glow as well though. This helps create distance but now we have less thickness in the atmosphere, I'm now using clouds for that. Clouds with 0 roughness and very low coverage and contrast that reach from ground right up beyond the clouds. It creates subtle differences in atmospheric thickness and helps to "glue" the clouds in rather than a very even haze. This works great for sun rays without attempting to get the haze to do it all.

[efflux]

Here's another render. Similar POV to the last one but extreme exponential haze. I've moved out of this planet now to work on atmosphere ideas.

[efflux]

I brought in my new atmosphere method that largely uses cloud as haze. I much prefer this effect. Some other minor tweaks including some more stones. The main clouds also need some work due to some nasty roughness. I can't get that out without huge quality settings.

[mhaze]

I much prefer your new method. once again you challenge our preconceptions and make us think!  Reality and art are different beasts accepting that allows us true freedom of creativity.

[efflux]

Rich.

I know you're into messing with terrain. Check out my thread called Terrain Altitude Blend. I've added some more images there. It's really easy. There are some files. Not of all the renders I've posted but you'll be able to see what's happening, if you haven't checked that already. I haven't even used it yet in a proper environment.

The idea is that you build stacks of interest into the terrain. Don't rely on surface displacements to do everything.