My first render

Started by bebe onea, November 21, 2012, 05:06:20 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

bebe onea

Hi,
These two images are my first attempts with TG 2.

Tangled-Universe

Very nice start :) The first one I like most. Good POV, very interesting as it shows off the peak nicely.
Where did you get the DEM file of this one?

You may try adding a couple of powerfractals in the shadergroup to add some more colour variation on the rock textures.

Cheers,
Martin

bebe onea

Thanks Martin,
I'm just at the beginning and trying to get my bearings with TG2.
I will try your suggestions. Any other comments and criticism are welcomed.
Bebe

Icegrip

Nice start, looking great! :)

What kind of resolution on the DEM do you have?

bebe onea


Tangled-Universe

Quote from: bebe onea on November 22, 2012, 01:16:29 AM
DEM resolution is 1".

That's 1 arc second isn't it? In other words; 90m?

Where did you download it? I like to have a go with it too :)

Cheers,
Martin

Oshyan

Whatever resolution it's at, it's good enough that I - an American with fairly little exposure to the mountain - recognized it almost immediately. :)

- Oshyan

bebe onea

Hi,
Actually 1 arc second is about 30 m resolution.
The DEM data was obtained within a research program that deals with alpine environments conservation.

4nt

beautiful pix!
a high rate of realism. go on this way . . .

cheers

Bjur

#9
Just beautiful!

Very fine moods, especially in the 1st one.
You could also try to project a nice fitting high-res. texture onto the mountain in the foreground from the left side, projected by an additional projection camera.
I just tested the first time camera projections some time ago. The additional "Woah!" effect was magnificent..
~ The annoying popularity of Vue brought me here.. ~

pixelpusher636

Great work bebe ones! Love it! Jealous of the DEM. I've tried unsuccessfully to obtain a DEM of this of even half that resolution.
The more I use Terragen, the more I realize the world is not so small.

efflux

#11
Good start.

This highlights something I'm going to do further tests on in accordance with the whole problem of photography and attempting to compensate for these problems in TG2. I think in a real photo your second image would be massively blown out with light. I'm going to test really pushing for way more atmosphere glow. I don't use any contrast in the render settings in TG2 or try to "fix" exposure which isn't really possible in TG2. I Iet things get badly overexposed (or underexposed) then I post edit it with exr. You can edit exr in Blender which is free. That's a bit convoluted to explain how to do though. It requires nodes in Blender. I may start a thread about this whole topic. Blender actually does do more or less what TG2 can do with exposure but it just gives you options later. Then you export the Blender output to another app (this can be lower bit depth) where you can further tweak diffferent regions of the shot. To me, many TG2 renders look like people are compensating for lighting within their TG2 lighting environment and it doesn't look so photo like because nearly all landscape photos end up being heavily post edited. By doing this you diminish one of TG2s greatest features, it's atmosphere glow. It's the same in movies as well. If you look carefully you can see this editing even in movies i.e ground that has been brightened.

Tangled-Universe

Quote from: bebe onea on November 24, 2012, 07:01:52 AM
Hi,
Actually 1 arc second is about 30 m resolution.
The DEM data was obtained within a research program that deals with alpine environments conservation.

30m? Wow great. Logically I'm going to ask the question whether you're allowed to share those elevation data with the community? ;)

Tangled-Universe

Quote from: efflux on November 25, 2012, 03:12:16 AM
Good start.

This highlights something I'm going to do further tests on in accordance with the whole problem of photography and attempting to compensate for these problems in TG2. I think in a real photo your second image would be massively blown out with light. I'm going to test really pushing for way more atmosphere glow. I don't use any contrast in the render settings in TG2 or try to "fix" exposure which isn't really possible in TG2. I Iet things get badly overexposed (or underexposed) then I post edit it with exr. You can edit exr in Blender which is free. That's a bit convoluted to explain how to do though. It requires nodes in Blender. I may start a thread about this whole topic. Blender actually does do more or less what TG2 can do with exposure but it just gives you options later. Then you export the Blender output to another app (this can be lower bit depth) where you can further tweak diffferent regions of the shot. To me, many TG2 renders look like people are compensating for lighting within their TG2 lighting environment and it doesn't look so photo like because nearly all landscape photos end up being heavily post edited. By doing this you diminish one of TG2s greatest features, it's atmosphere glow. It's the same in movies as well. If you look carefully you can see this editing even in movies i.e ground that has been brightened.

I think I understand a bit what you mean. The default atmosphere settings are quite realistic, I think. One shouldn't tinker too much with it.
Basically the camera in TG2 should emulate a real world camera. In other words: with the default atmosphere settings your render output would be overexposed when facing the atmosphere glow/sun directly.

On the technical side you made one mis-assumption here. The render contrast and gamma settings only apply to lower bit depth formats like BMP and TIF. If you save as EXR the renderer will not apply the toning, contrast and gamma to it.

efflux

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on November 25, 2012, 05:37:19 AM
On the technical side you made one mis-assumption here. The render contrast and gamma settings only apply to lower bit depth formats like BMP and TIF. If you save as EXR the renderer will not apply the toning, contrast and gamma to it.

OK. I never did that anyway so never found it out.