Darth's Road Entry - Final

[Oshyan]

Or you could try A: increasing Strength on Surfaces for enviro light or B: tone mapping. Personally I'd prefer to see the rays still as they're one of my favorite parts of this.

- Oshyan

[TheBadger]

I really like the atmo and light of the forest just a little in off the road. The lighting there really supports the other areas of the image. Over all I like the image.
Hope you can tweak it to get what your after.

[Hannes]

Wow, really looking great! I agree with Oshyan, but otherwise a fantastic image!

[Gannaingh]

Progress is slow at this point. I'm still trying to get the details in the shadows to look good, without looking flat. Right now I'm being crazy  and doing some crop renders with GI at 5/5 . At least based on what I can see from the GI pre-pass, the shadows are certainly lighter, but i won't know how they look until it's finished. Once its done I'll post the comparison with the GI 3/3 renders I've been doing.

[Gannaingh]

Alas, my testing was in vain. As you can see, there is not a significant difference between GI being set at 3/3 (left) and when it is set at 5/5 (right). It might be something to do with the ambient level in the atmosphere. I increased the ambiance recently and it might be contributing to the "density" and darkness of the atmosphere. I think I'm going to try Oshyan's fill light setup since I've seen some good results from it floating around the forums. Better tone mapping should help also, but I want to coax as much out of Terragen as I can before resorting to fiddling with other software. Thanks for staying tuned.

[Tangled-Universe]

GI relative detail @ >3 is seldomly necessary, as you indeed found out.
Also, you're correct about the atmosphere's role in shadow brightness.
With GI @ 1, even without GI, you can get brigter shadows.
Key to this is the atmosphere haze and density settings.


Take a look at my WIP for instance:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,15737.msg154260.html#msg154260


Atmosphere haze density is 1 and blue sky density is 1.75. Fake dark power is 1 and sharpness is 1.
Glow settings are default.
GI strength on surfaces is 0.7 in the enviro light. Yet, still there's some detail in the shadows.


Now, if I would increase blue sky and haze density to 2 or 3 and increase haze colour to 0.6 then you'll notice that cast shadows are brighter and that there will be more detail in the shadows. Up to a level that you may even consider them flat.
Here's an extreme example of this technique:
http://www.cgscenery.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Overcast_Weather__V2_by_Tangled_Universe.jpg


So what are your atmosphere settings now?


Cheers,
Martin

[Gannaingh]

Atmosphere
atmosphere haze density: 1.5
blue sky density: 2
glow amount: 1
glow power: 1.25
ambient: 0
fake dark power: 0
fake dark sharpness: 0


Haze / rays cloud
both colors: .45
glow amount: .8
glow power: 1
ambient: 0
fake dark power: 0
fake dark sharpness: 10 (why so high I wonder?)


Martin, I want to simulate something in between what I have now and what you show in your second link (which is one of my favorites btw). I like the brightness in the shadows, right now mine seems a tad bit depressing and gloomy. 

[ajcgi]

This is a pretty one. Nicely understated.

[inkydigit]

I love this, great quiet mood and light, lovely detailing too!

[mhaze]

Great mood and lighting, interesting POV and nicely detailed road surface.

[Tangled-Universe]

Sorry for the late response, got carried away with some other things


Your setup doesn't look so much "off" from the default.
In a way I'm a bit surprised why your render is still so dark'ish, but no worries, there are some things we can try!


For starters, you may try increasing haze exponential height and it's colour for the atmosphere.
Default colour is 0.35, so try something like 0.5-0.6 with an exp height of 6000-8000 (try some variations).
Keep everything else at default, also the ambient and fake darkness settings.


I'd disable the haze cloud layer for the moment and focus on whether your atmosphere gives you the type of shadows and hue you're looking for.
Then later you can add in your cloud haze, if necessary, and then you'd only need to tweak it's density and colour.


I'll dig in my folders to see if I can find the tgd of that example.

Fake dark sharpness smooths out the fake dark power effect.
To demonstrate set fake dark power @ 1 and compare fake dark sharpness @ 1 and @ 10
You can see that for high sharpness values you need more fake darkness power to get a darker sky.

Atmosphere
atmosphere haze density: 1.5
blue sky density: 2
glow amount: 1
glow power: 1.25
ambient: 0
fake dark power: 0
fake dark sharpness: 0


Haze / rays cloud
both colors: .45
glow amount: .8
glow power: 1
ambient: 0
fake dark power: 0
fake dark sharpness: 10 (why so high I wonder?)


Martin, I want to simulate something in between what I have now and what you show in your second link (which is one of my favorites btw). I like the brightness in the shadows, right now mine seems a tad bit depressing and gloomy.

[Gannaingh]

Thanks for the reply TU, I'll give your suggestions a go on top of the improvements I've made already. Most of them were working with the shaders on the models, instead of the atmosphere itself. I forgot to add some blending shaders to the traffic lines, so they look absolutely pristine at the moment. I'm in love with the right side of the image so I'm going to try to emphasize that part a little more.

[cyphyr]

Oh that dose look good

Richard

[Gannaingh]

Thank you 

[TheBadger]

amazing