I'm about to embark on quite a demanding task; making a 150 x 10 foot wall for a museum, all TG3. It's supposed to be one terrain, extending from right to left, spanning 250.000 years.
So..... thinking about this gives me the creeps already, and I would like to have any input by you guys. Anyone have any experience with this?
Luckily there are gaps, and it doesn't need to be one huge file. But still, they have to merge into each other, which I will do in PS. But perhaps PS can't handle a huge file. And how about cutting it in pieces and then stitching the non-merged bits together? The cut bits will fit again exactly anyway. But what will a printer need, one huge file, or can he work with the fragments? It will probably be printed on something flexible to accommodate wall curves.
And how large should I render? 30-50px/inch, billboard quality I guess. How many inch in a foot? Why don't we all just use the metric system? I'll figure this out, no problem.
But I also saw that if I take a render ratio of 1000x300 for a chunk, and I need a less wide chunk next to that, say 600, but same height 300, the whole POV changes. What would be better, using all the same chunks? Looks like it. I can divide the whole wall in 5 chunks, or 10. The latter is easier to work in of course, but needs more stitching work. But it seems another ratio changes the perception of the terrain......
Speaking about fitting chunks together: I can't really change the sun, as it would be some sort of cylindrical view, flattened to this wall. If I change the sun from one chunk to the next to keep light always from one angle, you get shadow discrepancies. So, one sun. There's bound to be an area with back light and/or one looking into the sun.
Another difficulty: it's a hilly terrain, but near the floor of the museum they want grass and stuff. like you're real close, so not an aerial view. That can be done, but I like to see into the distance as well (though not necessarily everywhere). So the camera should be on a hill or you look against the first hill and no further. But if you have the camera on a hill, 1.6 meters above ground level of that hill (which may be 40m high), you have a valley in front of you, and you can't really see the bottom, or you'd have to point the camera down. But if you point the camera down, you won't have the horizon at 1.6 meters above actual floor level. If you use wide-angle, there's too much distortion. So I guess a normal lens of 60 (default) or maybe 50 would be best to use.
Again another problem is to make it believable. The right hand side of section 5 needs to be a forest, but I only got 2-3 meters or so. Then you get a meter of tundra, a meter of ice age, another meter of tundra, then wood again. Wow.
If anyone has some bright ideas, I would greatly appreciate them.
Oh yes, and these are just tests, ground and veggies need a lot of work, and by coincidence 2 instances of a tree are rotated exactly alike.