Rio Celeste Waterfall

Started by digitalguru, August 27, 2013, 07:21:32 PM

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digitalguru

#15
mhaze - you can actually get a full copy of Realflow for $99! It's an educational version, so all they ask is that you don't use it commercially - but yes I appreciate that some of these techniques are not accessible to Terragen users, I did this more in the spirit that Terragen is being increasingly aimed at the the professional community as well as hobbyists and to explore how that could be realised.

Dune, I think you mean the waterfall particles from Realflow? I split the particles into a few passes - main body, splash, foam etc - these are just contain the information about the position and velocity of the particle and have to be rendered in a compatible 3d app like Maya - they were about 12GB added together. These can't be rendered in Terragen so have to be composited over. To get the reflection in the water of the mesh I made a mesh of the particle volume in Realflow and, imported that into Maya. Took the rendered element of the particles from the comp and projected that onto the mesh object and brought it into Terragen. As it wasn't directly visible in the Terragen render it didn't have to be very hi-rez.

Hannes

Thanks for your detailed explanation. A great render!
Anyway I'd love to see how this scene would look without the additional lights. Just sunlight and Enviro light. To my taste the additional lighting looks a bit artificial.

digitalguru

Hannes,
try this - I took out some of the more synthetic elements out of the comp

mhaze

Thanks for the extra information but even with realflow I haven't a app that will handle that data. Never mind.

Hannes

Thank you, digitalguru. I know it's a matter of taste, but I prefer the second one, although there are very dark areas. I think it looks more natural.

Dune

Thanks again, DG. Didn't know it was such a lot of work and such heavy files. Hopefully one day things like this can be done in TG, or at least 'faked'. For a still like yours, it might be much easier to mask the falls and do something procedural, or even project a painted mask. For animation you'd need the real works though.

digitalguru

well the orginal plan was to do an animation, but the more I got into it and realised to the cost in disk space and render time meant I might get it finished some time next year :-)

besides, the fun part was taking a real environment and trying to recreate it - it really ups your skills and I learnt a lot from it.



EoinArmstrong

Excellent composition; the water is really something else!

Oshyan

Superb image and fascinating process. I agree that the 2nd, darker image is preferable for me, but both are great, and the really nice thing is how easily adjusted it is in post now. :)

- Oshyan