Bzzzz - Your Clear Atmosphere

[rcallicotte]

Bzzzz, I've noticed you often create nearly spotlessly clear skys and even with clouds your atmosphere is pretty clear.  Would you mind sharing how you eliminate this foggy atmosphere that seems to be the default setting for TG2?

[old_blaggard]

The simplest way is to reduce the haze density - by default it's set to 4, but for normal scenes I usually lower it to 3, and if you want it to be very clear I would recommend lowering it to 2 or even 1.

[Harvey Birdman]

Yeah, I think the default haze settings are too high. (Let's see. Could this be a reflection of the fact that Planetside is in foggy old England? Poor guys - they must think the whole world is as lost in the fog as they are.     )

[Buzzzzz]

Don't know who Bzzzz is, but what I do is: as was already said lower the haze density. I prefer 2 or lower, however when I do this I don't care for the over-saturated Default Blue Sky Density Color so I lower the saturation to a little lighter softer blue. In addition I raise the haze exp height to 3000 or more. I normally render with atmo quality anywhere from 64 to 92.

LOL at Harvey 

[rcallicotte]

Excellent, Buzzzz (apologies    ).  Thanks.  This helps tremendously.  Your atmosphere is always the best.

[Volker Harun]

Totally agree with Buzzzzz ...
Altitude of 4000, Density of 1-2, Saturation of BSDC (Tweaks-Tab) is 133.
I saved these settings as the default scene, when terragen starts up.

It helps to set in the Render-Tab the Gamma to 1.9 and Contrast to 0.5

[rcallicotte]

Cool, Volker.  I'll try these.  It makes a huge difference in renders to get the atmosphere right.

Totally agree with Buzzzzz ...
Altitude of 4000, Density of 1-2, Saturation of BSDC (Tweaks-Tab) is 133.
I saved these settings as the default scene, when terragen starts up.

It helps to set in the Render-Tab the Gamma to 1.9 and Contrast to 0.5

[mogn]

I normally use a haze density of 1. But this often produce a moire pattern, so I also put in some cirrus clouds, with decreased coverage.

[FrankB]

I normally use a haze density of 1. But this often produce a moire pattern, so I also put in some cirrus clouds, with decreased coverage.

I believe that must be due to a reduced jitter. If you reduce the jitter, you'll get banding.

Regards,
Frank

[Volker Harun]

So you might tell em what the jitter is for ... I am too lazy to try ,-)

[ProjectX]

I'd assume it slightly randomizes the colours of nearby pixels, which would break up the bands ad turn them into a smooth gradient.

[Oshyan]

I believe it randomizes the sampling for the atmosphere shading. So yes, it tends to break up the reglarity of the sampling patterns and reduce banding in the sky.

- Oshyan

[Mr_Lamppost]

Thanks Volker

Totally agree with Buzzzzz ...
Altitude of 4000, Density of 1-2, Saturation of BSDC (Tweaks-Tab) is 133.
I saved these settings as the default scene, when terragen starts up.

It helps to set in the Render-Tab the Gamma to 1.9 and Contrast to 0.5

I have been aware for a while that I needed to change my Gamma/Contrast settings but have never found the time to experiment.  I have just tried your settings and my clouds have immediately taken on a more solid look.   

I often drop my Bluesky Density to 1 and raise the Bluesky Exp Height to 16000. My haze density is often as low as 0.5, I also drop the Haze Horizon Colour to around 0.2.

In the scene I am testing it on the foreground  terrain has almost gone into silhouette; this is what I would expect from the scene if I were using a real camera in the real world. Fortunately I am in TG land so can just move the sun, etc until I get the effect I want.

Yeah, I think the default haze settings are too high. (Let's see. Could this be a reflection of the fact that Planetside is in foggy old England? Poor guys - they must think the whole world is as lost in the fog as they are.

Can't answer for England but here in Scotland the rain washes the fog away.

[efflux]

I'm dropping the haze to 1 now to get much clearer renders in bright sunlight. It depends on what sort of weather conditions your scene has. Also, the altitude of where you are is important for the haze because, depending on how you build your terrain, it can sometimes displace inwards towards the planet centre quite a lot which I think affects the haze. You can use displacement offset in the terrain to fix this. Haze samples can often be set to 32 but 64 probably ensures smoother results. For clouds it's not so easy to say because they can all be different, at different altitudes etc. I often use 64 and usually get away with it but often I'm downsizing the final render anyway. Drop the settings right down for everything as you work then nearer completion of the scene, increase them until it looks OK. Only experimentation can really answer a lot of these questions.

[bigben]

One extra thing I've recently tried is to create an additional surface layer to add a blue tint to the terrain, masked by a distance shader (near distance 7-10km, far distance 40-80k, coverage 0.1 - 0.3... [edit] ahh just look at the clip ). The main reason I tried this is because whenever I tweaked the lighting/atmosphere settings to achieve the same effect on the terrain, it destroyed the transition of colours in the atmosphere near the horizon. I've only done a couple of rough tests but it looks quite promising.