Kirkjufellsfoss

[oysteroid]

You could probably do some rocks in Sculptris, but this particular technique won't work there, as the MAHmask bias brush is key, and I don't think Sculptris has anything comparable. Blender has some sculpting tools too, but not this particular thing. I don't know anything about Mudbox, but something similar might be possible there.

[j meyer]

oysteroid - there are some very good examples to find at ZBC.Environmental things
done for 'underworld' or other rather old stuff.'Rock environment' was very good,too.
Don't remember the author's name or the thread otherwise I'd have posted links,sorry.
Ryan Kingslien had/has tutorial video and some other environment artists have
posted examples of techniques also.Hard to find maybe,but definitely there.

[bobbystahr]

oysteroid - there are some very good examples to find at ZBC.Environmental things
done for 'underworld' or other rather old stuff.'Rock environment' was very good,too.
Don't remember the author's name or the thread otherwise I'd have posted links,sorry.
Ryan Kingslien had/has tutorial video and some other environment artists have
posted examples of techniques also.Hard to find maybe,but definitely there.

Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation ? what's this ZBC?

[j meyer]

ZBrushCentral.Sorry.

[bobbystahr]

ZBrushCentral.Sorry.

Not a problem, I fear I was being an early morning wise ass....

[oysteroid]

Thanks, j meyer, I'll check it out!

Here is another quick rock sculpt I did for fun using this same basic technique. It is probably overcooked as usual! This one is just a turntable animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOECdHsDYRE&feature=youtu.be

Also, here is a simple example of an effect that happens readily when a little smoothing is applied here and there between iterations with 'selected orientation' applied to the MAHmask bias brush.

[attachimg=1]

This effect reminds me of some eroded sandstone I've seen.

[DannyG]

This really is an excellent render, by far one of my favorites 

[bobbystahr]

Somewhere on here I read that you have music on YouTube, so I looked you up! Really nice, honest, human music! 

Missed this when you posted but I tend to re read threads, for this reason, as I am getting older and miss stuff. Thanks for checking out my you tubes. P M me an e mail address and I'll send you a link for the cd download if you like.

[archonforest]

Missed this when you posted but I tend to re read threads, for this reason, as I am getting older and miss stuff. Thanks for checking out my you tubes. P M me an e mail address and I'll send you a link for the cd download if you like.
[/quote]

wowoww! I would be very interested on the too

[oysteroid]

Thanks, Danny! 

There are some things I don't like so much about it though. I got involved with contest pretty late and spent most of my time figuring out how to use all the blue nodes for the waterfall, and so ended up rushing some of the rest of it. The atmosphere and distant mountain could have been a lot better. And the foreground plants could have used a little more work. But most of all, I dislike the water. I wanted to find a way to make the water look like it should in a long exposure such that it would be more consistent with the waterfall, but I just ran out of time! And I don't know if there is a way to do that satisfactorily anyway, short of animating waves in the water and averaging a bunch of frames together to get the motion blur, and I don't have the animation-capable version. Using clouds in the water can go a certain distance toward the right effect, but it still isn't quite right, not like motion blurred reflections.

I have still been meaning to share the waterfall method I developed for this, but have been a bit too busy here lately. Hopefully I'll get to it soon! I've got a file in progress in which I am trying to make the falls as flexible and user-friendly as possible.

[Oshyan]

This was one of my personal favorites, and had some of the most impressive and unique TG and multi-app work(flow) in it. I think the main thing that let it down is the lighting (and possibly atmosphere, clouds are nice but maybe a bit boring), and the foreground vegetation as you mentioned. Structurally, and in terms of general realism, land forms true to the source material, etc., it is one of the best images I've seen lately, not just from the contest but in general. I encourage you to think about tweaking it a bit further even though the contest is over, or maybe make a derivative image. We're working on some new web content and a gallery update and I could easily see an improved version of this image being a shoo-in.

- Oshyan

[oysteroid]

Thanks, Oshyan! And I agree about the lighting. As for tweaking it a bit further, we'll see! I am kind of sick of that image to tell you the truth! I'll think about it.

Bobby, I'll send a PM for that CD. 

[Dune]

I'll second Oshyan. Still wanted to comment in more detail, but never came to it. It was one of my favorites too, but some aspects were not photographic enough, and that was the challenge after all. But I greatly admire your skill and amount of work to put this together.
Another thing that struck me as unnatural is the absolute flatness of the water around the fall in relation to the (magnificently shaped) water flow in front, and the obviously 'time-exposed' fall itself. They are absolutely great as parts, but don't fit together somehow.
Also the vegetation clinging to the (again, very nice) rock is too hard edged, IMHO.

I too would like to see this (or similar) perfected very much. I like your style!

[oysteroid]

Thanks, Dune!

I agree with your criticism. I intended to try to do something with the water more like this sort of long exposure:



But I just ran out of time and still don't really see a way to do it inside of TG without the animation version, where one might average together a bunch of frames in which the water changes from frame to frame, so that the waves get blurred out.

And the moss on the rocks does look a bit hard and too thick really.

[Dune]

I did something a while a go (posted somewhere), where I used a cloud layer as blurred water; that may be a method for you also, seeing this photo. Using the function inputs there's lots you can do; color, mask, even displace, or rather thicken and thin by procedurals.