My personally easter egg

Started by DocCharly65, March 10, 2015, 04:21:21 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

DocCharly65

Wow, many new wip's to look at since I had time to be here!... And great works! I'll have to look at all of them these days.

Meanwhile I had some "learning sessions". I saw big ben's link to the british-museum-downloads --- and I just HAD TO DO THIS...

[attach=1]

What I had (and further have) to learn:
Creating a map of an existing island.
Creating foam on the water
Creating wet coast line
.
.
And many things more...

Some of the objects are just to have an imagination of dimensions (sorry - - horse is too small)
I want to change the docks asap.
And many things more...


This was in the beginning:
I started with a card of contour lines in corel photo paint
[attach=2]

I manually traced all contour lines, saved them as masks, and filled all with a black color + gamma dependend on the height
[attach=3]

Some smoothing... and here is my first manually selfmade map (only 800x800 -- original is 8333x8333):
[attach=4]

That was app. 2 weeks.
The last 3 weeks I fighted hightmaps, displacement functions... and many more...

Just a check for the plausibility of the coastline (no shaders - only some clouds):
[attach=5]

sometime it was just frustrating, how slow I get forward, but I hope the first results are not too bad  :)

And now let's see what else happend here in the forum in the last weeks  ;)

TheBadger

QuoteI saw big ben's link to the british-museum-downloads --- and I just HAD TO DO THIS...
lol! ;D I am glad you used those. I saw them and thought, man I hope someone renders that, they look pretty good. And they do.
It has been eaten.

DocCharly65

#2
Step by step...
Changed the order of the fakestones shaders and had another struggle with the displacement shaders (so many possible input values to get a
hedgehog instead of a landscape... ;)  )

Hope this looks not too bad ... But after this try with the lamp inside the cabin I work on a late in the evening / night scenery. (I think the light disturbs this scenery)

[attach=1]

Dune

It looks pretty good, actually. The most 'disturbing' IMO is the misty shore. I don't think you need that, but instead some foam where water hits rock. And I think with this roughness of the sea, the rocks wouldn't be wet that high up. Maybe add some (XOIO) guy in the illuminated doorway, looking out? The horse and catamaran are nice attribs.

DocCharly65

#4
Dear Ulco, you are absolutely right... and you will not believe what I'm reading since 3 days ;)
I try to understand all your experiments with foam and coastal waves since ... I think it must have been 2009?
(I had a little bit time to read this week, because my boss sent me home with a flu...)

I really miss the functions of the TG 0.9 ... was it WaterWorks?
I will need much time and experiments to get behind the secrets.

Unfortunately the fog looked "OK" like spray, when I used lower resolution, lower render detail and lower AA for tests. The render took almost 40 h until I saw the mess.

But I'll not give up...
A minute ago I found a basic "tutorial" from you - I think I will start at that point:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,9891.msg103314.html#msg103314
.

XOIO is a good idea. It will darken the light of the open door, which disturbs me.


Dune

Yeah, I've been quite busy with that water stuff; enough to read while you're ill (hope you get better soon though).
You can use the displacement of the terrain to derive a mask from for some coastal foam. Blue nodes; convert 'displacement to scalar'. Add a color adjust or smooth step and play with the settings until you have the coastal area like you want it (feed into surface shader on lake for testing). One thing to take into account; your basic terrain fractal must have stretched Y, or you won't exactly get the coastal mask, as PF change in Y as well of course. And then there are ways to make surflike waves on that coast by using sinus functions......

DocCharly65

#6
Thanks for your support, Dune.
Still a little cough. I think currently I smoke too little  ;)

After many many experiments I have to admit, that my talent with procedural terrain, water, etc. is still very small. Fortunately, I came up with the idea to look for your "beach-training" at NWDA. I think I'll start from the beginning to really understand what I do.

Here is the point where I gave up the previous concept:

[attach=1]

Here is the concept how I created the coastal strip. I hope you can grin a little but do not have to laugh too much ;) I think that in that concept I didn't really understand your advise and moved into a dead end:

[attach=2]

With the Powerfractal I streched the waves and the Painted shader 14 deleted these waves from the area close to the coastline. The other cloud fractals were to simulate a kind of foam... But as I said I will study all of your beach tutorial before I begin again... I first want to understand - not just copy...

Meanwhile I started a better motivating WIP for the moment (I hope it will come tomorrow): An aerial view of the same island... 

Dune

I grinned a little. But what are all these lakes for? If it's just a piece of coast you want to portray, you can use a warped soft edged simple shape. The warp determines the curves of the coast. With additional simple shapes you can define masks for different regions on that coast, and give each a stretched fractal for waves. Warp everything separately by the same warping fractal (vector displacement+ fractal), or the whole lot ath the end of the line. You can even reduce warping effect on the waves and rotate them to get wind direction into play, especially if a coastline is curved strongly.
With a procedural terrain, you have to derive the height through a blue node (displacement to scalar), add some smooth step and figure out the right heights and softness, then you'll have a mask too. With an additional sinus function into that mask you can get some sort of surflike waves.

bigben

Here are some terrains and a satellite image to play with.  TGD uses the version with bathymetry, the "SRTM" tif is just the land.

DocCharly65

#9
I do not begrudge you the grin  :)

The two other lakes are relics of one of my big mistakes: I mostly think too big. They are the two crater lakes in the volcano's (Rana Roratka and Rana Kao) of the real Easter Island and should have been there in an animation. You can find them in the card at the top of this topic. 

I always think in animations... Many scenes look OK from far distance and get unrealistic if you get too close. But I promise, when my head is free again, I will study your coast and beach tutorials.

Sorry, sometimes I even have trouble understanding how to use all the functions and shaders... when to use e.g. input node and when to use mask shader node instead or density function node, which sequence... 3/4 year since my first usage of TG3 now my lerning curve is stagnating (for a moment). When I break this wall, new possibilities will appear. I have seen that others even left the forum and gave up... not me ;)


... Oh I see, that meanwhile bigben wrote too...
Thanks... Yesterday I already saw something - I think it was a link from one of your topics where I saw terrain data of almost every part of the earth? Hey, I will kick my own butt, when the Rapa Nui Terrain already exists and I had a two weeks fight to create that hand made height map  :P ;)

DocCharly65

OK bigben -- my butt hurts now!  ;) :P
I checked your tgd - my hightmap is just something similar BUT NOT Rapanui... Your's has the cliffs, I never got to work...

Some psychological work now:
I'm not frustrated - I'm not frustrated - I'm not frustrated - I'm not frustrated - I'm not frustrated
I will not give up my version - I will not give up my version - I will not give up my version - I will not give up my version

In fact I'll not throw away my version because it was too much work.


bigben

Given the process you used to create the terrain it was a pretty good result, and there is always much to learn in the journey ;)

DocCharly65

#12
Thanks ;)
But as alread promised yesterday... Just let's have a break...
(TG is still "just hobby" for me and I want to keep the fun)

Here is a aerial view of "NOT Rapanui"
Just a training for object-placing and road-painting.

The airport is at the opposite side, the vegetation and many more details are different - but I like this island...

[attach=1]

And in contrast to the real Easter Island this island will have some wind turbines from cyphyr (render job just running)

[attachimg=2]

... but if too much more things go wrong I will place a big Mc Donald on that Island! :)

DocCharly65

Sorry - just a little bit too late for 1st april and easter... but never the less, hope you have fun...

[attachurl=1]

Meanwhile... I go on exercising...  ;)

Dune