Kadri, this is a fantastic idea!!! I think I'll do that!!
Doc, the birds are made of a particle system using animated bird meshes as particles in 3ds max and then exported as an object sequence. The whole thing can be moved, scaled and rotated, but the motion itself of each bird is fixed.
I don't want to get too close to the village, unless I added some more details (hmm, maybe I'll do exactly that...
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The shadow popping is a big issue for animations, but there are some settings to avoid that (hopefully). I once copied one of Matt's comments on this (don't remember where exactly) and saved it as a text file. Here is what Matt wrote (long text!!):
"For animations:
In the Render Subdiv Settings node:
Fully adaptive OFF, but there may be side effects. OFF may reduce detail unsatisfactorily in some places or put needless detail in others, but if you need absolutely pop-free animation it might need to be OFF in current versions.
(Hannes: I leave this ON always. The side effects are really nasty!)Force all edges ON
Jitter shading points OFF
Stabilise ray detail in motion ON (if you have v2.4 alpha)
On the 'Extra' tab of the render node:
Detail blending 1. This is the most important setting for blending between levels of detail as the distance between camera and surface changes. Values other than 1 can be used, but I would not recommend lower than 0.5. Higher blending values increase render time, unfortunately.
Displacement filter 1 (default). Allows displacements to blend between levels of detail. The effect also depends on detail blending.
Microvertex jitter OFF or ON. OFF seems to produce a more stable animation because I think there is an error somewhere, but ON reduces render times by a small amount.
Detail jitter OFF. There is an error that cause this to change from one frame to the next, so you should switch it OFF for animations.
For still images:
Either delete the Subdiv Settings Node altogether, or reset it to default settings, which are:
Fully adaptive ON (default)
Force all edges OFF (default)
Jitter shading points ON (default)
Stabilise ray detail in motion OFF (default)
Still image quality is generally higher and often with shorter render times if you have the following settings on the 'Extra' tab:
Detail blending 0 (default). Higher blending values increase render time, and are not as useful with still images, so I suggest setting to 0. Blending also softens the appearance of surfaces, but its main purpose is to blend between levels of detail in animations.
Displacement filter between 0 and 1. I always leave this at 1 (default) for still and animations.
Microvertex jitter ON (default)
Detail jitter ON (default)
Briefly, this is what the Render Subdiv Settings do:
Fully adaptive causes micropolygons to be more heavily subdivided when the surface is stretched by displacements, but reduces the amount of subdivision where the surface is compressed in screen space due to the angle of view or due to displacements. For stills this is usually a good idea, but it can lead to sudden changes between frames in an animation (and may also produce gaps in stills, although I am not sure about this). Turning this off means that the amount of subdivision is quite regular according to the undisplaced surface, and therefore stable in animations, but doesn't give the best image quality when studying each frame separately. Big displacements will look quite faceted when this is turned off.
Force all edges fixes one of the problems that causes gaps between micropolygons. If two neighbouring micropolygons A and B are subdivided to different levels along a shared edge, this can cause gaps. Force all edges causes the shared edges to be subdivided to the same level. This helps in both animations and stills. The default is OFF because this feature hasn't been in use for very long and it does slightly increase render time. For animations, though, it's probably worth the cost to remove artefacts.
Jitter shading points chooses a random point on each micropolygon as the point where lighting and shaders are calculated. The results of those calculations are used to colour the whole micropolygon. Jittering provides a more natural image, but because of an error in current versions the jitter is different on each frame so it is a source of unwanted noise in animations.
Stabilise ray detail in motion. This feature is even more recent than the others, and needs some further work, but its purpose is to blend between levels of detail when calculating shadows and reflections. If it's working correctly, it should have two benefits. It should minimise the crawling of shadows across surfaces as the distance from camera changes. The crawling motion is instead replaced by a gradual blend between different shadow positions. (Unfortunately it's impossible to completely stop the shadows from changing shape, because the terrain that casts the shadows needs to change levels of detail as the camera moves.) Second, because the shadow positions are now blended instead of moving from frame to frame, popping that occurs when shadow-casting micropolygons very close to the point receiving the shadow change their shape should no longer happen. Unfortunately, stabilise ray detail in motion produces artefacts of its own - sometime a kind of cross-hatching pattern is visible. This is something I still need to improve.
I really don't like having all these options. The goal is hide these behind a couple of simple options which should optimise Terragen for animations or stills.
Matt"