Luminosity Highlight Intensity... Missing?

[WAS]

I've noticed when you use a surface layer to create a glow with the luminosity feature it does not create any actual 3D depth to it's cast.

For example. If you up a luminous layer to 50 with a color like dark orange as your original hue, you will get your orange glow, sure. However it will have no intensity. It will be the same light cast at 0.001 meters away as it does at almost 20 meters away before it finally starts fading out.

I'd imagine I'd get a lot more yellow/orange intensity, specular highlights on the reflective surfaces I have inserted. But instead it's uniform.



In the above image there is no intensity to the light at the source, but the same intensity almost 20 meters away before it starts to finally fade... this is incredibly unrealistic. Can this be overcome with surface layers luminous effects?

[Matt]

This is going to depend on the size of your light source, in this case the luminous surface. If it's a large source, then within a certain range you wouldn't see the kind of falloff you're expecting. I'm talking about real life, not just Terragen. A strong falloff requires the distance to be large relative to the size of the light source. The same for specular highlights too.

However, to get the best results you need high GI quality. I would try at least 6, but even higher values may improve the results.

EDIT: High GI detail too.

Matt

[WAS]

I tried cranking detail to 4 and quality to 8, but all it seems to do is increase the overall brightness of everything, effectively achieving the same effect as before, on a grander scale.

The source of light isn't that big, I believe, just like a Volcano and real life, there should be highlight intensities at the lava base.



From here we can see specular highlights from the brightest source despite the overall scene lit up by light.

[Matt]

Can you show me which parts you mean? In the photo I see very bright lava above the waterline, but that's bright because it's lava, not because it's being lit by some other part of the scene. And the lake is made of water, not lava. In your render I thought you had a lake made of lava which was intended to illuminate a solid rock shoreline, which is quite different, or have I misunderstood what you were trying to do?

Matt

[WAS]

Can you show me which parts you mean? In the photo I see very bright lava above the waterline, but that's bright because it's lava, not because it's being lit by some other part of the scene. And the lake is made of water, not lava. In your render I thought you had a lake made of lava which was intended to illuminate a solid rock shoreline, which is quite different, or have I misunderstood what you were trying to do?

Matt

I just mean the specular in general. I can get a glow, but there is no specular highlights on the stone in my image even with 0.25% reflectivity and highlight intensity. It's just the flaw luminious glow

[bobbystahr]

maybe run a default shader into your rock colour shader and use that for specular.

[Oshyan]

Works for me. Luminous sphere at 1000 luminosity (10m radius), Base Colours layer unchanged, added a Surface Layer with altitude restriction to 105m and a Reflective Shader child, and then a Lake object at 100m altitude. So what you're seeing is the sphere lighting up the Base Colours under it, then the reflection/specular from the Reflective shader closer to the camera, and then the reflection on the lake object even closer than that, plus some light cast by the luminous object of course.

- Oshyan

[WAS]

Well I feel kinda embarrassed. I somehow killed my specular roughness at 0 and never noticed. What coupled with 0.25 intensity was giving me no noticeable look with the dark gamma of the image. I slipped in a new default shader and all was well so I was wondering what was up with the original, and sure enough.

[Oshyan]

Well, glad it was something simple.

- Oshyan

[bobbystahr]

That stuff happens when y get into a complex scene,,glad y traced it down.