Canyon WIP Crits welcome

[cyphyr]

Hi Gang

I have been inspired by some of the recent canyon renders. I made the following image using a modified version of ProjectX's Procedural canyon shader, my models and I've been playing with some of the voronoi function nodes for some of the wavy rock effects. I'm not entirely happy with the result so far. The stones need changing obviously but I'm unsure of what else to change. I'm thinking of toning down the colours somewhat, but not too much. It sems to lack something, drama, composition, something.

Comments and critiques welcome.

Thanks

Richard

[Tangled-Universe]

Those displacements, realistic or not, look really cool! 
I really like the colours too, only thing I'd change is to tone down the purple shades a little.
Further you could try to roughen the surfaces a little bit more, because the overall look is a little bit too smooth to my taste.
The bridges are a nice  touch, works nice with the scene. Great work!

Regards,
Martin

[FrankB]

First of all: this is a very interesting image to look at.
However, I think I understand why you're looking for having something else, still.
It is difficult to come by, but maybe it's the ground. The ripples don#t look good, and somehow, there's too much yellow.
Then there's the question of depth. Upwards, the impression of depth is great, thanks to the hanging bridges. But on the ground towards the far away canyon walls, the imression of depth is lost.
If you're looking for more drama, why not have a few floating fog-like bands travel through the canyon, partially blocking sight? Maybe a little bit of vegetation can also help add a sense of scale for the ground?

This is what I could think of for now. Keep it up, as I said, a very interesting image to look at!

Cheers
Frank

[ProjectX]

I'd point the camera upwards and add some larger boulder-like lateral displacements to the cliff sides for variation. Other than that, it's a very nice image!

I must say I'm surprised at how much use my shader is getting, I thought maybe a maximum of 3 or 5 people would download it

[marcob]

I like it the way it is...is unnatural but cool...displacement and colors

[bigben]

Just to add to the confusion....  I think the ripples look good, although they seem to lack a matching displacement(?). I have seen rocks like this.  The "purple" is good as it provides some contrast to the yellow. I agree with Frank that the yellow is a bit too strong although mainly just in the foreground.

The top rope bridge seems out of scale... too big for something so far away relative to the lower bridge.... Perhaps you scaled it to fit across the gap?  This makes the canyon look a lot lower, reducing the potential drama of the shot.

The displacements on the canyon wall might look unrealistic, but with the added human element of the rope bridge they could quite easily be mysterious carvings. The only other suggestion I can think of is to make the lighting a bit more dramatic.. a good gutsy shadow never goes astray in a deep canyon... and perhaps the odd tree or bush growing out of the odd crack to add some extra scale... or even fake it by making the higher plants deliberately smaller.

Great image all the same 

[Volker Harun]

I'd add some haze to the ground to get that Myst-like look ,-)

[rcallicotte]

This is very Myst-like.  Cool.

[cyphyr]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I hadn't realised the Myst connection although I can see it now of course. That may be why I have been unhappy with the image, subconsciously I may have seen the similarity and kept trying to get away from it. My Terragen installation seems very flakey at the moment and I'm having trouble completing any renders at all ... I think I may have to wait till the updated version comes out, hopefully that will be more stable .. (please, oh pretty please).

I actually like the weird displacement on the cliff faces, kind of naturalistic but impossible at the same time, also could it be "moon writing" The sand is just an image map displacement but I agree about the colour, needs to be muted down somewhat. One of my biggest bugbears are the fake rocks and stones, cant get them to look convincing, they just wont "fit" in the scene properly. I've been trying to use the cracks & gashes shader but it crashes as soon as I connect up the network (or sometimes when I render )

If I can get the damn thing to work I'll post some more WIP's later this afternoon.

Richard

[cyphyr]

Well I decided to take the Canyon off in a slightly different direction and the updated Terragen certainly helped (yea much more stable ). I was able to get the cracks & gashes to work although I don't think I completely understand its variables yet. I've posted three versions below, The first is the native render straight out of Terragen, you can see a great many artifacts, holes and spikes. The second is the cleaned up version and the third is with a water plane. The reflections are wrong but I was able to play with the transparency in the foreground quite effectively, its just a layer with an alpha ramp on it.
Let me know what you think.

[Harvey Birdman]

True to my contrarian nature, I'll chip in and say I liked the first one best.



Really! The last one with the water is nice, too, but I liked the surrealistic air of the first version.

[ozijon]

yes me to the first is very Ancient looking

[sjefen]

I must say I like the second one better. The first one is very special and all, but I like the second best.

[rcallicotte]

This is great.  You've got the stone textures down.

[NWsenior07]

I'd say I liked the first one better, but the water is a nice touch. Something about that first POV was perfect.