Easy Cloud Peaks Example

[WAS]

In response CG Mania's question about clouds sticking their heads up, I thought I'd submit this basic example for anyone else. I struggled with this for a long time and gave up on it just as often until I exampled some of Dune's work. I hope it helps someone, or gives them ideas.

PS: I do not know if this method breaks the clouds at high quality settings. The preview has substantial noise reduction and an high pass I went a little overboard on.

[Oshyan]

Nope, works fine at higher detail settings. I'm interested in why you (and many others) choose to post .tgc clip files often here when IMO a TGD might be better. The reason I say this is that many times the camera position is one of the important parts of the setup. In this case that's definitely true. Simply using the .tgc gives a very different result, and I found it basically impossible to adjust the camera to find the same view. Obviously you don't need people to be able to replicate the exact same setup, but at least having an included camera above the clouds makes sense. Maybe it's just a personal preference thing.

- Oshyan

[WAS]

Nope, works fine at higher detail settings. I'm interested in why you (and many others) choose to post .tgc clip files often here when IMO a TGD might be better. The reason I say this is that many times the camera position is one of the important parts of the setup. In this case that's definitely true. Simply using the .tgc gives a very different result, and I found it basically impossible to adjust the camera to find the same view. Obviously you don't need people to be able to replicate the exact same setup, but at least having an included camera above the clouds makes sense. Maybe it's just a personal preference thing.

- Oshyan

I believe the camera is just at 2000m form  0,0,0. Just opened a new project. Being cloud peaks, whatever cloud peaks you want to look at would be appropriate. I feel a project file for clouds is a bit overdoing it. The users should have a basic grasp of the camera system before anything else. And I assumed the whole point of the TGC system is easy sharing. Maybe adding a ability to save the camera settings to a TGC would be beneficial (a checkbox) which would add a generic camera upon insertion.

I guess like a majority of Terragen content, I assume people know a bit about Terragen, which I guess is one of it's Bane's, as it was for me when I first joined and started using back with TG2.

I've attached a updated project, and higher quality preview I let render out overnight. Raising the camera a bit and tilting down should give you your "clouds to the horizon effect" CG Mania. If not, cloud radius just needs to be bumped up.

[Oshyan]

What exactly is easier about a TGC vs. a TGD though? That's the part I don't understand. TGCs are specifically for sharing *parts* of a network. They are not actually easier to use than TGDs, in fact I would argue they are slightly *harder* precisely because of the fact that you need to either insert them manually into your network, or trust the auto-insertion to work (it often does but not always), *and* you need to replicate any other needed settings like camera position. Whereas using a TGD is simpler, just a matter of opening the file and you get the whole result exactly as the person demonstrated. Your approach is not wrong, I just don't really understand why it may be better. I suppose if you assume that the person wants to use your cloud setup immediately in an *already existing project* then it would be slightly faster and easier to use for that purpose.

- Oshyan

[WAS]

What exactly is easier about a TGC vs. a TGD though? That's the part I don't understand. TGCs are specifically for sharing *parts* of a network. They are not actually easier to use than TGDs, in fact I would argue they are slightly *harder* precisely because of the fact that you need to either insert them manually into your network, or trust the auto-insertion to work (it often does but not always), *and* you need to replicate any other needed settings like camera position. Whereas using a TGD is simpler, just a matter of opening the file and you get the whole result exactly as the person demonstrated. Your approach is not wrong, I just don't really understand why it may be better. I suppose if you assume that the person wants to use your cloud setup immediately in an *already existing project* then it would be slightly faster and easier to use for that purpose.

- Oshyan

Isn't that assuming you're just ripping off projects, or doing the work for the user then. When they are looking for something? I mean I try to think about the user as much as possible, even editing XML data for paid users sometimes as I've been question when things are so small. But saying it's more work to insert or add a TGC is harder than recreating the nodes and settings yourself in your own project is puzzling. I'd definitely assume inserting/adding a TGC is by far simpler, as I just gotta add it and hook it up and change a seed for uniqueness or any other small settings i want to tweak.

Like, I work off of TGCs. All my unique setups are saved to TGCs and can be dropped into my projects. Clouds. Shaders. Colour shaders. Functions. Everything. It's the most amazing useful aspect of Terragen.  Like literally. As far as workflow goes.

PS, I do always Add TGC files, as relying on insertion is buggy. Don't see any issue in hooking up nodes/rearranging them. It's pretty inherent to the program in general for much you are doing.

[Oshyan]

I agree if you're trying to make a modular setup that would be used from a variety of angles or in different scenarios. I just see a lot of people posting TGCs to demonstrate something very specific that relies on camera or other parts they do not include as part of the TGC to demonstrate the effect. Again it may just be a different way of seeing things. It's not meant as a criticism, people sometimes just make choices that are different than what I would. Personally I post both TGC and TGD, where appropriate, but I find TGD to be fastest and easiest - both for myself and others - to demonstrate a particular effect. And I would argue that providing an effect that is readily "dropped in" to an existing project more significantly encourages direct re-use, rather than the person opening a TGD and learning from it and *re-implementing* it in their own project (of course they could just copy/paste the nodes or export their own TGC).

Anyway it doesn't need to be a huge debate, just something I found surprising/interesting.

- Oshyan

[WAS]

I agree if you're trying to make a modular setup that would be used from a variety of angles or in different scenarios. I just see a lot of people posting TGCs to demonstrate something very specific that relies on camera or other parts they do not include as part of the TGC to demonstrate the effect. Again it may just be a different way of seeing things. It's not meant as a criticism, people sometimes just make choices that are different than what I would. Personally I post both TGC and TGD, where appropriate, but I find TGD to be fastest and easiest - both for myself and others - to demonstrate a particular effect. And I would argue that providing an effect that is readily "dropped in" to an existing project more significantly encourages direct re-use, rather than the person opening a TGD and learning from it and *re-implementing* it in their own project (of course they could just copy/paste the nodes or export their own TGC).

Anyway it doesn't need to be a huge debate, just something I found surprising/interesting.

- Oshyan

I guess my motive was more specific to a person, assuming they'd drop it in their own project where there camera was relative to mine. That is my bad.

[luvsmuzik]

I agree if you're trying to make a modular setup that would be used from a variety of angles or in different scenarios. I just see a lot of people posting TGCs to demonstrate something very specific that relies on camera or other parts they do not include as part of the TGC to demonstrate the effect. Again it may just be a different way of seeing things. It's not meant as a criticism, people sometimes just make choices that are different than what I would. Personally I post both TGC and TGD, where appropriate, but I find TGD to be fastest and easiest - both for myself and others - to demonstrate a particular effect. And I would argue that providing an effect that is readily "dropped in" to an existing project more significantly encourages direct re-use, rather than the person opening a TGD and learning from it and *re-implementing* it in their own project (of course they could just copy/paste the nodes or export their own TGC).

Anyway it doesn't need to be a huge debate, just something I found surprising/interesting.

- Oshyan

I guess my motive was more specific to a person, assuming they'd drop it in their own project where there camera was relative to mine. That is my bad.

Oh come on....we have libraries full of clip files and file sharing....do you want to expand the use of this program or not?

[Oshyan]

luvsmusic, if you're responding to me, I think you've misunderstood my intent. I am not trying to discourage anyone from posting *anything*. I am actually noticing that people sometimes post things in a form that seems (to me) to be *slightly* less optimal for a specific situation, and then trying to understand why that is. There is no "right" approach, and in this case it seems pretty clear that it's just a matter of perspective and small workflow differences/preferences. A TGC and TGD can both be used for very similar purposes and with substantially similar value, with a little extra work in one case or the other, depending on need.

- Oshyan

[WAS]

Yeah I understand the issue. Coming from anyone else coming across the topic, the thread doesn't translate over to a TGC. I am specifically exampling cloud peaks, but provide a TGC with no setup to demonstrate my example.

[luvsmuzik]

luvsmusic, if you're responding to me, I think you've misunderstood my intent. I am not trying to discourage anyone from posting *anything*. I am actually noticing that people sometimes post things in a form that seems (to me) to be *slightly* less optimal for a specific situation, and then trying to understand why that is. There is no "right" approach, and in this case it seems pretty clear that it's just a matter of perspective and small workflow differences/preferences. A TGC and TGD can both be used for very similar purposes and with substantially similar value, with a little extra work in one case or the other, depending on need.

- Oshyan

Nope, not you particularly. I read responses and if you will note, most of your points were mentioned about global vs local. coverage, and camera position. I tried the settings CGMania used on a local, radius 50000 and got almost exact results as CG, with coverage at 1. Just nice even mounds of clouds. When I used EZClouds (when they first appeared in version 4) I tended to get responses like, too wispy, too much cotton candy, too grainy, etc etc. So with higher resolution capability now I continue to experiment.  You must remember, I am old, and used the slider with preview approach from the dinosaur era. The preview takes as long as a low res render sometimes, so sometimes i wait for it, sometimes I don't.

My feeling about clip files is that one should/could take advantage of the notes option like many of the preset files and many clip files have these as well. Long time users and those naturally gifted can usually hang them in the right place, not always so true for newbies. In this case a tgd share would have been fine, as it dealt mainly with clouds, sun, altitude, camera. When one element of a good render is dissected it is much easier than deleting objects or dealing with directory paths, perhaps that is one reason people offer the tgc.