Additional light and shadow details

[AP]

Is there any possible procedure in order to achieve additional light and shadow details without needing to use the path tracer feature?

[Oshyan]

The Path Tracer *is* the solution to that issue. It is the future of Terragen rendering and most work will be focused on improving it in the future.

- Oshyan

[WAS]

Higher surface GI settings can trick better details "within" shadows, and bounce to the ounce seems (don't quote me; haven't compared differences) to help with ambient highlights.

[WAS]

Did a few test renders for you to show you some ideas

Center example is a standard go-to for low light for me.

[WAS]

Sorry for another bump, but it dawned on me this morning, that you can also use additional environment lighting. Take a look at this example which uses Ambient Occlusion as well as Global Illumination. Strength on surfaces is set to 2 for exaggeration effect.

Image Pass settings AW 3, BO 5, R 32.

You can see with Ambient Occlusion there is more indirect ambient light highlights facing the brightly lit sand.

[cyphyr]

Was there much render time hit using AO and GI together.

I used to do this but I found it very hard to mix the two.
It seemed that I could only ever have one or the other.

I shall revisit and re-evaluate.

[WAS]

Was there much render time hit using AO and GI together.

I used to do this but I found it very hard to mix the two.
It seemed that I could only ever have one or the other.

I shall revisit and re-evaluate.

Seemed to render in just the same amount of time, possibly few seconds added on (10-20)

This is heavily exaggerated, I'd probably use fractions on the AO scales. Like 0.5 on surface or 0.25 etc, just for the added effect. Maybe even floor the other effects. I'll give it a try.

[AP]

The Path Tracer *is* the solution to that issue. It is the future of Terragen rendering and most work will be focused on improving it in the future.

- Oshyan

I figured as much, however I am trying some alternatives until I possibly decide to use the path tracer feature at some point. I am not entirely against using the path tracer feature if I can figure out a way to optimize some settings in order to achieve a somewhat faster render.

[AP]

Sorry for another bump, but it dawned on me this morning, that you can also use additional environment lighting. Take a look at this example which uses Ambient Occlusion as well as Global Illumination. Strength on surfaces is set to 2 for exaggeration effect.

Image Pass settings AW 3, BO 5, R 32.

You can see with Ambient Occlusion there is more indirect ambient light highlights facing the brightly lit sand.

It will probably be a few days until I can post some test renders based on what alternative settings you had suggested.

The object populations and the terrain foreground appear more realistic, however the background has some very exaggerated effects that appear less realistic.

If you have any more suggestions, please by all means.

[WAS]

Perhaps, to keep things to real-world values as close as possible you could just try a secondary enviro light

Code (xml) Select Expand


<terragen_clip>
<enviro_light
name = "Surface GI"
gui_use_node_pos = "1"
gui_node_pos = "320 -160 0"
gui_group = "Lighting"
enable = "1"
mode = "1"
ambient_strength_on_surfaces = "1"
ambient_colour_on_surfaces = "0.6499999762 0.8000000119 1"
ambient_strength_in_atmosphere = "1"
ambient_colour_in_atmosphere = "0.6499999762 0.8000000119 1"
global_strength_on_surfaces = "0.5"
global_tint_on_surfaces = "1 1 1"
global_strength_in_atmosphere = "0"
global_tint_in_atmosphere = "0 0 0"
strength_on_surfaces = "0.5"
colour_on_surfaces = "1 1 1"
strength_in_atmosphere = "0"
colour_in_atmosphere = "0 0 0"
>
</enviro_light>
</terragen_clip>


With your GI settings, try only upping your occlusion weight by 1 or 2, this will at least bring out the shading details of the GI with the added eviro lighting boost.