Subsurface scattering

[Henry Blewer]

I think that over large areas it would still take a lot of render time. But it would look great for ice.

[Seth]

so that was Ryan again ^^

[sjefen]

This thread http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5786.0 seems to suggest it was Matt, and gives a couple of techniques for faking.

Well..... a fake SSS shader that still looked awesome would be good enough for me, but the way it is done in that thread isn't really working to well.

- Terje

[Seth]

well... maybe stability, speed, different kind of lights (like spots) or multithreaded preview might be better things to work on for PS...
Do you really think SSS will improve renders of a lot of people ? i am not sure...
I don't see a lot of render post in here that need SSS... maybe I am wrong, but honestly... i don't think it is a priority.

[zionner]

Hmm,

I'm not entirely sure if this would even be possible, but would planetside (perhaps as an "unoffical" alternitive) enable the "unfinished" shader, in the same way that the planet surface shader is technically enabled?

Have it removed from all of the menu's ect (so it has basicly been taken out of the program) but still accessible through TGC's, which would allow people, who understand the complications that come with the shader, to at least play around with it?

Thanks
Zionner

[Seth]

It seems that Ryan had a good understanding of how it is possible to achieve something like sss on TG2 with this previous version.


Hey, Ryan, did you do something more on that stuff ?

[jo]

Hi Hannes,

Nevertheless it's a pity that there are no plans to implement SSS in the near future. TG is a landscape generating program and for creating natural things like Ice and snow SSS would be absolutely essential.

Hardly essential. Even if we had it working about as fast as could be expected if would probably still be too slow to use for large objects or items taking up a lot of space in the scene, and it would probably be much quicker and look almost as good if were faked convincingly. Faking it for ice is perhaps a little tricky at the moment, but I think it would be fairly easy to fake for snow, if you mean that blue kind of look if you take a section through deep snow.

I think you're greatly overestimating the importance of the effect in general.

Regards,

Jo

[CCC]

I think the older thread faked the ice look fairly well. I had long forgotten about that thread. Still, it does need some touch ups before it gets buried again.   

[Oshyan]

To be honest the one image in the gallery showing this is the best possible result that could be achieved with the test shader, under ideal circumstances. I've played with it myself and the results people have achieved with "fakes" for ice, etc. are about as good as what it can do, and almost certainly render faster besides.

Zionner, an interesting but not original idea (i.e. we have done this before)...

I remember back in the TG 0.9 (not Terragen Classic) days there was a clever fellow who created a system to read TGW (TerraGen World) files and directly adjust their parameters, getting around any limitations in the UI. It turned out there were fairly few things that actually worked that weren't available otherwise, but there were one or two hidden gems. So far I haven't seen anyone really digging around in TG2 yet, but that could be interesting...

- Oshyan

[zionner]

I'm on it 

[RArcher]

Franck,

I really didn't take the idea any further than what was shown in that previous thread.  It was a neat effect, but it would be pretty tricky to build it into much other than a sphere.  I suppose technically it would be possible to do the same thing with two overlapping heightfields which could produce some interesting results.

[Seth]

thank you for you answer Ryan

[Seth]

Subsurface scattering is planned for the final release of Terragen 2 in 2007.

- Oshyan

any news about that ?

[rcallicotte]

Good find, Franck.  News would be nice.

Subsurface scattering is planned for the final release of Terragen 2 in 2007.

- Oshyan

any news about that ?

[Seth]

hehe
I hate doing that... it is like whining...
but I was looking for some stuff on fake SSS and found this all thread.
The "2007" made me laugh, so... ^^
anyway... with new version the previous fake SSS don't work anymore.
Maybe a real SSS will be valuable for some renders I guess.