Tundra

[DocCharly65]

The ground coverage is marvellous!
I could search for my old user guide to make hair or even quite satisfying fur with blender. As I remember it was possible to let the hair take the Color of an objects surface -- but believe me you don't want to use that... If you perhaps remember my cat render some years ago - its fur was a 2.5 GB model...

[Dune]

Thanks, sjefen, I will try what that does. And regarding the sky; WAS, this is not an arctic scene, but a Dutch late summer scene in Eemien era, so a lot lower latitude. Sun can be pretty high. Actually I like the bright sky, as it doesn't fill the image with too much 'information'. It keeps it still, so to speak. I only don't want the clouds to have large bleached areas.

In the meantime I've asked on the ZBrush forum about hair colors, and guess who helped me out; Jochen. Big thanks to him. But thanks for your offer, Nils. I have a video telling me how to proceed. I will keep it decent in terms of GB's.

More poses would be good, indeed. But that would need to be bending legs in ZB, as I've never rigged anything (yet). Maybe I should add one or two standing and looking back, just to offset the running herd.

[Dune]

For speed of rendering no RT-reflection. They wanted a different spread of species at front, so here goes. Now hopefully find out how to export fibers from ZB with colors of the skin, but that seems to be pretty hard. Added a few different poses as individual objects so far.
Soft clip at 2. I still have to find out what it exactly does, though. Never altered it before.

[Kadri]

Looks good. I like the close-up very much too.

[WAS]

And regarding the sky; WAS, this is not an arctic scene, but a Dutch late summer scene in Eemien era, so a lot lower latitude. Sun can be pretty high. Actually I like the bright sky, as it doesn't fill the image with too much 'information'. It keeps it still, so to speak. I only don't want the clouds to have large bleached areas.

Netherlands is more north than my location with a high of around 22 degrees in late summer. But I see your reasoning. It just doesn't give me the impression of a tundra. More like boglands. Which would be definitely more true to Netherlands.

[Dune]

This was the Eemien, so nothing is really directly comparable to an existing place, due to differences in climate (which are not only dependent upon latitude). The North Sea was 150 lower than today, and you could walk to England  Early rivers carved through this landscape, much later these valleys were filled again with sandlayers up to 20m thick, giving us todays much less deep undulations. Back then the 'tundra' had mostly mosses, low grasses and sedges, low shrub, and this cottongrass. The only inconsistency in this render being that the low shrubbery has a late summer coloration, while cottongrass still is its magnificent self. I still have to ask how bad that is

[WAS]

Interesting information, thanks for sharing. You could probably fix the cotton grass easy enough. Mask up the cotton to be more patchy like it's released some seeds, and change up main texture color to include some dying and dead areas.

[sjefen]

For speed of rendering no RT-reflection. They wanted a different spread of species at front, so here goes. Now hopefully find out how to export fibers from ZB with colors of the skin, but that seems to be pretty hard. Added a few different poses as individual objects so far.
Soft clip at 2. I still have to find out what it exactly does, though. Never altered it before.

I'm not 100% sure, but in my experience, if you increase the soft clip effect, you're sky won't be as blown out at the same time as the shadows are brighter. You may want to alter the shadows in post to get some more contrast or just darken them, but it's much easier if everything is more "evened out" for the lack of better words. This is something I've been playing more and more with lately. I've even used values up to 3 if of the scene is a little darker.

Maybe Matt can say something here. I can also try to show I another thread with some examples, but I'm moving these days, so it will have to wait a little bit.

[Dune]

Cottongrass is out anyway, didn't fit in that habitat.

Sjefen, thanks. I couldn't find any information what soft clip actually does (and never touched it before), but I suppose it works like a smooth step instead of hard step. I set it to 2, and I like the sky, so I won't tamper with it now. maybe do some tests in due time.

[WAS]

I'm not 100% sure, but in my experience, if you increase the soft clip effect, you're sky won't be as blown out at the same time as the shadows are brighter.

Wow, so I have never played with this either, and it does exactly what I've tried to simulate in the horizon of atmosphere for a long time. The kinda bleached haze look which clouds meld into.

[DocCharly65]

That are great results!

[sjefen]

I'm not 100% sure, but in my experience, if you increase the soft clip effect, you're sky won't be as blown out at the same time as the shadows are brighter.

Wow, so I have never played with this either, and it does exactly what I've tried to simulate in the horizon of atmosphere for a long time. The kinda bleached haze look which clouds meld into.

This will affect the whole image. The ground, the sky and everything. You guys probably understand that, but just to be sure 

Anyway..... I strongly recommend giving this some more try in different scenes. It's not long ago I found this and started to test a little bit and it helps out allot. Especially if you have some areas that are very bright and some that are dark or in the shadows. That's why I suggested it for you here.

[Dune]

TG is endess in its possibilities, proven once again!

[Dune]

A part rendered at near final resolution. I need to add some debris on the ground, more species and mix the reindeer poses better. Also actually need to improve the bump or objects themselves.

[masonspappy]

Wow!