Arctic Skydome 2023

[Stormlord]

This is my weekend doodle with some phantastic looking clouds in a clear and starry sky over the arctic.
It comes with a very beautiful planetarium look, carefully masked and embedded into this nice icy scenery.


Skydome 2023 by Stormlord
Rendered in 4K as a spherical projection (Original Size 4320 x 2160 -> Shrunk to 3840 x 2160 for 4K Desktop), made with TG 4.12.

STORMLORD

[Dune]

Looks very good, Dirk!

[Stormlord]

THX Ulco !
In the meantime I created another view and added some water to the scenery.
In my waterlib I found a nice arctic water and this is the result.


Icy Mountains 2023 by Stormlord

STORMLORD

[pixelpusher636]

Nice work man!

[Stormlord]

I try to find out, which water is better than the other?
The blue arctic one or the more greenish phytoplankton styled? Or maybe another one...

Do you have a comment or perhaps some other water recommendation, settings for me?
At the moment I try out also some other combiations (water, atmosphere, clouds) of my arctic scenery.

 
Icy Mountains 2023 by Stormlord (higher zoom, less contrast)

PLEASE:
I don't know, but maybe the color and the contrast is to brutal? It's hard for me to find out...
I purchased a brand new 4K LG Monitor, beside another PC and by comparison with my old HDMI Monitor, the colors and the contrast is different (on the new one it's brighter and more intensive).
So I dont know how the colors and contrast comes out at your monitor at home? Please tell me, if everything with my renderings are ok on your screen? To much contrast, to much color?

STORMLORD

[Stormlord]

When the sun sets or rises, the colors are also very beautiful.
Tried this time to catch them in another setup of the arctic scene.


Icy Mountains 2023 by Stormlord

STORMLORD

[Dune]

I prefer the greenish water. The colors are indeed very harsh and cold, but it does convey icy coldness.

I have 2 remarks though; there are some strange pinches in the terrain (yellow), is that due to alpine shader anomalies? Or did you displace after a compute?
And I think you need to mask out any snow below water level (red).
I tiny ridge of vegetation near the coast would be nice. Even on pretty big altitudes there might be lichens, heathers, tough grasses, perhaps even some small shrub. That would counter the 'all-blueness'.

[Stormlord]

Yes I've noticed also these strange artefacts! But I cound'nt notice some of them in the purple scene.
But they seem to occur here an there? Unfortunately it seems to be the case, that it is an anomaly to live with. 

Allow me to show you my setup of the scene...


Setup Icy Mountains

Your input to mask out the snow below the water came also up in my mind.
In a future version, I will probably put in some underwater stones, sand, rock slides ect....
THX for your precious input. This helps to make scenes better.

(Most of the comments here... "OH... how wonderfull"..., or "Well done..", but this does not help you go further. So more constructive critic is really helpful and appreciated!)

STORMLORD

[Hetzen]

You can sometimes paint out those pinches using a Paint shader to mask between a softer heightfield of the same terrain.

Personally I would convert the displacement from your mountains and heightfield using displacement to scaler nodes, blending those two streams with a mix node using the paint shader to mask. That then connects to a displacement shader, then back into your compute terrain.

You can then just pause your preview and paint in where the problems are. You could possible skip the displacement conversion and use a merge shader instead, but I tend to like to have a little more control over the values. For example, you can have the water layer look at the displacement values coming out of the terrain mix shader, to displace the water layer at the edges to sim ice. You couldn't do that in the water shader by looking at a Get Altitude, because it would be looking at the water objects altitude and not the terrains.

[Stormlord]

Thank you Hetzen
A very good advice, but there is something wrong in my mindset...
I used the paint shader and painted the left mountain side, this is the result...



Hmmmm.....

STORMLORD

[Hetzen]

I thought you'd renamed an Alpine Fractal to "Fractal terrain01" and that was causing those pinches. Looking at your above layout it now seems it's in the heightfield.


This is what I had in mind, which is fairly much the same as you did. The second heightfield needs a lower sampling, so you use a generate heightfield to do that. Can be a little tricky getting everything to line up, as you have to set centre in both parts of the softer HF, which is fairly simple to check if all is in the right place before painting, and indeed if the softer version is to your taste.

[Dune]

@Dirk: If using the painted shader don't forget to put it in 3D.

[Stormlord]

@Hetzen, you were right, my Shader has been renamed. Its an "Alpine fractal shader v2", not a "Fractal Terrain"... ups....
Is this causing my problems ? And if so.... what can I do to prevent them?

@Ulco, what do you mean by putting it into 3D?

This is what I did so far...
Wait until the preview windows is finished with rendering, push the pause button
Started the painting shader, painting the area, pushed stop painting button
Deactivate Pause button
Then I rendered the scene agia (with obviously no effect?)

STORMLORD

[Hetzen]

It certainly looks like Alpine Fractal pinching. So in my network above, it doesn't matter what you use to create your terrain, the principal is the same.

The Generate Heightfield (which is missing in your network) needs to look softer than the original, or to the point you don't see the pinching. So it might be a good idea to see what that looks like before you start the mixing shenanigans, plug that directly to the Compute Terrain whilst you do that, then plumb it back to the above to paint.

The Generate Terrain node has a Number of Points setting, this will be the resolution that you will be sampling your original terrain with. Lower settings creates a softer version of the original. You'll have to play with this a little to get an acceptable shape to use as your 'patch' to paint in.

[Dune]

I think there have always been some glitches in the alpine, pinching occurring sometimes.

See screendump for painted shader 3D setting.