Pteranodon Hunter

[Stormlord]

Here is my latest creation.
A prehistoric scenery with a nasty predator observing the landscape while flying very high.


Pteranodon Hunter 2023

The Pteranodon is from the De Espona Collection and has been converted and edited until it fitted perfectly into my scenery.
But at the end I decided to render the hunting bird separately to embed it later in the Adobe Poposhop postwork.
This has been done due to the inconvenienced lightning condition in the landscape scenery.
Otherwise, the shadow would have been fallen over the face of this bird of prey... so... this is the way I decided to go with.

But I will show you a TG render from within a true scale scene, which has been made to compare sizes at the first glance.
The silhouette on the right side displays an average man, 1.80m tall. Sorry... sexy females were out...

By the way, you can download my true scale scene here. Good to scale or compare correct sizes from within TG.
https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,26585.msg265073.html#msg265073



Pteranodon Hunter (Wingspan 3.6m)

The Pteranodon hunter has been scaled to have a wingspan of 3.6m, which fits to adults of this species.
This final size of this bird has been estimated by looking at a lot of images and researching prehistoric references with real life data.

Finally, allow me to show you a screenshot of this beautiful scene as seen in Terragen 4.7.15.
The rendering took only 6.2 sec in the preview, unfortunately the final render took a little bit longer.


Screenshot TG 4.7.15

The funny thing is, it is the same terrain you end up, when you follow the "Texturing with Surface Layers" tutorial in the Planetside Wiki.
I followed it closely to get more educated in shader design... I learned a lot here...
https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Texturing_with_Surface_Layers

https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/images/a/ab/Final_take2.jpg
Final render of the terrain from the tutorial

But I took it further while fine tune it and adding more fine terrain details with the classic erosion plugin (rendered in 16K).
Somehow I created a pretty color range which looks somehow prehistoric-like, especially when grass clumps are added.


Texturing Surface Layer Tutorial taken further with the classic erosion plugin (16K)


SLTTK (Surface Layer Tutorial Taken Further)

After putting so much work and energy into this undertaking, it is an image I would not hesitate to send it to a contest.
But comments and constructive thoughts about improving my "Pteranodon Hunter 2023" scene are highly appreciated.
So feel free to comment my work! Has it emotionally touched you in a way, how would you try to do such a scene, ect. ?

STORMLORD

[Dune]

Cool scene, Dirk. And very nice that you break it down this way.

I do have some comments, if you don't mind. They would be my personal changes, mind you.
1. The haze below is very thin. I would soften that and make the cloud higher (in meters), so it would perhaps obscure a bit of the right side higher up.
2. That would also be my position of the Pteranodon, not so centrally located. With some haze behind it would 'jump forward' more automatically.
3. I would also clump the trees more to the valleys, like it's a harsh terrain where they hardly survive, only in secluded places. I would also check out what trees (if any) were present at the time of those dino species! And is this the right habitat? Not on coasts? I don't know actually.
4. You could also work with shadows of clouds, so if you have a shadow on some hillside, put the P. in front of that and have it light up like that. I sometimes use an invisible card with some reflection or luminosity placed near an object to give it just a bit more light.

[schmeerlap]

I was waiting (like the wimp I am) for Ulco to give his expert opinion. Yes, that low-lying cloud would be better if it was raised to the level of the Pterothingy, given more depth, and made less dense, wispier. Maybe having the Ptero appearing out of that cloud would give the scene more dynamism, add to the scariness of the dino. The clumping of trees was the first thing that struck me when viewing the scene, the smaller trees are far too scattergunned. A couple more Ptero's in the background would add to the authenticity of the scene.

[Uwe Kronemann]

Textures are to much white!

[Stormlord]

Thank you guys for your constructive criticism, which I really appreciate!
Exactly this is what I want to hear, because only true input brings you forward and helps you to improve.
Just to say, "well done" or "great", didn't help you to see what's wrong or could be done better?

"With some haze behind it would 'jump forward' more automatically."
Yes, that's a very good idea, thank you Ulco.

But what I do not understand, why my textures "are too much white?"
Do you mean, too much clouds here, -> to be more precisely, the cloud are to dense?

I alreday made 2 groups of Pteranodons, one with 3 and one with 5 of them.


Pteranodon Hunter Group 3x

A first test wasn't that successful, they didn't seem to really fit?
Maybe I have to find another way to place them inside the scene or change the scene arrangement?

I thought also, maybe I should do a small river in the top left position between the trees.
But after you mentioned mainly the clouds, I will first focus on the cloud situation...then the population arrangement...

So thank you all, I wish you to have a pleasant Christmastime !

STORMLORD

[Dune]

You could also try to bend their wings differently for some different poses. And/or bend their head to one side. Shouldn't be too hard. It would make a group more interesting.

[schmeerlap]

But what I do not understand, why my textures "are too much white?"

I think Uwe was referring to your rock colour. Does it come from a power fractal?

[mhaze]

This an excellent piece of work. The trees are too spotty and need more variation.

[Stormlord]

Pteranodon Hunter 2.0
-------------------------------

Thank you mhaze for your nice comment.
I respect you as a very talented artist and so I really appreciate your kind words very much!

Thank you all for your constructive criticism.
I developed another scene (based upon the first) in which I tried to bring in your great ideas.

1. The scene has been slightly modified to cluster the trees more in groups to give them a more natural look as most of you mentioned.
I added some more red ground dirt below, then reduced slightly the yellow sand field in the left upper corner and set the grass clumps (~1.35million) a little bit higher up into the mountains.


Surface layer 4.0 with plants (created after following closely https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Texturing_with_Surface_Layers, then spiced up with classic erosion)

-> Yes Smeerlap, the Shaders are mainly designed with Power Fractals (procedural).
Here is a screenshot of my Node Network for you.


Pteranodon Hunter 2023
Shader Node Network for Surface Layer 4.0

2. I created one more dynamic model of the Pteranodon Hunter as Ulco suggested.


Pteranodon Hunter (dynamic pose designed to fit perfectly into the already existing scene)

3. Also smeerlap idea to make the scene more dramatic while a Pteranodon comes out of some foggy clouds is excellent, but hard to bring into reality.
So Johns idea was the next step, but a very hard one to take! I took the other posed Pteranodon additionally inside, instead of using only one Pteranodon.
Then I created a new set of clouds and set the second bird of prey in the midst of the carefully designed cloud layers. I earned a fresh and more dramatic look.

-> The scene received some shadow, occultation, fog, another more dynamic hunting bird. Nearly all things you mentioned are now in this updated scene.
(Maybe I could further do some shadowing on the flats and the mountains with clouds.)



Maybe I could bring in other lightning and another sky or some snowy mountains to get more details into a version 3.0... well... I will see...
But now, It has become a really nice and cool scene!
Terragen is awesome!

STORMLORD

[schmeerlap]

Terragen is awful!

Did you mean Terragen is awesome?

Not to keep harping on, but I will. Clustering of trees is good, but it might be a good idea to have more trees in the clusters so they can shake hands as it were. This will also help darken and add more shadow to the ground.

[Stormlord]

Terragen is awful!

Did you mean Terragen is awesome?

Not to keep harping on, but I will. Clustering of trees is good, but it might be a good idea to have more trees in the clusters so they can shake hands as it were. This will also help darken and add more shadow to the ground.

AWESOME !!!
Thank you...

Ok, now I reduced the spacing in the vegetation by 40% (from 10x10 to 6x6) and gave my plant mask a slightly higher contrast offset (from -0.15 to -0.3) to make the trees more shaking hands.
I also rendered a clean version with a neutral shader, so that it is pretty easy to spot my own vegetation, and you know what? You're absolutely right!!!
The outcome looks much more natural than the previous version!

-> I'll keep the idea of making a clean and neutral vegetation test render for distribution evaluation for the future!
I did this the first time, and it is so much better to get a new and fresh look upon the vegetation distribution in your own scene.


Vegetation distribution test

STORMLORD

[Dune]

Good advice, your render has already improved a lot.

I wrote something about its environment earlier, but did you check out some facts? It's more of an ocean/water dwelling fisheater, so a water body would be appropriate.
Check out this: nice images too: https://dinosaurpictures.org/Pteranodon-pictures

Also: New oceans flooded the spaces in between. Mountains rose on the seafloor, pushing sea levels higher and onto the continents.
All this water gave the previously hot and dry climate a humid and drippy subtropical feel. Dry deserts slowly took on a greener hue. Palm tree-like cycads were abundant, as were conifers such as araucaria and pines. Ginkgoes carpeted the mid- to high northern latitudes, and podocarps, a type of conifer, were particularly successful south of the Equator. Tree ferns were also present.
See here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/jurassic

So you'd need some palms, treeferns and pines...

[Stormlord]

Thank you for your compliment, Ulco!
I also appreciate your research and the input about the Jurassic time period.

STORMLORD

[Stormlord]

After going through all these new informations, I realize, that I made a mistake here.
The time to change the whole setup, because the Pteranodon lived in regions with much water like lakes or an ocean, is a little bit late now.
But these predators lived mostly in the US. So the best I can say here, I try to emulate a terrain, like in Canada or Mid-West towards the ocean.

To be honest, first I didn't expect this project to go any further as the first render!
-> But I have learned here, that It makes absolutely sense to start with a more in depth research before starting to do a bigger project like this.
Now, I really like it, to dive more and more into it... it's so cool. Even if the terrain isn't one with water in it. So here is an update how I proceed.

I started by arranging another plant setup with the ones you already suggested, making my scene more realistic.
First I had two sorts of King Palms, three different trees, one prehistoric plant, two sizes of an Asparagus Fern and one grass clump ground cover.
But I changed the vegetation and created another setup with many pines instead. I also paid attention to a very natural clumping of the plants.
The final scattering of all vegetation can be clearly seen in the next picture... I think, now I can really go on with this one :-)

 
Pteranodon Hunter 2023
(Vegetation)

STORMLORD

[Dune]

You could easily add a water body and a waterline in this setup, make it coastal.