Hanging Valley

Started by Mohawk20, November 07, 2008, 03:52:08 PM

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Mohawk20

The Monthly Contest on Ashundar has the theme 'Hanging Valley' this month, and I'm participating.
I used the edge of a heightfield to get the hanging valley. The problem is that the border of a heightfield doesn't seem to get all the displacement of the rest of the terrain.

As you can see in my first decent test render below, which took 21 hours to render, the cliff sides don't have nice displacement on them, and other parts of the terrain have way to much displacement.

Have to work on that, as well as the colours, and perhaps the POV.


Tell me what you think so far...
Howgh!

rcallicotte

I like the mountain on the right just fine.  The color of the green looks too VR and the terrain on the left looks a little too rough, I think.
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

Mohawk20

I thought so too... working on it.
Howgh!

Oshyan

So is this the edge of a heightfield with Border Blending on? If so that's going to really just smooth out any displacement there on the edge until it blends into the planet's base height. You might be better off creating some edge falloff in another way (perhaps editing the heightfield in another app) and then turning down Border Blending all the way if you want to do your scene this way. Of course you might also try finding an interior "hanging valley" or specifically crafting one in a heightfield editor.

- Oshyan

Mohawk20

Well, with another POV and some surfacemap tweeks it's looking better.

I repainted the mask, because in another POV I noticed the waterfall was falling from left to right, which is a bit unnatural. That also means different clouds on the bottom, which is a shame because I kind a liked the shape.
Now rendering, I'll post as soon as it's done.
Howgh!

Mohawk20

Next version:
I've repainted the masks for the waterfall and cloud, because the waterfall was running from left to right a bit (which I only noticed changing POV).
Have to work on the cloud's mask a bit because the nice shape of the last render is lost.

The waterfall is white, but a bit too white for my taste. It's a surfacelayer with a powerfractal stretched in the y and z directions, plugged into colour and displacement. It's child is a water shader, in this render without transparency, but the next will show a bit of blue I think.

The cliff face is looking better as well I think.
Howgh!

old_blaggard

Have you considered using Dandelo's waterfall technique? Other than that, I think that this image is looking quite interesting. Perhaps more texture work on the steep surfaces would help, too.
http://www.terragen.org - A great Terragen resource with models, contests, galleries, and forums.

Mohawk20

I could use Dandel0's technique, however, the waterfall itself should have a lot of foam, so it can just be a texture, and I'm testing the painted shader from the bèta in this scene... (that's because I've paid for the software and we don't want you guys having a buggy bèta of course).

With that in mind I will be working to improve the waterfall until it looks real.
Howgh!

Mandrake

Mohawk, kept coming back to this last night and it got me to rendering a mountain side but anyway. I was wondering if you could continue with the water as in this quick markup? I like this wip though!

Mohawk20

Nice markup Mandrake, good idea!

I'll paint that in as soon as I get the colours in the waterfall right.
Howgh!

Mohawk20

Quote from: Oshyan on November 08, 2008, 02:42:47 PM
So is this the edge of a heightfield with Border Blending on? If so that's going to really just smooth out any displacement there on the edge until it blends into the planet's base height. You might be better off creating some edge falloff in another way (perhaps editing the heightfield in another app) and then turning down Border Blending all the way if you want to do your scene this way. Of course you might also try finding an interior "hanging valley" or specifically crafting one in a heightfield editor.

- Oshyan

Just a thought... You say the border blending will keep the border smooth. But that's only for displacements above it in the node structure right?

Nodes below it should treat it as any other surface, shouldn't it? Perhaps only after the 'compute terrain' node, but still, it should work to displace the border someway.
Howgh!

dandelO

You could always add a fractal foam layer before the final water shader and still use my method. I've managed to use one paint shader for water distribution and still blended 2 water shaders to be applied to the final object surface at different areas all inside the water object's own network. Each water shader has its own node tree before it and can be edited seperately, they are then mixed with a merge shader to: 'Highest-raise' and 'merge displacement' only, not colour. Use a surface layer for the water shader that goes into 'input B' to add the displacements to specific areas of different heights/slopes.

Oshyan

Quote from: Mohawk20 on November 09, 2008, 05:19:03 PM
Quote from: Oshyan on November 08, 2008, 02:42:47 PM
So is this the edge of a heightfield with Border Blending on? If so that's going to really just smooth out any displacement there on the edge until it blends into the planet's base height. You might be better off creating some edge falloff in another way (perhaps editing the heightfield in another app) and then turning down Border Blending all the way if you want to do your scene this way. Of course you might also try finding an interior "hanging valley" or specifically crafting one in a heightfield editor.

- Oshyan

Just a thought... You say the border blending will keep the border smooth. But that's only for displacements above it in the node structure right?

Nodes below it should treat it as any other surface, shouldn't it? Perhaps only after the 'compute terrain' node, but still, it should work to displace the border someway.

Yes, I believe that's correct.

- Oshyan

Mohawk20

I really need some help with this.
I extended the painted shader to have the river like suggested by Mandrake, but I can't get the waterfall to look realistic.
Inspired by Dendel0's waterfall I copied the heightfield to a second planet, enlarged it a bit and shaded it by a watershader, blended by the painted shader.

But as you can see below, no luck yet...
Howgh!

dandelO

Turn of 'cast shadows' on the water surface planet. Use a displacement offset of the value required to move the water up above the terrain. The problem you'll face here is, it will raise ALL the water over the terrain because you have used a new planet that's entirely covered with water.
I like to use TG planes, they are seperate objects that can be scaled to fit into gaps in the existing terrain, or as the starting point to build the main terrain around.

I'd definately suggest building your terrain around the waterfall instead of the reverse, that is very tricky and I've had little success. Ask Big Ben, he's your man for building rivers onto terrains. Check out his river threads again for some help.  :)