do you think terragen could do this?

[Oshyan]

Very interesting Matt.

About Vue - GR really looks like radiosity, considering how colours from surfaces are able to blend on others and the patterns they make if there are too few samples.

Is there any source for in-deep explanation of GI methods floating somewhere over the internet? I'd like to read something about it (other than Wikipedia).

Color bleeding between surfaces is not an effect unique to Radiosity. It is something that should be present in any well-implemented GI algorithm, and is possible in TG2 with sufficiently high settings and strong colors in the scene. What you're seeing at the edges of some of the leaves in the example shots appears to be a simulated glow and/or chromatic abberation, which is really a lens artifact, and something TG does not simulate (nor do I think it necessarily should). Translucency is the other major effect, which TG2 can handle fairly well already. Subsurface scattering isn't really that necessary because the leaves are so thing, there is little need to simulate complex inner scattering.

- Oshyan

[PorcupineFloyd]

Thanks for making it clear.
I guess that my confusion came from experience with Vue's different approach to lightning computation as in Vue Global Illumination is a different thing than Global Radiosity.

So it seems that in case of Vue it's basically a marketing approach by having two GI types and using this clue word "radiosity" to mark something ultimately powerful and neat.

By talking about colour bleeding in TG and settings required to achieve it - do you mean only those settings in enviro light settings?

I was also doing some experimenting with slightly altering specular reflections colour on leafs with also subtle but positive effect.

[Cyber-Angel]

Will we still be getting subsurface scattering at some point in future as certain natural phenomena such as certain rock types and ice require it to be present if they are going to look realistic, effects that are difficult if not impossible with out subsurface scattering?



Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel       

[Oshyan]

Will we still be getting subsurface scattering at some point in future as certain natural phenomena such as certain rock types and ice require it to be present if they are going to look realistic, effects that are difficult if not impossible with out subsurface scattering?



Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel       

Hopefully yes, although not with the coming release of TG2. It would have to be in a later update. It simply needs too much additional development to be stable and useful to release it at this time.

- Oshyan