Overgrown Crater

[RArcher]

Here is the start of my next project.  It is currently very rough and still needs a great deal of work, but I think the idea is sound.  Once everything is detailed and finalized, I think I will try to create an animation where the camera skims the tree line and then dips down and around the inside of the crater.

Things to finish:

Add vegetation variety
Add further displacements to the crater walls
Add ground and lake side surfacing

Any other suggestions are welcome.

[PorcupineFloyd]

Those clouds...

I'd think only about doing some colour variation with trees based on some simple perlin perhaps, and this image is perfect.

[Volker Harun]

Fine idea. You could try to add some 'intersect underlying' on the distribution of the trees.
So some vegetation is going onto the rim of the crater.

[BlueRose]

Its very nice as it is and the clouds are awesome.

My only complaint would be about the homogenity of the forest.  The trees are too even in size in shape and colour.  In nature there will be patches and gaps and different trees that will sneak in to gaps.  You would only see such even growth pattern and pureness of planting in a man made plantation.

So the vast plain greeness looks quite wrong to me - some examples below

http://virudhunagar.nic.in/natural/forest_files/forest5.jpg

http://www.birdlife.org/images/sized/300/harapan_regenerating_forest.jpg.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Chacachacare_dry_forest_3.JPG

http://www.cynical-c.com/archives/bloggraphics/treess.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1108/1427974866_b23ebf5bf7.jpg

heres a really good pic in that its similar in concept to yours, and you see the different shapes and colours of the different trees in it

http://www.town.williston.vt.us/website/images/pictures/planning/place_mud_pond_aerial.jpg

[nvseal]

That's fantastic. I really like the distance.

[Mohawk20]

I like the crater wall a lot, and besides from your own plans for improvements, I would only look into trying smaller trees, so the crater looks a bit bigger...

[sjefen]

Beautiful scene. The sense of scale is awesome and so are the clouds.
I agree about the trees need some variation. At least in colors.

http://www.cynical-c.com/archives/bloggraphics/treess.jpg

What is this actually? Am I the only one who see the pattern here?

- Terje

[dandelO]

What is this actually? Am I the only one who see the pattern here?

Whoah! That seems too perfect for coincidence.

[dandelO]

Hitler used the painted shader for distribution!

[BlueRose]

Beautiful scene. The sense of scale is awesome and so are the clouds.
I agree about the trees need some variation. At least in colors.

http://www.cynical-c.com/archives/bloggraphics/treess.jpg

What is this actually? Am I the only one who see the pattern here?

- Terje

oooh I didnt see that, I was just looking for examples to show what I was meaning.....weird

[rcallicotte]

Can't wait to see the animation.

[RArcher]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.  Here's a little bit of progress with much lower quality render this time.  All of these were rendered at 0.4 detail, 5AA and model detail set to medium, so I would expect the final images to look much better.

Similar point of view to the original (ignore the missing trees in the background, limited here for speed)



Over the top edge of the crater looking down



Just above the water in the bottom of the crater



Close up on the crater walls



Next steps are to continue to work on the underbrush, and then figure out a good way to create a camera path.  First attempt I think I will try with Terranim but with all the trees I might just have to do it within TG2 ugh.

[tumasch]

Fantastic stuff! You must either have loads of time or a very fast machine to render so many different variations... 

[Volker Harun]

The vegetations blend very good to the scene. I like the distribution very much, not much work to do here nymore.
The surface shaders need some tweaking now.
I like the water's colour, am not a freind of that turbulence-like appearance, though. It is not subtle enough.

Volker

[nvseal]

Wow, that's amazing. You should render the first one looking over ther edge of the crater really big so I can use it as my desktop.