Forest Valley

[arisdemos]

Moodflow I really like the textures of your rock structure in so many of your images and this latest one has great lighting and mist duplication.  Would it be possible for you to get into your texturing shader work, or have you already gotten into this elsewhere?

[old_blaggard]

Quick question - I'm working on a scene right now and I plugged in a default shader with default color at 0 and luminance at anywhere between .1 and 100, and all I get is a purely black terrain with minimal light in the atmosphere. I've disabled the sunlight completely, by the way. GI is also on. Any suggestions?

[dandelO]

Don't disable the sunlight, OB. The background object won't illuminate your terrain from simple luminosity alone, I don't think. I think it enhances the haze because it must shine through it, not onto it.

I may be wrong.

[old_blaggard]

All right, gotcha . I was under the impression that you guys were using *all* background shader luminosity, instead of just as a supplement.

[rcallicotte]

o_b and dandelO - My last image of the snow used only illumination from the background object.

[old_blaggard]

Really? What did you have the luminosity set to?

[rcallicotte]

I'm wrong.  I have the Sun lighting set to .1. 

I have the Environment Variables like this -

Surfaces Strength - 10
Surfaces Color - 5
Atmosphere Strength - 10
Atmosphere - Color - 5

The Luminosity in the Default Shader for the Background Shader is .25 and all the rest (Diffuse and Translucency) is 0.

[moodflow]

Hey guys,

I've always had an image map or a power fracter plugged into the default shader's luminosity input.  If its just black, it won't light up the scene...it needs color.  The values I've used range from 2 to 10 depending upon how much light is needed in the scene, and usually indirectly proportional to how much sunlight there is.   For example, if I want a super hazy scene, the I set the luminosity pretty high (4 to 8 or so) and the sun's strength low. 

But here is the kicker:  I am not using the default sun.  I am using a light sphere thats pushed back out into space but still within the background object and scaled appropriately.  The brightness needs to be bumped up bigtime, usually to 2,000,000,000 or even more. 

The reason for using a light sphere is, there may be a bug with the default sun.  At random times, it just does not want to shine through the background object.  You can see it, but it doesn't illuminate the ground.  Its inconsistent and weird, so I disabled it, and ended up using the light sphere which has given me no problems.

[rcallicotte]

Good to know.  Thank you, Moodflow.  I'll change my snow scene accordingly.

[old_blaggard]

Cool. Thanks for the extra tips .

[moodflow]

No problem!   

I really want to put together some formal tutorials on some of these techniques, but still deciding on how to do this.  I've recently seen youtube and vimeo video tutorials (of other subjects) with recorded screen grabs and audio commentary which I found really helpful.  I think this would be ideal for some TG2 tutorials, not to mention I hate typing!

[old_blaggard]

Yeah, I think that video tutorials can be very helpful indeed.

[mhaze]

Hope you find time to do this - your rocks are particularly interesting.

Mick

[mesocyclone]

Awesome!! 

(waiting for the tutorials... )

[Mohawk20]

Just a small thank you here to Moodflow for his initial tip to use the background object. It has really helped to get a realistic atmo in my Irish scene!