Canyon Sunrise *Update 05/04*

[Hetzen]

Hi there, it's been a while since I've posted anything, although I have spent quite a lot of time lurking here. This is something that has moved on a few stages, mainly in Photoshop, but I wanted to post this image to get feedback on a few things I'd like to improve on, plus get peoples criticism. This was all rendered within TG2, no post. I want to put some lights in the scene, and wondered if there was a way in getting GI from material shaders with the Luminosity whacked up, like lit windows to give a sense of scale to the imported object, if so, could someone give me some pointers.

Cheers for looking.

Jon

[RArcher]

I assume you mean you want the spheres to glow like there are lights inside?  Should be a reasonably simple matter of increasing the translucency and luminosity of the default shader attached to the sphere object.  Something sort of like this?

http://www.archer-designs.com/zp/index.php?album=digital-art%2Fterragen-2&image=marbles-1600-jpg-full.jpg

[Hetzen]

I saw the topic you posted on that, very interesting. No, I was more after a series of lights running around the sides of the domes in banks of rows. I already have a texture doing something similar with VRay Light material masked with a series of differently scaled and spaced tiles in 3DMax, which works for a light pass, and is something I did in the end. I just wandered if you can use a material in TG to throw out light in the render, rather than placing shed loads of actual lights around the model. Something I'll give a go at, if it's at all possible.

Cheers.

Added to clarify a little. What I would like is to get some sort of glow out of the material, which also effects the surrounding geometry. Is this something that is considered within TG's GI calculation? Just wondered if anyone else has done this, or whether it's possible, for me to spend a few hours experimenting at work tomorrow.

[Mohawk20]

Just increase luminosity of a surface shader, or default shader. It will illuminate anything nearby, as long as it's bright enough. All lights are calculated in the GI pass.

I have had a surface layer cover terrain like sort of moss and have it slightly luminescent to light a cave.
http://www.terragen.org/gallery/displayimage.php?album=423&pos=28

[Hetzen]

Thanks Mohawk. Much appreciated. I suppose the surface shader accepts higher values than one. Will give it a try tomorrow.

[Mohawk20]

Sure! Type something like 10000 and see what happens 

[Oshyan]

Yes, it needs to be quite high to have an effect, and GI will also need to be at a good detail level, but it will work...

- Oshyan

[Hetzen]

Thanks Oshyan.

Attached is what happened in Photoshop. Ideally I want to get this sort of detail in Terragen, plus a little more with some brush plant populations. I took two renders of the same scene, one at sunrise, and the other with a 180 degree change in sun position with a higher elevation, so as to paint back in some detail. Lights, road, and ground detail also added in PS.

Something I discovered, which had caused quite a few problems, was the high Patch Grid setting I'd put in the compute terrain. I had it at 1000, which completely threw off Altitude constraints within Surface Layers, almost as if it was twisted somehow. Dialling back to 20 corrected it. Can I assume a lower number equals higher accuracy? ie a sample size?

There's quite a lot more I want to learn, and am using this scene to get to grips with specific areas, like breaking up the shore line of the river, adding in some reflectivity at the edges, want to play around with painting in populations of plants, add some fake stones and drop the height of the lake shader to get those stones protruding out the water. As well as working on the models and textures. Did I hear right, that there is no longer a 16 material limit on imported .obj?

Anyway, comments and criticism would be appreciated.

Cheers

Jon

[Mohawk20]

Ahhhh, much better with the light textures. Adds a lot of realism!

[Tangled-Universe]

Nice work Hetzen, like the details you added in!

You're correct about the compute terrain setting. When you decrease the value the displacements will be calculated over smaller patches. In your case the displacements, heights and slopes were calculated in patches of 1000m. Decreasing it to 20m increased accuracy of the calculates, indeed a similar idea to sampling.
The default setting is 20m but you can also go a lot smaller, depending on your type of scene and what you need. However, keep in mind that it also affects rendertimes.

Looking forward to see your next update on this one.

Martin

[rcallicotte]

I agree - nice.  I like the way you did the sunrise.  Bright and beautiful.  Cool artificial lighting on the ground.  Pretty good texturing on the ground, but more breakup would be better.

[dandelO]

This is great. I especially like the roadway leading up to the station, this middle area looks very realistic. You need some convoy vehicles on that road, or maybe just one or two... Nice job, though!

[Hetzen]

Thanks gents. I've rolled back a lot on this image. I want to try and get most of it out of Terragen as a learning experience. It would be good to try and come up with a more procedural approach to the middle ground, so that will be an exercise in itself.

Cheers

Jon

[Luminos]

very nice pic you have there, remind me a little of a book called Nightpeople