Strata

Started by efflux, August 02, 2009, 09:57:03 PM

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efflux

#30
By the way, there is one thing about TG2's renderer which I really like and that is the way you can change settings while rendering. It is very cool when you are working on surfaces and making tweaks to compare one version with another but no need to stop the renderer. It would be cool if the rendering window could hold several renders in tabs to make this kind of comparison even easier. Maybe there could be memory issues though I guess, at least on some machines.

Henry Blewer

There is a way. The program saves images in the temp folder. There is a menu item to view these files.
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

efflux

Yes, I suppose that's probably the best way. You only open them when you need to see them.

Henry Blewer

Use Windows Photo Gallery. Just open the temp directory. You can use the forward and back buttons between images.
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

Matt

Quote from: efflux on August 04, 2009, 01:48:18 PM
By the way, there is one thing about TG2's renderer which I really like and that is the way you can change settings while rendering. It is very cool when you are working on surfaces and making tweaks to compare one version with another but no need to stop the renderer.

It is no longer safe to do that since multi-threading was introduced. You risk crashing the render. In future Terragen should prevent you from doing this.

Quote
It would be cool if the rendering window could hold several renders in tabs to make this kind of comparison even easier. Maybe there could be memory issues though I guess, at least on some machines.

We plan to give you the ability to flip through multiple renders in some future version.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

efflux

OK thanks. I have changed settings without crashes but got the odd error message.

I think it would make things better is if we simply had one key command for render instead of the other ways - hitting render button in render properties or opening render window then hitting button. A lot of 3D apps simply have one key command that starts a render. You get used to hitting this all the time to test render instead of mousing buttons. After all it's the most command command you use.

efflux

Windows is pretty dire in terms of viewing images (I won't start a dissertation about the benefits of Linux here but once again it is way better at this) so probably a way of tabbing through images in TG2 would actually be better.

mhaze

#37
Hi

Thanks for the this - I'm doing a render now using this technique- it suits the slightly surreal, non realistic style of my work. Thanks - great work

efflux

Most files I post will be highly simplified to try to show what is happening. This idea may only be useful in realistic scenes if used subtly. However, the planet I just finished does have this technique but using the strata to blend two different surfaces. You may not be able to see this in the renders (especially since things are distorted around a lot) but take it out and you notice something is missing.

CCC

Speaking of color gradients i sampled many true color earth tones and made .aco files from them that can be read in Photoshop and i hope GIMP. So if anyone want's true colors to use for that needed realism here are the color swatch files i made.

Phylloxera

Quote from: CCC on August 09, 2009, 11:05:04 PM
Speaking of color gradients i sampled many true color earth tones and made .aco files from them that can be read in Photoshop and i hope GIMP. So if anyone want's true colors to use for that needed realism here are the color swatch files i made.

Thank You !

Volker Harun

Strata ... I just love strata ...

Just two hours left for a final render ...
I'll go for that :-)

Volker

rcallicotte

Thanks efflux.  This is the kind of thing a person can only wish for.
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

cyphyr

Quote from: CCC on August 09, 2009, 11:05:04 PM
Speaking of color gradients i sampled many true color earth tones and made .aco files from them that can be read in Photoshop and i hope GIMP. So if anyone want's true colors to use for that needed realism here are the color swatch files i made.
Many thanks, just what I was looking for :)
Richard
www.richardfraservfx.com
https://www.facebook.com/RichardFraserVFX/
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Volker Harun

Okay,

my first thoughts about that strata-thingy.

In my point of view, strata is not only some sort of distorted layered displacements.
Following points should be taken into account:
1. Strata are layers of mud/stone of different heights, colours and/or hardness.
2. Unless being in an area without any earthquakes, we find tilted and/or curved strata. Enclosed stones distort the strata, too.
3. Strata can only been seen, where the topmost layer of soil is gone, so first of all we'll need an area of negative displacement.

The easiest way to achieve this would be, to use 2 or more merged Strata and Outcrops shaders (each with different tilts).
It might be funny, to use your height-driven perlin to blend those shaders.

Another approach I would go for, are perlins stretched along x- and z-axis. To give them some more interesting directions you could add some perlin driven sines to the y-position of the 'Get Position (in texture)'-Node.

I'll go for the last one ...

Volker