Real Scale or Not

[RArcher]

A discussion in another topic made me curious how people work with Terragen 2.  Personally I always work in real world scales as it makes the most sense to me, but I know that others make beautiful pictures without focusing on scale at all.  What works for you?

[rcallicotte]

I'm sort of fuzzy, but the goal is realism in size.

[Henry Blewer]

I use re size for the clouds. I start in the Terrain using real values. The Shaders and the objects, I use what looks best.

[Seth]

I almost never use real scale
I use fake scale to fool people around make them believe that something is near or far away...
and I don't think it adds more works at all.
it is easier to me to populate stuff, to move around my camera, to have a good light and atmo, to have very detailed ground, etc...
and i don't know why the goal is "realism in size"... do you think my renders are less realistic because i don't use real scales ?
hehe
ask Martin, too

[Volker Harun]

At the beginning I was for real-scale - now I go for the most visual effective PoV and adjust the scale accordingly.

[cyphyr]

I generally try to keep things to scale, it just seems to make life easier, but ultimately that is a personal preference.

Richard

[sjefen]

If I am ever going to render a Terragen 2 scene in Maxwell Render, I will do it with real world scales

Regards,
Terje

[cyphyr]

If I am ever going to render a Terragen 2 scene in Maxwell Render, I will do it with real world scales

How can you do that?

Richard

[goldfarb]

If I am ever going to render a Terragen 2 scene in Maxwell Render, I will do it with real world scales

How can you do that?

Richard

a better question would be "why?"

[mindsap]

I tend to agree with Volker, I choose a good POV and adjust everything regardless of scale.

[inkydigit]

I try to keep to real world scales, though working with models can make this confusing (microscopic trees and giant grasses!)....although sometimes, Volker's approach can work equally as well!

[Hetzen]

The only time I would go to enhanced scales, is when and if I need values in the nodes less than 0.01. But because most of the time I'm jumping between programs, real world units really help.

[Tangled-Universe]

a better question would be "why?"

Because Maxwell renderer is a renderer which more or less emulates lighting rather than simulating it.
Maxwell approaches real world lighting by applying real physics and therefore you should use real world scales otherwise the results will be very different.

I almost never use real scale
I use fake scale to fool people around make them believe that something is near or far away...
and I don't think it adds more works at all.
it is easier to me to populate stuff, to move around my camera, to have a good light and atmo, to have very detailed ground, etc...
and i don't know why the goal is "realism in size"... do you think my renders are less realistic because i don't use real scales ?
hehe
ask Martin, too

Ghehe indeed

If you work with TG2 alone, no 3rd party 3D apps, and also only make still images then it is not important at all to use real world scales.
It's only time-consuming and doesn't necessarily give better looking results. It just makes TG2 life a lot easier.
Like Franck (and Volker finally changed his mind too I see! ) I'm only interested in how it looks, regardless the correctness of the scales.

There's one drawback for example you might run into using a very big diameter for softshadows to get the look you want.
Consequently you would need a lot more sampling and thus way bigger rendertimes.

The biggest scales cheat I've ever made was with this image:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/gallery/f/tg2/TU-A-Brand-New-Day-Full.jpg.html

This one is scale-wise ridiculous The foreground trees are 8x bigger than the background. The grasses are about 1/6 of the foreground trees. The lake is 1000m across. The middle trees I can't remember exactly.
Anyhow, no one ever mentioned that it looked off at first sight, nor at second sight etc.

To get back on no 3rd party 3D apps and no still images: yes, of course. If you need to export your TG2 work to other apps then it probably would really pay off to use real world scales. Depending on the scaling options and how easy to do in that app as well.
Also, "wrong" scales in still images often work well, but when the camera starts flying through then it inmediately becomes apparent that they aren't correct.

So far my first cents about scales

Martin

[Tangled-Universe]

I'd like to add to this that as a beginner I'd certainly would not try to focus on scales, but rather on getting to know the functions etc.
It would probably only make things more frustrating.
I'm quite experienced now with TG2 and still I find it quite difficult to build a real world scale scene.
Only my NWDA products use real world scales.

[cyphyr]

Anyhow, no one ever mentioned that it looked off at first sight, nor at second sight etc. Wink

Hmm now you mention it it dose look a little ... nah it looks perfect lol.

If I am ever going to render a Terragen 2 scene in Maxwell Render, I will do it with real world scales Smiley

a better question would be "why?"

I get why, Maxwell can produce some astonishingly good accurate results, I just don't get the "how". How on earth do you render a Terragen scene in Maxwell? I thought Maxwell needed all surfaces and objects exported in its own format via a plugin. Or are talking about rendering scene elements in Maxwell and comping them in to a Terragen rendered scene?

Richard