mountain problem

[Thejazzshadow]

I was rendering this mountain picture and saw that the backside of the mountain is stretched out. Does anyone know why this would be?

[Henry Blewer]

This is common. What happened is the faces went perpendicular to the horizon. When this happens, the breakup of the faces stops and long lines appear. Some times this can be a good thing, but mostly it is annoying.
In the Terrain Tab, add a powerfractal from the displacement menu. Set the values to 2 for the scale, and 2 for the displacement. It should stop this.

[Tangled-Universe]

This is common. What happened is the faces went perpendicular to the horizon. When this happens, the breakup of the faces stops and long lines appear. Some times this can be a good thing, but mostly it is annoying.
In the Terrain Tab, add a powerfractal from the displacement menu. Set the values to 2 for the scale, and 2 for the displacement. It should stop this.

How can you possibly determine he has to use 2m scales?
I also don't see how this definitely should solve the problem.
Perhaps it helps, but I can't think why yet.

My guess would be to first check different seeds for the displacement fractals and then the displacement's settings and see if "continue spike limit" is checked and perhaps reduce the displacement and/or displacement roughness slightly.
Another thing you could try is to increase the gradient patch size in the compute terrain node which in some cases can "close" the gaps in your displacements.

[sjefen]

This is a bug with the alpine shader.
I've seen it so many times I don't use this shader anymore.

- Terje

[Henry Blewer]

I was trying to think of a solution. I thought 2 meters may be enough to break up the vertical parts of the mountain side.
Your advice seems good TU. Changing the gradient patch size is something I would not have thought of.

[Tangled-Universe]

I was trying to think of a solution. I thought 2 meters may be enough to break up the vertical parts of the mountain side.
Your advice seems good TU. Changing the gradient patch size is something I would not have thought of.

Of course Don't get me wrong, it wasn't meant personally. The scales in the software often represent totally different values than you would judge from the image.
Though the mountains look hundreds of meters tall, they actually could be just dozens of metres in the software, that's what I meant to say
Sjefen is right by the way. If he uses the alpine here, he'd probably be better without it (is also faster rendering).

Martin

[Henry Blewer]

Not a problem TU. I think the crop looks great, except for the vertical lines. I would like to see this one finished. It looks like it could be quite fantastic.

[Thejazzshadow]

Thanks for all your input. The picture is turning out good so far at a render time of 11 hours and 24 minutes so far. For some reason, the sun looks like it is in front of the clouds and I have ray traced shadows activated. I'll show you what I mean when the picture is done. Any ideas?

[Thejazzshadow]

Here's the photo. Also, any other tips would be appreciated.

About earlier, would dispacement offset cause the mountains to have those weird problems?

[Henry Blewer]

It does not usually. It can change the look of a landscape when the offset is used.
I think this is a great pic. I see what you mean about the sun. This was with the atmosphere and cloud shadows turned on? If so, you may have to reseed the cloud or move the sun. Or you can bring this to everyone's attention; call it on purpose and people will say what a great effect it is.

[dandelO]

Displacement offset just moves the entire fractal up(or down if negative values are input) to the level, in metres, that you type. That wouldn't have caused the displacement stretch problem.

[TheBlackHole]

I had this problem once. It looks like the mountain is collapsing! 

[Mr_Lamppost]

Even with ray traced shadows activated it is often difficult to stop the sun from shining through the clouds.  The only solution I have found is to use very high density values; reduce the edge sharpness accordingly.  I haven't found a "Magic Value" so you will need to experiment, this is where crop renders can be useful. 

[Oshyan]

Assuming you mean you have Raytraced Shadows turned on in either the Cloud or Atmosphere Quality tabs, it's important to know that this will *not* help in situations like this. It's best to leave both of these turned off as the situations in which they are useful are extremely limited.

As for the terrain stretching problem, are you using any kind of masking, blending, or anything? Or is this just a single, straight procedural terrain.

- Oshyan

[Thejazzshadow]

It is just terrain.