Orange Canyon

Started by N810, September 29, 2009, 12:55:02 AM

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N810

I based it off of on old TG 0.9 file.

.. so what do you guys think.  :-\
Hmmm... wonder what this button does....

N810

Hmmm... wonder what this button does....

Kevin F

It's o.k. but nothing special. The rock shapes for me are too pointy and the sun angle needs to be off to one side to give better overall light and shade. Having said that the rocks are really good. It's the basis of a potentially really nice scene.

cyphyr

Certainly not :) Its a good start personally I'd like to see more variety in the rocks maybe only subtility :) The water I like as it is and maybe you could add some atmospherics, soft dawn light etc...
Keep it coming :)
Richard
www.richardfraservfx.com
https://www.facebook.com/RichardFraserVFX/
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Henry Blewer

I would add some variation to the rock strata. Use Surface Shaders with altitude constraints. Something similar to the Grand Canyon maybe. Most of my renders look rather monochrome, so I always have to go back and change colors. ;D
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

Tangled-Universe

Easy on us, we're not that fast sometimes :)
I think, regarding colors and depth of atmosphere you made a good start here.
However, I have some suggestions.
I have attached your image with some notes on it to help myself explaining:

It's a bit difficult to determine the scales of your terrain, mainly because of the water and the huge size of your strata-layers.
I painted a really beautiful figure *ahum* which depicts how I perceive scales in the foreground. However...on the far right foreground where the water meets the terrain I can easily imagine that he waves are 2m tall. But that would be strange, since it probably is a lake. So there's some conflict there imho.

It would be nice to have some outcrops, which in turn will make your strata look better as well.
Create a redirect shader and connect it somewhere in the terrain-group, but certainly before the compute terrain node.
Then create a powerfractal and follow/read notes 1 & 2 in the image below.
I didn't make estimations, just an example on how I choose scales for displacements.
You can measure heights, lengths etc. using the measure tool just above the render-preview.
In that powerfractal, given that you indeed have 25m features for example, choose displacement values with slightly lower values than the feature scale, say 15-20m.
Plug this powerfractal into the X- and Z-axis input of the redirect-shader. Do NOT set the displacement type to lateral or any other, just "along normal".
This should create some outcrops/overhangs etc.

Once you have succefully created the outcrops/overhangs you can tweak the strata. So to stick to my example: when your outcrops are on average 25m, then make about 2-3x smaller strata.
I'll give away one of my secrets for strata: keep the ratio of hardlayer depth and hardlayer spacing around 3:4 - 3:6

I hope you find this info useful.

Cheers,
Martin

N810

#6
Thanks Martin,
That's great advise, I'll try to work on it some more when I get home

I tried to do overhangs on this before,
but I just couldn't get them to work right...

There are some tilted strata displacements down near the beach,
and I have sand covering some of the flat surfaces near the water
to show where the river had flooded before.

I put the sun where it is so I could get reflections off of the water...
unfortuneately this leaves much of the foreground in shadow...
Do you think I should add a weak light source somewhere behind the camera
to make up for the reflected light that should be there...  ???

Not shure what to do with the sky... maybe just a few high altude wispy clouds?

I allways have trouble geting a sense of scale out of my renders...
not shure how to fix this.
Hmmm... wonder what this button does....

Henry Blewer

To give a sense of scale, I add object/objects which might give indications of scale. Trees seem to work, or something people recognize and know what size the something is.
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

efflux

I agree about the sense of scale. The render is OK but I think sometimes maybe people will not comment if they can't sense being in the environment. To get this effect you need to have scale references of some kind.

N810

Yea I was trying to add a dead tree (.obj) washed up on the little beach,
but I just couldn't get the (.mat) file to load right...

Maybe I'll get inspired to work on it again next week...  :-\
Hmmm... wonder what this button does....