My first tree population render

[D.A. Bentley (SuddenPlanet)]

Here is a scene I put together in about an hour using a tree I built in 3ds Max.  It's not a finished, or polished piece, but I thought it was amazing how much realism a single tree population can add to the mountain top ridges.  I just whipped together some basic surface maps, put in a tree population a default cirrus cloud layer and rendered.

[Henry Blewer]

The tree is hard to distinguish in the render, but it works well. Objects can make a so so landscape look fantastic.

Try using a distribution shader in the blend by shader of the population. This allows the control of altitude and slope, and coverage. Coverage of 0.25 with high population density of the population helps make plants 'clump' together in groups. This helps make things look more natural.

[Hannes]

Hey, that's nice. Are you using the latest version of TG?
I think the trees don't have the best quality settings?! The image could benefit from that.

[D.A. Bentley (SuddenPlanet)]

Hey, that's nice. Are you using the latest version of TG?
I think the trees don't have the best quality settings?! The image could benefit from that.

Yes, I am using the latest version, but I just didn't have my quality settings turned up.  It was actually just a test render, but I thought I would share my enthusiasm.    I have to learn a little bit each day in order to absorb all the power of TG2.  I am starting to see TG2 is a graphical mathematicians', and technical artists' dream come true.  I can't wait to start building more complex shader function operations. 

[Henry Blewer]

Welcome to the world of 'can I do this?' and the wonders of 'YES, I can!'

Terragen 2 is one of the most fascinating programs I have ever used.

[Linda McCarthy]

It's really great!  I agree that using the quality atmo and render settings will make this even better.  Have you considered lightening the tree needles just a bit in Photoshop before rendering?   i really like the point of view and rock surface.  Linda

[Tangled-Universe]

It's really great!  I agree that using the quality atmo and render settings will make this even better.  Have you considered lightening the tree needles just a bit in Photoshop before rendering?   i really like the point of view and rock surface.  Linda

This is a very good tip indeed!

To make it a bit easier than lightening up and down in photoshop you can also use the diffuse color value of the leaf-shader. The brightness of the diffuse color map for the needles/bark etc. is controlled by the diffuse color slider just above it. Normally it is set to 0.5, but the creator of the model can have this adjusted as well.
You can adjust it to any value you like, also above 1.
To make it look even a bit better you can add specularity (say reflection at 0.4 and roughness 0.3 for example) and add translucency (say around 0.5-0.7 for example).

Good luck!

Martin