Very first render....

Started by dlefik2008, January 02, 2010, 04:08:07 AM

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dlefik2008

Hi everyone. I've poking around in Terragen for about two days, and after following up on some tutorials and spending mad hours experimenting with all thats under the hood of terragen, i've come up with a work in progress. i know it's nothing exciting but I'm just kind of proud of it.

This scene is actually a mixture of different things. Grass was done in OnyxGrass and then imported as OBJ. Tree was one I made in OnyxTree and exported as OBJ, and the flowers are Xfrog exported as OBJ.

It's not an extreme high quality render just yet. I think I'll add some more to it before going for the insane render. But I just thought I would share my excitement for actually doing this right lol.


schmeerlap

It's looking good. Hope to see the top of the tree in the final render.

John
I hope I realise I don't exist before I apparently die.

Henry Blewer

There is a very good sense of distance. The colors are a bit over saturated, but that's an artistic choice. I agree with John that the top of the tree should be seen; it's the 'star' of the image. Overall it's a very good image. Nice work!
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

EoinArmstrong

Nice work so far - I'd add a touch of red into the green you've chosen :)

domdib

Welcome to the forums. A very good start. I particularly like the nice soft cloudscape you have created. The one thing that jars slightly for me is the sudden shift in grass colour from mid- to background.

dlefik2008

hey all, thanks for the feedback. you're absolutely right about that sudden shift. i only covered the immediate front area with the actual grass object then attempted to just create a simple surface layer for grass and try to use that for further distances just to keep my population count down. but maybe i should have tried to make it darker like the foreground grass.

the only thing that really bothers me about this image is it doesn't seem to have that "photo-realistic" look to it. it looks nice and all but it's not one of those pictures you look at and say wow, what a photograph. I tried to do another render last night with much higher settings on everything and let it run over night, but to my disappointment, when i went to check it, the result looked almost identical to this. so i'm not sure what i'm doing wrong.  :-\

but as the others have said, maybe some more variation in flowers and color. now i think of it as njeneb said, it does seem a bit over saturated.

TheBlackHole

#6
Try dandelO's Planetary Grass Shader: Evolution. More realistic than your grass and it covers the planet so you don't need ridiculous populations or surface layers to have grass in the foreground, midground, and background. You might want to decrease the saturation of the tree's leaves because I think a tree with light-colored bark needs some lightish greenish leaves instead of green construction paper.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7509.0
They just issued a tornado warning and said to stay away from windows. Does that mean I can't use my computer?

dlefik2008

wow, blackhole, thanks for the link to that other thread. i'm kinda tight on time right now but imanaged to skim over the thread and that looks so much better than what i'm using. i had a feeling using onyxgrass was going to be a bad idea in the long run. i'll have a go at that other thread later when i get time and go back and rework things and see how it turns out. thank you very much again!

TheBlackHole

Did you make the tree? If you did, try using XFrog. I've heard of a nasty case of copyright infringement lawsuits with Onyx because someone made the lethal mistake of -gasp- sharing his own models made in Onyx software. Apparently Onyx owned whatever its customers made. Onyx, because of this, might be better known as Own-yx. ;D That's one reason why I always read the EULA for programs: basically to make sure I still own what I make.
They just issued a tornado warning and said to stay away from windows. Does that mean I can't use my computer?

dlefik2008

ooops, wow, didn't even think of that. yeah i made the tree in onyxtree but the only thing i've seen was when you go to export as obj it says something along the lines of i agree not to sell the model and i have to agree to finish the export. man, that puts this into a whole new light.  :-\

maybe i will have to try the xfrog approach. i've just for some reason have preferred the trees from onyx over xfrog, dunno why.

Kadri

#10
TheBlackHole , like you said if he doesn't distribute  it and use it for his own projects there isn't any problem with Onyx .
I don't own any of them but i heard from some users that Onyx trees were a little better ?

Edit : I saw your reply , Dlefik2008  :)

Cheers.

Kadri.

Linda McCarthy

Hi dlefik2008, and welcome to the forum!  An impressive first image you've posted.  Beautiful colors (though a tad too saturated, in my opinion, but maybe you're not going for realism?); wonderful splash of purple with the green.  Very nice distant mountains, lovely soft atmosphere..and the tree is so lush; would like to see the treetop.  I look forward to seeing more from you.  Linda

dlefik2008

hi linda, and thank you for the welcome and your comments. i've noticed a few of you mentioned the over saturation. will too much saturation steal away from the photorealism? thats what im trying to achieve, is the kind of render that's more like a photo and not so much just a picture.

Linda McCarthy

I think it does take away for the "photorealism."  It's beautiful, but I've not seen anything quite as green..or, at least the shade of green you have here.  If you find a place like this, let me know..so my husband and I can vacation there.   :)

Quote from: dlefik2008 on January 02, 2010, 11:22:43 PM
hi linda, and thank you for the welcome and your comments. i've noticed a few of you mentioned the over saturation. will too much saturation steal away from the photorealism? thats what im trying to achieve, is the kind of render that's more like a photo and not so much just a picture.

TheBlackHole

What exactly does the export message say? Post it so I can read it to see if they say you own what you make. And yes, oversaturation will take away from photorealism. Go outside someday. Look at some average grass. It's not made of bright green construction paper, is it? The only way to make Crayola grass realistic is to build a suburbia around it. Since your tree is alone with what appears to be mountains in the background, it's very obvious it's a natural ocurrance; nobody planted it there for a reason. No buildings or streets or cars around it, nobody painting the grass green to be better than the neighbors. The grass is its natural color: muted green.
They just issued a tornado warning and said to stay away from windows. Does that mean I can't use my computer?