Northern Sierras

[Linda McCarthy]

I'm hoping to help redeem myself with this latest effort.  No shrooms, but some varied and more conservative displacement shading.
The trees are Marc Gebhart's. his "Generic Pines Snow Pack" can be downloaded at http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8117.msg86547#msg86547; unfortunately, I haven't used them to their best advantage, as they appear more artificial in this render..and the trunk too spindly.  Even given the distance, I think I must be doing something wrong. ??

I'm from Placerville (foot of the Sierras) and will be tripping up there Monday for a 2 week or so stay.  I should return with some fresh ideas.
Not entirely a pleasure trip, as my Dad suffers from Alzheimers and he is my primary reason for the trip.  But- no matter the reason for going- one can't help being inspired by the magnificent countryside.

Have a beautiful weekend all!

Linda

[Gannaingh]

Very cool, I love the terrain! My one suggestion would to be to decrease the size of the trees and to increase their density; that way it would give an increased sense of scale to the mountain.

[schmeerlap]

The scaling of the trees is good for me, tighter grouping in large well-defined clumps would be better than the scattergun approach, though. And as I said elsewhere I like the snow coverage over the strata. Very nice render overall.

John

[Henry Blewer]

I think the trees are about the correct size. I agree with John about the clumping. They would look very good in tight groups with open/brush space around them.

This is very nice work creating the upthrust mountains of the Sierras. The snow coverage is quite good.

[EoinArmstrong]

Excellent pov and terrain feature.  I like the lighting too, but yeah the pop distributions need a little revisit

[Hannes]

Very beautiful render. I really like the terrain and the bizarre snow layer, although to me it looks more like some kind of bright sand.

I have to disagree about the size of the trees. They are much too big compared to the altitude of the clouds and the size of the mountains in the background.

You could decrease the value for object spacing and use a distribution shader as density shader for the trees population to create the random clumps of trees Schmeerlap mentioned.

[Tangled-Universe]

Hi Linda,

I'm sorry to hear about your dad. I hope that part of your visit will be going fine as well.

This is nice work here. It's been said about the trees already. I'd reduce the size, say 50%, and increase coverage indeed.
To make them look better I strongly suggest to increase the diffuse colors for the bark and the needle.

Each texture, bark or leaf, is loaded into a default-shader which is plugged into a parts-shader (most of the times).
In these default shaders the texture is applied, like bark.bmp for example. Above that you'll see the diffuse color setting, which by default = 0.5.
This means that the texture is not brightened, nor darkened by TG2.
To darken or brighten textures you can choose to do that in photoshop/GIMP/whatever, or you can do it simpler, faster and with more control in TG2.
Just increase/decrease the diffuse color number above the texture path.

So for the pines I'd start increasing the diffuse color by 50% for the needles and 25% for the bark (so from 0.5 to 0.75 and 0.5 to 0.6125).
For the needles you could also add more translucency, say a value of 0.75.
Further you could add specularity at a strength (reflectivity) of 0.3 and roughness of 0.3 for starters.
Make a croprender (not too small) and see how it looks.

Good luck with both

Cheers,
Martin

[Linda McCarthy]

Thank you, everyone, for your kind comments, honest critique and recommendations.
Martin, I appreciate your kindness.  My sweet Dad is having a difficult time, and I try to spend as much time with him as possible, given the geographical distance between us.  We're hoping and praying a new med the doctor wants to try will improve his quality of life.

Changes:
pop: added a 2nd tree from Walli's Fir Tree Pack at NWDA:
http://www.nwdanet.com/buy-packs/8-object-packs/12-trees/49-fir-tree-pack.html
Thanks, Walli, and thanks again to Marc Gebhart for his Generic Pine Snow Pack:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8117.msg86547#msg86547

Played with the diffuse, tanslucency, specularity and roughness on both pops.

I also changed the shader from distribution shaders on the trees to painter shaders for both populations.
Reduced the size of the trees, as well as the object spacing..and played the spacing variation numbers to break up the uniformity a little and add clumping and denseness.

Though I liked the snow coverage in the 1st render, I decided to reduce the slope a bit to show more of the terrain.  I also brought the landscape up a bit..felt that the sky was too big before.  Looks very different, and I may still prefer the first.

Question:  What makes the 'base colors' go from the shader panel to the terrain panel??

ps to Frank:  Still working on the Shroom image.  Can't get the crater shader to cooperate; in other words, still don't have a clue.
Will have to wait until I return.

[Hannes]

Yes Linda, I think the size of the trees is way better and the snow looks like snow to me now. The distribution of the trees is really good but if you would reduce the value for object spacing a little more to make the vegetation a little bit more dense it would be fantastic.

[Henry Blewer]

For me, both scales of the trees work very well. They both are beautiful renders.

[EoinArmstrong]

I think the population distribution is a bit more realistic looking now

[schmeerlap]

Question:  What makes the 'base colors' go from the shader panel to the terrain panel??

That will occur if you insert a Compute Terrain shader after the Base Colours shader. Though, it shouldn't cause any problems.

For me the original tree size was ok too; but their deployment is better now.

John