The wonders of TG2 - As per my new rock wall example

[mhaze]

Thanks for he tip Frank - I'd not thought of restricting slope, does the trick. Thanks again.

Mick

[FrankB]

Thanks for he tip Frank - I'd not thought of restricting slope, does the trick. Thanks again.

Mick

Hi Mick, remember to add a compute normal before the slope restricting shader, otherwise TG2 will assume the normals of a sphere.

Cheers,
Frank

[domdib]

The detail in the foreground of the 4000px image is just astonishing - fantastic work Frank. Will you be posting it over at CG Society?
So, when does this little preset go on sale?  

[FrankB]

The detail in the foreground of the 4000px image is just astonishing - fantastic work Frank. Will you be posting it over at CG Society?
So, when does this little preset go on sale?  

Thank you Dominic.
Actually I was just going to write about that I have discovered a flaw in the setup, in that the outcrops and cracks are not shining through correctly.
I think I have fixed this and will render another big version tonight, also with a couple plants.
I am wondering if I should even add the water or not... any opinions?

Once I am satisfied with how this preset works, and had a little feedback from a few testers, I will write up instructions. That's not the easiest part. When writing instructions, how much do you assume the user can understand? That will require a few days usually.
So if everything works fine and I continue to have time during the evenings, I may have it ready to go on Sunday, at which point I'll also post this on cgtalk - although I don't expect much interest from there, but we'll see.

Cheers,
Frank

[Tangled-Universe]

This is really good work so far and is going to be a wonderful preset!
About the water in your image. I like it better without.
I certainly would like to test it and in my opinion a couple of little things could be improved. The texturing for example which slightly lacks variation somehow, although you've used a couple of colors.
Maybe some more slope restricted way of texturing gives a better impression of actual real different types of soil/layares/rockstructure. As is now it looks a bit the some throughout the whole terrain.
The trick for coloring stones works very good.
All in all this will be a wonderful learning tool for everyone

Generally, when I write instructions for my presets I try to assume that the users vary from inexperienced to very experienced.
I try to go through every relevant node and deal with the why and how of the settings. This is for the more inexperienced users.
After that I try to drop a few suggestions on what is possible as well and that's for the more advanced users.
If you like I can try to help

Cheers,
Martin

[FrankB]

Thanks Martin! Of course I am happy to call on your help with putting together instruction. All in all the preset will be relatively simple to use, because I managed to set better default values for everything now.
(I figured that a few elements didn't quite work as expected in the previous version, so here's V2).

Only 1680 px wide this time (sorry)

Cheers,
Frank

[domdib]

I'm going to be hyper-critical here, Frank, forgive me - I think I prefer the previous one. But that might be because the greyish surfacing on the flat areas doesn't seem to go with the new, redder rock; and this also accentuates the slightly implausible thinness of some of the strata layers in the foreground. Also, the strata 'waving' isn't so obvious here.

(P.S. many thanks for the clip file - I've integrated it into v.2 of my rock surface  )

[FrankB]

it's true, in this test render the slope constraint for the rubble ran a little short...
I thought that may happen, hence the smaller render size. I thought I'd post this anyway.

[Walli]

very nice and I think if the grey will be covered a bit by rubble, then it will look fine!

[Tangled-Universe]

Very nice work!
It's been said about the rubble, agree with that.
The texturing of the terrain has improved, looks smoother and less noisy.
A next thing which might be interesting to add is some slope restriction and breakup to the strata.
Of course you could go on and on with adding elements etc., but at a certain moment you'd end with a very complex preset.

[FrankB]

Yeah I'll leave it at that. There already is a slope restriction and breakup to the strata. So it's easy to strengthen the effect if you so wish

Cheers,
Frank

[inkydigit]

this is looking great Frank, I am reworking my Grande Massif with some strata, it is tricky stuff to get looking right, (did you get my pm?)

[FrankB]

Hey Jason, thanks.

yes I got your pm. Can you provide me with your email? I would like to send you something that may help.
Cheers,
Frank

[inkydigit]

no worries, Frank, I have pmed it to you

[FrankB]

ok, so here is the final render.
I have accentuated the strata fading and tried a new color scheme (although that can of course be customized to everyone's individual taste), and corrected the slope constraints for the rubble so that the grey remains only here and there.

I have tried to render this at 4000px again, but with water and vegetation, the app needed too much memory and threads started dying (afer 6 hours....   )
It's really painful in cases like these, as you know the computer has another 4 GB free RAM, but the app can't allocate it.

anyway, rendered again at 2500px wide, which also gives quite nice detail. This time, at quality 0.7, GI 2/2 the render finished in under 3 hours (but still scratched near the memory limit).

Enjoy

http://nwda.deviantart.com/art/Next-Iteration-Rock-Surface-152776937

Frank