MAC or PC? that is the question...

schwi77 · February 07, 2010, 09:21:24 PM

SURVEY!

what's the best?
who's on what?

I just started TG... and was looking for plugins to eventually add strata, water... and maybe throw the whole thing in 3Dmax. It seems that lots of the sites related to MAC plugins are out of order or not ready yet.

Just wished I could do all this on MAC... boh. I have a funny feeling I'll be rebooting on PC soon.

f.

jo · February 07, 2010, 10:07:55 PM

Hi,

It's true that I haven't been able to release Mac versions of many of the plugins I wrote for TG Classic. The irony here is that all of my plugins were actually written and compiled for Windows on a Mac! I've been so busy with TG2 I haven't had an opportunity to sort out the Mac versions, or the plugin websites for that matter. If you particularly want to use the plugins or do animation then Windows is the better platform. OTOH the Mac version does have some useful features the Windows one doesn't.

I would definitely recommend getting to grips with TG2 though. It just does so much more than TG Classic. In that case use whichever platform you prefer, however rendering is probably a bit faster on Windows at the moment. We should be able to make the performance equivalent though. If you are using a Mac I strongly recommend using OS 10.6 Snow Leopard, as TG2 Mac can be much faster on it.

Regards,

Jo

schwi77 · February 07, 2010, 10:58:29 PM

Thanks Jo.
Really appreciate the quick response!

Actually I havent got MAC 10.6 yet and am a little tight on budget.
Time is not on my side either! I'm doing a master degree in architecture (scrambled in 12 month!).
I was planning on produce a series of drawings using TG2.
I have 6 weeks to produce some cool stuff (end of 2nd term)! So I'll definitly switch to PC.

I was wondering if there is a student license available. I'll eventually need to print A1 and/or A0 size...

test image:
I added the latest version, it took around 30 minutes to render!
I put cloud samples to 90 and atmosphere to 30...
I also put exposure at the max, I think 10...

Next I'll put atmosphere to 90 too. and try this... hope it'll get better.

cheers all
felix.

schwi77 · February 07, 2010, 11:00:16 PM

oups the second part of the post is meant for my other post named "dark and noise"!!!

inkydigit · February 08, 2010, 04:40:41 AM

Quote from: schwi77 on February 07, 2010, 10:58:29 PM
snip...

I was wondering if there is a student license available. I'll eventually need to print A1 and/or A0 size...
...snip

wow, they are gonna be some massive renders!
welcome Felix, and I am on a mac btw!

Henry Blewer · February 08, 2010, 08:44:51 AM

I would up the atmosphere samples to 96. The sun angle thing... The god rays would render much cleaner. The water is a little rough. Take the wave roughness down to about 1/3 of the default value.

This render is much better. Nice improvements!

schwi77 · February 08, 2010, 08:49:22 PM

Thanks!!
I did a quick try with according to your comments. Posted here.
But problems with water are due to a unsuccessful mask (painted shader).
It makes it opaque... but the roughness might come from the displacement tolerence, I went from .57 to .2
I'll run another render without the mask and with adjusted settings by Njeneb.
Not too sure what the god rays are?! a plugin?

Need to work on other stuff. Will be back at it tomorrow on TG2.
This image was a only a try out. The plan is to work on more tutorials and then compose my own idea project.

cheers,
f.
______________
still on MAC...

i'll do more tutorials and if i really need those plugins I'll switch.

jo · February 09, 2010, 04:29:15 AM

Hi,

It looks like you're mainly using TG2? There aren't any plugins available for that on Mac or Windows. The existing TG plugins only work for Terragen v0.9/Classic.

Regards,

Jo

Henry Blewer · February 09, 2010, 07:49:14 AM

Terragen 2 has a superior atmosphere render. The god rays result when the sun shines just over/under a cloud layer. The atmosphere samples you used on the last render post look really good.

schwi77 · February 10, 2010, 12:49:15 AM

oh thanks!
I needed some cheering... I kind of abandonned that image.
I had hard time getting the right side brighter.
I wanted to see some of the grass and the white mountain top.
I must have spent over 4 hours tweaking the light to get to see more detail...
got some funny stuff out of it.

doing step by step tutorial to keep me out of my frustration!
actually just finished john's BenMcDuff tutorial. will post the image soon.
looked at the ones by dandel0 too... not a lot of instructions but still good material.

ciao
felix

Henry Blewer · February 10, 2010, 07:53:43 AM

Getting the lighting just right is a real skill with Terragen 2. I envy some of the really good artists here that they consistently have great lighting. The best i have been able to do is good lighting. By reading the various posts for some time now, I have began to get a feel for how to use lighting better.

Most of the very good renders keep the sun angles above 15 degrees. They use higher GI levels in the environment light. FrankB increases the GI samples in the render settings.

Then there is the gamma and contrast levels in the render settings, I have not played with these much. Last is the exposure level in the camera setting. For me, this seems to increase the overall brightness.. I hope this helps a little. There is a lot of experimentation involved to learn Terragen 2 and use it well.

TheBlackHole · February 13, 2010, 08:54:00 PM

Windows XP SP3 ftw!