Pinus

[dandelO]

I'm really loving ray traced objects right now!
It's also great to just be having fun with Terragen for a change, instead of constantly beating creases out of new and broken shader sets and settings, which I usually do.

I've never made an image with so many populations so far in TG either, 14 here.

Credits for the models which make this image:

Walli: Pine 1 and 2, fern 1 and all 3 grass clumps from the Planetside freebie pack.
Mr Lamppost: Bush 5a and bush 7c, from his basic bush pack.
Xfrog: Grand fir(young) and grand fir(mature) from the Xfrog tgo sampler pack.
Turbosquid: Free Sansazi flower.

Other objects are 3x TG2 Grassclumps.

Thanks for looking!

Also, Henry, if you're reading this. I said before in one of your image threads that I thought you had me mixed up with TU regarding light distribution with clouds. You didn't have me mixed up at all, I was confused. You had TU mixed up with RArcher. I think he said to use low clouds in a tutorial somewhere to spread light through a forest before. I realized this when I was adding a cloud layer to this forest that this was what you were meaning in your thread(I can't remember what image it was now). Sorry.

[Henry Blewer]

I am glad you decided to do a render without testing new concepts! It's very good. I have one in the pot simmering now which is much like this.
You are right, it was Ryan who uses cloud layers for light scattering. It's a good technique. I use it often now. We all are so busy and there are so many discussions happening at once; it's hard to keep track of who did what and when. I am happy I remember what I do read. Sometimes I wish it was easier to find the subject I am interested in.

[dandelO]

Cheers, Henry.

I think I'll run this through The Gimp. Should've earlier but I only tidied it up in Photoshop. There's a lovely filter in The Gimp called 'softglow' I really like it, it'd be nice in this. I'll post an update later.

For now, it's St. Valentine's day and my beautiful girl is wont to kill me if I spend the whole day TG'ing!

[MGebhart]

Nice to see your taking a break from over taxing your big brain.

I really like in-the-woods shots. This is nice.

Oh, and she will kill you.

Marc

[dandelO]

Nice title, eh?

Just a post-worked version of the same thing, nothing new.

Cheers!

[cyphyr]

Just beautiful
Slightly higher sampling quality, just maybe
Richard

[dandelO]

Cheers, Richard. Do you mean the cloud or the AA sampling?

The cloud samples are very low because the layer is only 50m thick. This equated to 13 samples at detail = '1'. I could've probably bumped that up somewhat past full detail.
AA is 6 at default sampling.

[cyphyr]

Cloud quality I meant, I sometimes have it up to 12 in quality (depending) if its a very thin layer. Its the density that really slows it down and this is so diffuse you could bump up the quality a lot (the sampling will follow suit)
Richard

[dandelO]

Aye, I hear you, man. Usually I'd bump up cirrus layers and such well beyond detail = 1. You can usually afford the render time when the cloud is so sparse and thin. I normaly go on the basis of cloud quality levels, samples are really pointless in judging, from cloud to cloud.
I didn't think I'd need to bump this fog past 1 here, since it's so thin but I did see the grain in the distance fog in the first render in this thread once it finished. That had very little work done to it afterwards, signature, frame, tiny colour balancing. It also appears washed out and a bit flat in colour.

I'd fixed this in the pw'd version, I thought. I don't see any grain in the image, not now that I've went to town with the image editors(subtly enough, I hope, to still appear natural). Does it still appear grainy to you?

[dandelO]

Oh. 12 is a ridiculous level of detail for clouds. Unless you are talking really, really thin haze layers, still, I'd not think you'd really need to go past 2-3 for that. I mean you could really go as high as you want but really, why quality 12?

P.S. I also had your pine needles in this at one point, Richard, but they are so small that I really couldn't justify the amount of them that I needed to cover the ground(there wasn't always this amount of grasses, in fact to begin with there were no grasses, just my clump shader, which looked rubbish here). I was looking at a spacing of 0.01-0.05 over about a 500x300m area for the needles. It was pathetic, ha! They're really nice for close-ups but on a larger scale scene like this, I decided to pass. I will use them shortly I think, though. I like close-ups.

[cyphyr]

To remove noise in "local area "god Rays"

[dandelO]

Cool, but 12!!! Phew! You're a more patient man than me.

I'd like a real beast to render on, my top end machine is only a dual core 2.0ghz. I'll tell you, even this is a dream-machine compared to the computer I'd been working on for about the last six months, no way could I have rendered this scene on my other computer. Not without becoming a patient, at least! I'd have been waiting for ever.

Pity me!

[cyphyr]

A default 3d Cumulus Cloud at 50m thick with a quality of 12 gives 190 samples, not too bad. I'd never use a setting that high for anything other than close up fog with "god rays"

Richard

[TheBlackHole]

I seriously hope it's pronounced "pie-nuss".