The Approaching Storm WIP

Started by Bluefinger, April 17, 2010, 06:29:26 PM

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Bluefinger

Right, returning from severe obscurity to slightly less severe obscurity, I come with a pic and request for advice. Basically, I'm trying to recreate a dry, rocky plain with a fair bit of vegetation, with a storm front as the dramatic background to contrast against the arid and bright foreground. I've been doing a fair bit, but I'm just not quite liking the results yet. I feel the clouds aren't quite right, and probably need more to them, and probably extra cloud types to denote the approach of a storm front. In general though, I've gone for the dry grass and bush look, and even put in some cracked earth whilst I was at it too, since I had the advanced cracked earth clips on me. Still working on putting a layer of pebbles and rock debris, but so far, this is what I've put together so far in the pipeline.

So yeah, what can I do to improve this? The image I've provided has had a little postwork done (since I'm practising on the postwork side of things too), so feedback with that would be good too. Pull it apart, and what not. I might even provide the .tgd file if it is required for further examination. And yes, I've got rain going, since you can't have a storm and not have rain!  :P

But yeah, give me your thoughts!

Kadri

Very nice image , Bluefinger  :)

For me there are only 2 things that i would say :
1 : The grass in the foreground don't look quite natural . Maybe more variation (in the object) or distribution ?
2 : Please render it bigger  ;D

MGebhart

Very nice start.

You may want to billow-up the clouds a bit. Perhaps play with the scale and density.

Also, throw in some high altitude clouds.

Marc Gebhart

TheBlackHole

I agree with MGebhart. In the cloud fractal, change the Noise flavor from Perlin to Perlin billows. Maybe increase the cloud density a bit, and add some high-altitude clouds. Perhaps add a moon (I love those, the more the better, up to a point) or a tree, maybe some kind of object...
They just issued a tornado warning and said to stay away from windows. Does that mean I can't use my computer?

Bluefinger

Quote from: Kadri on April 17, 2010, 06:52:10 PM
Very nice image , Bluefinger  :)

For me there are only 2 things that i would say :
1 : The grass in the foreground don't look quite natural . Maybe more variation (in the object) or distribution ?
2 : Please render it bigger  ;D
For the distribution, I can do so, but the object is the long grass object I downloaded from Terragen.org. I'll see what I can do with that.

Quote from: MGebhart on April 17, 2010, 07:22:04 PM
Very nice start.

You may want to billow-up the clouds a bit. Perhaps play with the scale and density.

Also, throw in some high altitude clouds.
Feature scale, or the lead-in scale with adjustments to octaves? Maybe both even? And yes, high altitude cloud is a must. Looking at reference pictures, having some form of leading cloud is the usual scene for storm fronts.

Quote from: TheBlackHole on April 17, 2010, 07:41:30 PM
I agree with MGebhart. In the cloud fractal, change the Noise flavor from Perlin to Perlin billows. Maybe increase the cloud density a bit, and add some high-altitude clouds. Perhaps add a moon (I love those, the more the better, up to a point) or a tree, maybe some kind of object...
Alright. Billows it is!

Bluefinger

Okay, redid the clouds and added a little extra high altitude stuff quite quickly. The billows turned out a little different, and thus I had to adjust the rain bit a little, and I probably could do with thickening the high altitude cloud cover. Nothing new on the objects side, but I'll have to leave that for tomorrow. So yeah, new image and cloud before I go off to bed.

So, is this getting anywhere? Or could I improve the cloud settings?

TheBlackHole

Bring the storm cloud a little closer and decrease the edge sharpness on the cirrus clouds. Decrease the coverage adjust too. Just so the cirrus doesn't look flat.
They just issued a tornado warning and said to stay away from windows. Does that mean I can't use my computer?

domdib

I think increasing the cloud quality settings would help - and moving the clouds closer would help increase the sense of menace.

Bluefinger

Quote from: domdib on April 18, 2010, 05:26:54 AM
I think increasing the cloud quality settings would help - and moving the clouds closer would help increase the sense of menace.
At the moment, I'm not rendering at full quality settings so to keep preview render times quick enough. But I'll certainly go all out for the full render.

Dune

It's getting very nice. How did you do the rain, Y-stretched fractal in an extra cloud layer?

Bluefinger

Quote from: Dune on April 18, 2010, 09:39:38 AM
It's getting very nice. How did you do the rain, Y-stretched fractal in an extra cloud layer?
Yes. It is a Y-stretched cumulus cloud layer, however, it has a low density with an increased edge sharpness so to still keep the rain streaks visible. The distribution of the rain is also mapped to the above storm cloud layer to ensure that the rain always appears under the storm clouds and also only on the inside parts where the cloud should be thicker. This is done by adjust the coverage adjust and colour contrast accordingly. Also, be sure to invert the profile of the cloud layer, since you want the 'rain' to be built downwards, not upwards.

Dune


Bluefinger

Right, since changing the scene settings with regards to the cloud layers, I've noticed a few problems with the way the rain cloud layer is being formed, so I've tried redoing the way I'm mapping the rain part. I'm trying to use colour adjust shaders to create a better mask for the rain distribution, feeding off from the density shader for the storm clouds. I'm having to constantly tweak the settings and rechecking the results, so a new image is slightly delayed until I'm happy with the rain distribution.

Here's at least a pic of the node network I've set up. Tried using some functions last night, but that didn't quite work out so I've stuck to using what I know.

Bluefinger

Okay, update with pic time. The main storm clouds are looking a lot better, but I think there's still room for improvement. I'm not happy with the rain distribution, and generally the way it is looking. Do I lighten it? How can I improve the streaking so it doesn't sort of end halfway between the cloud and ground in some places. Any ideas on that front? Because it isn't far off from being done, if only I could tweak it better. The nodes haven't changed since the last update, but I'll try listing all the settings I've done with regards to setting up the rain cloud distribution. Maybe someone might be able to point out where to change things. But since everthing is connected, I'll try to summarise it as best as I can:

Main storm clouds density shader: Feature Scale 20000, Lead-in Scale 30000, Smallest Scale 10, Octaves 14.
Storm cloud shader: Cloud alt. 3744, Cloud depth 6000, Edge sharpness 10, Cloud density 0.2, Coverage Gamma 0.48, Cloud colour 0.618, Scattering colour, 0.05625
Distance shader: Far dist. 2750, Near dist. 2500
Colour adjust for blending mask: black point 0.5562, white point 0.59,
Rain density shader: Feature scale 3000, Lead-in Scale 30000, Smallest scale 10, Octaves 13, Contrast 2, Coverage adjust 0.2, Stretched on Y coords by a factor of 10.
Rain colour adjust shader: black point 0, white point 0.225
Rain cloud shader: Cloud alt. -100, Cloud depth 3500, Edge sharpness 17, cloud density 0.002, coverage adjust -0.2, cloud colour 0.3562, scattering colour 0.28, Inverted Profile, wispiness 0.5, softness 0.268, usually rendered at around quality 2.

So yeah, any suggestions on how I can tame this rain into something great?

Dune

This is the way I handled rain (and snow) as well, and also found it hard to get it exactly as I wished, as you see from attached images. For more streaky effect, I suggest using an extra power fractal with hard edges and simple shapes (low on octaves, high on contrast), as a blender. That's what I did. Ah, and another thing; I think the smallest size of your main cloud should be 50 or so, not as small as 10. They are very 'fractured'.

---Dune