Help! I need to make sunsets!

[Allegro]

Sorry, but I'm new to TG2, and I just can't seem to figure out how to make nice sunsets.  Mind you, I'm also a perfectionist.  I'm hoping to make something similar to the two attached.  I'm not concerned about the ground, as I want to make these into sky boxes for Maya.  I can't figure out how to make the sun a visible disk... the option for that under the sun seems to just make it a point, and increasing the radius seems to make the sun lose it's brightness.

If anyone could help me set something up it would be super appreciated.  I figured that such a sky would be simple... but I just can't seem to get it! 

[Allegro]

I actually need the sun to be at about the height of the first image... I want to make it into a sky because I want to do lighting with it, but I also want to have a shot of the sun  looking about that height / size in one of my shots.

[DiscoBall]

Attach as TGD file and we'll see what we can do for ya

Visible disk? In that first picture wasn't the sun a visible disk? Although its covered by clouds a bit, all you need to do is lessen the clouds

[Allegro]

Sorry for the misunderstanding, those are both photos.  I want to make something similar to that, but I'm just not having any luck.

[rcallicotte]

I did a search in the File and the Image forums here and found this -

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=713.0
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=891.0

[dhavalmistry]

lowering your sun's elevation will help. It will make your sky orange and then you can adjust your sky color to your liking.

[Allegro]

Turns out the biggest problem I had, was that I was turning off "render surfaces" so that the ground wouldn't render... didn't realize that that would get rid of the sun disk too.

Silly me.

I'm getting much better results now.

[cyphyr]

Visible disk? In that first picture wasn't the sun a visible disk? Although its covered by clouds a bit, all you need to do is lessen the clouds

HeHe I can see that this kind of thing could become a problem in the future. Terragen renders being SOO close to photogtraphs that even we cant tell the differance. We'll have to start putting in deliberate imperfections just to prove we did'nt take a snap !!! lol

Richard Fraser

[Cyber-Angel]

  If indeed one day Terragen dose reach that level of realism then I for one would not see it as a problem in fact I would welcome it. The problem with CGI is that it is to clean, to ordered both of which computers love, nature is not so clean and ordered in fact with vary few exceptions nature is the diametric opposite of CGI, and convincing a computer to do that is on of the hardest challenges faced in CGI and has been since its inception.

Even the most seemingly simple river bank in the real world is infinitely more complex then you would think, or take a look at a real world forest with the added complexity of the leaf litter, the masses of fallen twigs and branches even entire sections of forest filled with masses of fallen trees, without masses of vary hard work on the behalf of the user this detail simply will not be there.

To me its all about scalability and interaction of different levels of detail within the same scene and the interaction of different complex systems working together just like nature.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel   

[Will]

I agree with you Cyber-Angel, and I think Organic Algarithoms are mading some progress in the matter. Still it will be a while till we can get a world that looks like it really lives and breaths. Although I have seen some post work and filters that give a great image or animation that final touch.

Regards,

Will

[DiscoBall]

If indeed one day Terragen dose reach that level of realism then I for one would not see it as a problem in fact I would welcome it. The problem with CGI is that it is to clean, to ordered both of which computers love, nature is not so clean and ordered in fact with vary few exceptions nature is the diametric opposite of CGI, and convincing a computer to do that is on of the hardest challenges faced in CGI and has been since its inception.

Even the most seemingly simple river bank in the real world is infinitely more complex then you would think, or take a look at a real world forest with the added complexity of the leaf litter, the masses of fallen twigs and branches even entire sections of forest filled with masses of fallen trees, without masses of vary hard work on the behalf of the user this detail simply will not be there.

To me its all about scalability and interaction of different levels of detail within the same scene and the interaction of different complex systems working together just like nature.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel   

Watch some videos of Crysis in action

If you still aren't convinced, get yourself a quad core CPU and hook up 2 nVidia 8800 GTXs and play Crysis on max detail

Oh and also for my post before, the first picture's water looked REALLY like terragen 'rough' water, and I was pretty convinced it was
When you look closer, you can see that there is a lot of Depth of Field in the second picture, and the tree shows that it isnt really a 3d model

[Allegro]

Well, I ended up making the sunset in TG2, then rendering it out as a sky cube, to use as hdr lighting in Maya.  Just thought I'd post a link here for anyone interested in seeing.

http://www.allegromation.com/Terragen/Sc1.mov

[Oshyan]

Beautiful results! Eventually you should be able to do all that, water animation and DoF included, in TG2.

- Oshyan

[Allegro]

I hope so
For now though, it was definately quicker and easier to do the water / camera animation in Maya.
Render time at 1280x533 was 8 minutes a frame in Mental Ray (mind you I have a quad), and the camera was linked to the motion of the water.  The DOF, I did in post with premiere

[absolutehavok]

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