New render, been through dozens of iterations but I'm at a point now where I am a bit sick of looking at essentially the same thing :o
New: Updated render on page 2
Thanks for viewing.
Would you be interested in some comment or are you too tired of looking at it anyway?
This is going to be great.
Some things to critisise if you don't mind: the first thing that caught my eyes was the overall regularity. The strata on the mountains look kind of unnatural although you seemed to have warped them. And the plant distribution could be a lot more chaotic. Maybe you can use a power fractal for the distribution. And the trees would imho look better with some colour and size variation.
My points exactly.
Cheers, always open to suggestions. Points noted and agree with them completely!
Nevertheless I like the overall view ;)
Looks nice and with the suggestions it could be better.
Great leap off point, agree with all the preceding suggestions...love the massive-ness of it over all...Bobby likes BIG....
I am trying to enhance the terrain in world machine, so I want to increase the resolution, but I cant get it to fit the original extents of the terrain :/ The fundamental problem is the very low resolution of the base terrain, but I am having no luck getting world machine to output a terrain of the same size into a .ter file.
Edit: Thought about the problem some more and worked it out - now to learn how to make my hills look nicer!
If you use a .ter file you can increase the fractal detail in TG.
Yeah I am finding I am having a lot more luck adding detail within TG than I am in world machine. Surfacing is definitely something I need to work on though so I'll keep trying. Thanks for the suggestions
You can detail your terrain in various ways in WM.
You can either just add some fractals to it which adds more sauce to your terrain which you can then erode further.
What you can also do is:
1) open a new project
2) in project world settings change the main extent from 8x8 to 16x16 or even 32x32km.
3) load .ter file with file input device and use the quick scaling tool to fit the 16x16 or 32x32km extent.
4) detail a tiny bit with and expand the terrain with the expander, but use very small amounts to just create a slightly larger starting "volume" to erode away.
5) erode using both filters (avoid sharp artefacts, so do NOT use inverse filter and set interpolation to smooth instead of linear)
6) calculate the thing @ 4k or even 8k if memory allows (preserve memory function is king)
7) export all erosion maps and heightfield
Import all the stuff into TG and use the erosion masks to mask TG PF displacement and strata.
For example, exclude strata from erosion channels by inverting the "flow mask" from the erosion device.
(thus use "invert mask" in the strata shader)
Why do I resize the terrain extent to 16x16 or 32x32? Because I feel WM's erosion has a kind of fixed resolution.
In a 2x2km extent the erosion channels are small, sharp, straight and deep, while in a 32x32km extent they are more organic and the erosion channels "start" in lots more places.
In overall I feel you get more detail this way.
Anyway, a lot of info...good luck :)
Cheers, some very valuable info there. I can see what you mean about the fixed resolution of the erode in WM. Also I hadn't thought about using the flow mask to mask the strata in TG, I have just been masking using PF's and by slope. So much possibility :)
Updated render, taking into consideration everyone's suggestions. Still not perfect, but this render had been trying to render that bottom section for over 20 hours and I also realized that I had forgotten to turn on a population :-\
I have a new i7 machine coming this week, so I'll do some reworking and render after I have put it together. I tried to put a bit more variation in the grass but it didn't show through very well, and I think the trees could do with some work. Might put some rocks or a dead tree in the foreground to break it up too.
Suggestions more than welcome :) Apologies for the obnoxiously large file size, I must be doing something wrong as there is still quite a bit of compression distortion going on.
Much better now!! A bit too crisp in my opinion?!
Yeah agreed, what AA settings would you expect to have to render this scene, or what is typical for scenes with lots of grasses? I still have a lot to learn in this area
Holy cow that is a big difference between 1 and 2! I Like number 2 better, obviously.
I agree it's too sharp/crisp. What filter did you use, or did you sharpen it? Michel Netravali is nice, and AA6 minimum, but 8 will do great. There's a lot of testing done on this and several threads worth a read (use the search function). Soft shadows may help with the crispiness of shadows between grasses, but you'd have to croptest the effect.
I also think there should still be more variety in trees (one or two species extra and a little patchiness, like storms collapsed certain areas, where other species take over. Same with the grass; more species in patches intermingling. And indeed some more color variation within a population.
But it's getting better and better!
The foreground is good. Maybe add some taller vertical plants; not too many but just to make it look more interesting.
Using catmull-rom filter, at 1 detail and 7aa. Slight sharpening in post work, so I will flag that next time as it looks pretty bad especially with the jpg compression on top. Soft shadows have always been on, and I have a feeling they might be what is causing the horrendous render times in the foreground.
Thanks for the feedback! Keen to nail this image to be as close to perfect as I can
You should test whether soft shadows makes much difference, otherwise use it locally and comp together crops.
Some nice work. For such a panoramic vista a bit more haze might help soften the image as well, even at altitude the air still has some density. This one is headed in a fine direction, keep going!
I think your shading/texturing on those mountains is fairly excellent, it struck me as very realistic even in the first image (and I actually liked the odd warping, though I agree the newer version is much more realistic at first glance). I do think compositionally the foreground expanse of grasses is a bit boring, it would be nice to see some more interesting foreground element(s) there, perhaps a rock as well shaded as your distant mountains. But honestly I'm really just impressed with that mountain texturing, something about it is quite evocative to me...
Color the sky seems a bit odd though, and overall lacking in atmospheric haze?
To improve render times drop detail to 0.75. It's not having any positive effect on 50% or more of your render as it doesn't affect the raytracer (which I'm assuming you're using for the plants), but will still affect render time as the terrain renders before plants render on top. AA is best in multiples of 2, so 6 or 8, but your overall level is fine. I'd just skip the sharpening step. Also add (back?) in some haze to soften things a bit.
Let me reiterate though, overall this is a very good, promising scene.
- Oshyan
I made some big changes to the point of view and foreground a few days ago, which I think helped reduce the boringness of the grassy area. In my images I like having the camera close to the ground to bring out the small details in the models and for a more photographic likeness, but it comes at an expense of how much of the rest of the scene you can see. I am pleased with the changes, but I have put rendering on hold until I finish building my new PC which should help cut render times significantly.
Interesting info about your suggested render settings, but does tie in with what I have been observing. Interesting about using AA in multiples of 2, because that definitely not a rule I have been always following!
Cheers
I need a bit of technical help - I am doing a test render on my new PC (i7 4790k with 16gb RAM), and my cores are all sitting above 69 degrees and have hit a max of 76 - Is this something I should be worried about? I haven't really tweaked my fan settings at all, but it sounds like they are going full tilt and I'm concerned I might have something incorrectly setup in the case. Just seems pretty hot to me, and it is quite cool in my room. Cheers
Those temps are a bit high, but well within tolerances. Do they get up to that temp quickly, or does it rise over time? What cooler are you using?
- Oshyan
All four cores idle around 28 degrees, but as soon as render starts they shoot up to around 72. As soon as render stops they drop back down. I am using a Hyper Evo 212 air cooler. I'm not too worried but as it is a new build I put together my self I'm scared if something like the cooler power cable comes loose in the middle of a render it might overheat.
If I use a higher performance setting (Asus board), fans turn harder, but my temps rise to that amount as well, quickly when rendering and dropping to 30 after. If I use the normal setting temps rise to about 55ยบ. So if you're worried you might check the bios settings and lower performance.... I wouldn't really know if that has significant impact on render time.
Too hot may also mean the cooler doesn't sit properly on the cpu, or not the proper amount of silver paste has been used (not too much).
Next iteration, I am quite pleased with some of the changes made. Upped the haze density but might put it up a bit more for next time. Still not 100% happy with some of the surfacing on the mountain (snow included), I might try re-render the terrain out of world machine at a higher res now I have a PC that can handle it. I think that will help to get a more accurate flow map.
I'm not sure about the rocks either - I quite like the shape of the ones on the right, but not so much the left ones.
Render only took 4.5 hours, although I did forget to put soft shadows back on. That is compared with 20+ hours on my old PC! Pretty stoked with that.
Cheers
All I can say is WOW!!!
That looks insanely good. What an evolution!
Quote from: Hannes on September 14, 2014, 09:05:07 AM
All I can say is WOW!!!
That looks insanely good. What an evolution!
Gotta agree...that new computer has done wonders for this...if only your happiness at 1/4 the render time. Well done.
Modern CPUs/motherboards will automatically shut down if they go over temperature, so no worries there. As I said you're well within temp specs so go ahead and render, and keep an eye on temps and as long as they don't go above say 80 with prolonged rendering, it's fine. The limit is somewhere around 95c I think.
As for the scene, I definitely like the addition of the rocks, but they seem to almost glow and are rather blue. But compositionally they're a nice addition and the actual surfacing looks like a very good start. I do think even more haze could be good, it helps establish scale and distance, really giving us a grander feeling for those mountains. I also notice you (probably) changed the pixel filter, or just do no post processing sharpening, which I think is good in general, but it honestly is a little *too* soft now. If you're using a soft pixel filter, try Mitchell Netravali or Narrow Cubic, but don't do any post sharpening.
I think this is very close to a very good "final". Nice work!
- Oshyan
Shall I call this a final??
Yes you can. This is very good!
Quote from: choronr on September 20, 2014, 05:54:54 PM
Yes you can. This is very good!
Totally agree...what a great ride this has been...thanks for having us along.
Yes, it's a great final. I like the addition of the rocks.
What a beauty!!!
I like this mountain :)
Matt
Cheers :) Looking forward to starting something new
Nice progression on this.
Really good. This could make an excellent animated sense too.
I just love it... :)