Alright team,
Has anyone found a way to create rock and stones of the below formation? I know the "cracked face" technique was a huge step in this direction...
Anyone have anything close?
Yep
Care to elaborate, Volker? :P
It is just about applying multiple displacements. One before 'Compute Terrain' and the other one afterwards.
Think of creating thos Twist and Shear-overhangs and then displace them up and downwards.
Super! Got any example images? 8)
I am working on it ... just a preview of some work:
(http://tn3-1.deviantart.com/fs18/300W/f/2007/212/e/3/No_Quarter_by_Volker_Harun.jpg) (http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/61103003/)
Volker
Edit: I changed the image to link to the final render.
Holy cow Volker! That looks simply amazing.
Very good results!
@Volker: Hey man, nice work on the image above! I have had you as a favorite at Renderosity for quite some time for a good reason! (Ex. The hornblower and mountain images are amazing - and this was before the softlight).
Would you be able to add those cracks and such and have them sitting on top of the ground? (thats what I've been working on myself).
@Moodflow - that was you!?!
What you see in the image was an accident ... it happened after applying a crater shader as the last shader befor compute terrain and plugging the terrain itself to the rim-shader. It is far out off scale - from bottom to top about 500m. But that could be corrected. The better view on structures will come later ... maybe, because:
When you were asking I had not ime - but maybe today I might finish something:
Taking a sphere and that wild strata functions. Changing the Y-To-Scalar into X or Z for the cuts going from up to down.
The tricky thing will be to convert the Sin-Output to positive only values - I remember the following: |x| = sqrt(x²) which could be very slow. This should produce some nice ridges but which have to be inverted for cuts.
Distributing the cuts with a powerfractal should be fun ,)
About Hornblower and Towerbuster terrains - I have a tutorial on how to approach such a terrain on the go.
Attached are 4 images, showing the first stages of developing the function for cracks:
1) no function ~45s
2) sin (x) ~49s
3) sin (sqrt(x²) ~46s
4) first go for variation ~50s
The rendertimes can vary due to other influences than the function itself - so no real benchmark
to be continued ...
@Volker: Looks like you have some great ideas going here. Thanks for the information on Hornblower. Those are some amazing images. I also like the lighting and texture on the mountain images.
I am getting closer, but feel a bit exhausted now ...
Two problems I had so far:
1) Clamping the output from 0 to 1 without loss of data (compressing the range)
2) Getting a good variation in the width of those 'cracks'
No.1 leads to good displacements without enlarging the rocks too much.
No.2 is for realistic results.
No! A TGC?
For me? ;D
Quote from: Volker Harun on July 31, 2007, 10:28:36 AM
I am getting closer, but feel a bit exhausted now ...
Two problems I had so far:
1) Clamping the output from 0 to 1 without loss of data (compressing the range)
2) Getting a good variation in the width of those 'cracks'
No.1 leads to good displacements without enlarging the rocks too much.
No.2 is for realistic results.
Yes, I've tried myself, and ran into some road blocks. But I know there is a way. I am thinking it will take a regular terrain, then displace the cracks and such into it. I've tried the voronoi techniques, but they just don't seem to cut it so far.
The voroni is nice, but has too hard edges for my taste.
Meanwhile ...
maybe I should just stop listening to Deep Purple while playing with functions ... or the vice versa? ;D ;D ;D ;D
All I can say is BRAVO. Keep up the good work and I'll just keep trailing along behind you.
Remember Forest Gump when he was jogging across America? I'm about the 20th guy back with a number of you following...who is it? I can't see them. They haven't cut their hair in a month of Sundays...
Woah, thats some psychadelic stuff right there! Pretty sweet.
I have been playing with something which may be of use in some situations... more of a pictorial approach to function thingies ;)
Fractals are functions but don't look much like cracks..... but what about a contour along a particular tone in a fractal?
Attached a quick hack, although for rocks you'd need to rescale things a lot. A lot hinges on the fractal so it may be difficult getting the exact effect you want, but you might find this handy for other stuff as well.
I tried using something like this as a mask for creating waves of clouds (combining multiple contours from a single fractal). While it sort of worked, it did push render times way up beyond reasonable levels... but on surfaces it's pretty quick and simple.
Good find BigBen! I'm gonna play with this idea.
Again, nice work Ben :).
Where is that smiley for hugging???
Thanks Ben! Cool. 8)
Accidentially I was also working on something like this and here are the results so far.
I have been using the voronoi crack trick on this one. The clipfile was from a "dried mud" topic which I can't find anymore. So kudos to it's creator.
Only thing I did was fiddling with the voronoi scales, slopes and displacements.
I've attached the clipfile with the settings as seen in the pictures below.
Load the clipfile and connect the displacement output to the surface-input of the fake stone layer. As you can see I already had the stones displaced using a default shader which had 2 powerfractals mixed and connected to it's displacement port. I connected the displacement output of the cracks to the input of the fake stones' default shader. Hope you can follow me :)
The first image shows displaced fake stones using 2 mixed powerfractals:
The second image shows displaced fake stones using 2 mixed powerfractals and the voronoi cracks:
Hope this will be of any use to you Moodflow :)
Martin
very nice work everyone. really interesting stuff here.
@Tangled:
Many thanks! This is really nice... 8)
This was created with all of my own materials (no one else's clip files, etc.), based upon everything I've been asking about this last week or so. Thanks for everyone's help and, while this is a WIP, I believe I'm on the way to understanding. Thanks (you know who you are).
This is a side of a fake stone (no images).
Hi,
played around with the file Tangled-Universe posted the other day.
Maybe it´s not what moodflow wanted,but since it was derived from
the above mentioned file i post it here (instead of making a new
thread in the file sharing forum).
2c,2b2 and v2 share the same heightfield and have the same camera
position,but different nodes.2b2 and v2 use a "heightfield smooth
erode" and that can cause some inconvenience when opening the tgd,
that´s why i´ve attached only a tgc for 2b2.No file for v2 for the
same reason,but it´s identical with v3 except for the terrain,so
you should be able to change it to a heightfield again,if desired.
Hope it´ll be useful for someone,J.
Excellent detail.
I am rendering on all the 4 cores I have, but my stomach is itching ;)
I'll inspect it soon!
I saw yesterday a few images from Iceland ... these structures on v3 really fit to the inspiration.
Thanks J Meyer!
Quote from: j meyer on August 05, 2007, 06:02:36 PM
Hope it´ll be useful for someone,J.
It will be ;D Looks perfect for my current project.
great work from a photo to render:D ;D ;D ;D
Quote from: king_tiger_666 on August 05, 2007, 11:23:54 PM
great work from a photo to render:D ;D ;D ;D
I agree with King Tiger... these are very impressive!
Very nice looking cracks indeed :)
Next funny thing could be to restrict the cracks only to a strata or redirect-shader (inverted or not) and see how that looks.
I think you can get amazingly realistic pictures.
:o Thanks to all of you!;D
T-U:good idea,let´s see that.
bigben:can´t wait to see your project.
Volker Harun:hope your stomach gets well soon.
I had a quick play last night and it looks very promising. Just getting my head around some of the adjustments, but I'm getting closer. The problems I had with this and cbalaskas "cracked face" are that when I up the render quality to 1 and move in close to a cliff things get very spiky.
I think I'll disable fractal detail on my TER tonight and just focus on sorting one of these out.
[edit] Here are some base renders with no fractal detail (jmeyers' v3). Soooooo different. Camera height is about 2m in all cases. I'll repeat with my strata first before I start tweaking.
I posted another solution in another thread. It is very easy to scale and to modify: Klick (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1960.msg19542#msg19542)
I made this image with that technique:
(http://tn3-2.deviantart.com/fs17/300W/f/2007/219/0/b/Four_Rocks__No__1_by_Volker_Harun.jpg) (http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1495997&member)
Volker
Yep,very promising indeed.
Volker,i´ve just downloaded your version and will try it today,thanks.
Fantastic texturing, Volker!
Nie render Volker. Your rock surfaces and displacement always look fantastic and very realistic.
Quote from: Volker Harun on August 07, 2007, 05:54:45 AM
I posted another solution in another thread. It is very easy to scale and to modify: Klick (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1960.msg19542#msg19542)
I made this image with that technique:
(http://tn3-2.deviantart.com/fs17/300W/f/2007/219/0/b/Four_Rocks__No__1_by_Volker_Harun.jpg) (http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1495997&member)
Volker
damn I'd love to know what you do when you postwork your images! I can never get them to come out quite as, well, as real as yours look!
EDIT: It seems to be the vogue to come out with your own kind of rocks at the moment, so I'll see what I can do tomorrow (it's too late to bother starting here, atm), I guess.
Postwork:
I reduced the 32-Bit OpenEXR to 16 Bit (Thanks BigBen).
I used some slight sharpening (unsharp mask 95%; rad. 0.5)
Copy of the Background, gaussian blur, radius is 1% of image width. Set to soft light.
Curves to adjust brightness.
Volker, I see you use a similar "bloom/glow" effect to what I do. It definitely enhances many images. :)
- Oshyan
Hi Oshyan,
yes, but sometimes the opacity of the layers has to be reduced. :-D
Thanks for that postwork information Volker, those steps definitely give off a nice effect.
Hey Volker!
As I mentioned these are very cool displacements ;D Thanks for sharing it with us, also for your post-work techniques.
Quite similar to mine except for the bloom/glow effect, definitely going to try it next time!
Martin
Quote from: Oshyan on August 07, 2007, 04:38:35 PM
Volker, I see you use a similar "bloom/glow" effect to what I do. It definitely enhances many images. :)
- Oshyan
I see you two also use the same technique I 've been using for years (well similar atleast). Its amazing how we all tend to come around to the same techniques, even without conspiring to.
Quote from: Volker Harun on August 07, 2007, 04:29:58 PM
Postwork:
I reduced the 32-Bit OpenEXR to 16 Bit (Thanks BigBen).
I used some slight sharpening (unsharp mask 95%; rad. 0.5)
Copy of the Background, gaussian blur, radius is 1% of image width. Set to soft light.
Curves to adjust brightness.
You might be interested to try a sharpening technique I picked up out of a graphics mag one day.
Duplicate Background, set to hard light, high pass filter. Reduce the high pass filter radius until you can just see some edges in the filter preview (or check the image preview). I tested a while ago on aTG2 image and found a radius of 0.5 was enough. (anything less than 1 means the image was pretty sharp to begin with, so I don't bother much)
And back on topic ;)
Here's a render test from my experimentation with jmeyers' clip last night. A few observations:
Most of the wonderful clips here are created on fractal terrains. When applying them to TERs with fractal detail added things can get messy because the fractal detail is a lot more complex than you average power fractal node. Things usually get screwed up on the cliffs, where these clips are at their best.
The image below includes a TER without fractal detail, a couple of low displacement power fractals and a strata shader before jmeyers' clip. Adding the extra power fractal helped a lot and is one of the key tweaks.
The other problem I had was when the second surface of the clip was on its own. (see the foreground of the last two images in my previous post (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1939.msg19529#msg19529)) I brought their slope distributions closer together and duplicated the fractal breakup of the first to use for the second, using differences in the colour offset to give the second surface a slightly greater distribution.
So far so good, and I haven't touched the scaling yet to really screw things up ;) I'll have another go tonight and post a TGD tomorrow.
PS. this clip makes great outcrops if you let it loose on slopes down to 15°. not so good for my terrain, but someone else will have a ball with it.
[edit] Added 2 more images of the latest version I had on the train this morning with a slightly different approach to using similar distributions for the two surfaces. Added a view of the north face which is probably the steepest slope in the terrain. This is the first time I've looked at a steep slope with this, and it looks quite promising.
Thanks for the info volker! I've been using a rudimentary bloom effect (actually it's nigh an exact copy of what video games use) except I use screen instead of soft light, and I lower the brightness and up the contrast of the image (only the brightest bits glow - like how the video games do it). I've never used .exr before, I assume photoshop accepts them. Thanks a ton for the help!
EDIT: Wow, that works really well! Thanks volker! The unsharp mask adds tons of detail to the surfacing too!
bigben:thanks for your observations,they will certainly be helpful later on
when i´ll find the time to test on TERs myself.
I just thought I might contribute this. It's two voronois added together and then a strata shader.
That looks very interesting! Would like to see some more perspectives of it. (little bit from above for example)
Martin
These are all very nice effects gang! I Would like to see someone apply them to a full landscape scene instead of just the effect it's self. Or has anyone? Please lead the way.
Buzzzzz ... you are kiddin'! I tried several settings, each time I applied the nodes to a different scene, everything changed.
Fiddling with scale, fractals and so on takes up more time than creating something from scratch.
Basically there are a few options that can be used. And as soon as somebody is aquainted with its (un)comfort, it can be adopted to almost any other scene ...
Yet!
Quote from: Volker Harun on August 08, 2007, 09:55:32 AM
Buzzzzz ... you are kiddin'! I tried several settings, each time I applied the nodes to a different scene, everything changed.
Fiddling with scale, fractals and so on takes up more time than creating something from scratch.
Basically there are a few options that can be used. And as soon as somebody is aquainted with its (un)comfort, it can be adopted to almost any other scene ...
Yet!
Kidding? LOL Well yeah :P I know because I tried a fake stone setup in a scene I'm working on and I couldn't even find it because the scale was so small. I do understand what you mean though, after creating these and applying them to another scene would involve lots of tweaks and scale adjustments. Would still like to see something created with them especially OB's. Hint Hint!
You guys are doing some really sweet stuff here. Think I'll go back to finger painting. :D
As for scale, I've been trying to keep everything based off of 1-Meter scaling. Obviously, some things are much larger than 1 meter, but they are scaled appropriately. That way, I can find them by knowing how much I need to step in, or step back.
Nice job, o_b.
TGD or TGC? Or is it too soon for handouts for the day? :P
Quote from: old_blaggard on August 08, 2007, 09:27:51 AM
I just thought I might contribute this. It's two voronois added together and then a strata shader.
If I can I'll provide a .tgc, but this is actually part of a commercial project, so I'm not sure if I'm allowed to. It is ridiculously simple, though - just create a couple of voronoi noise functions, same scale, different seeds, add them together, plug the result into a displacement shader, and then apply strata.
Okay, o_b. I'll try it now.