Planetside Software Forums

General => Terragen Discussion => Topic started by: Eric Johannsen on February 17, 2018, 06:18:19 PM

Title: Sunset with flecks of sunlight
Post by: Eric Johannsen on February 17, 2018, 06:18:19 PM
This is a frame of a sunset animation. I've enabled Receive Shadows from Surface on the atmosphere because otherwise, the sun happily shines right through the terrain. Why do I get specks of sunlight and how can I create a more natural look?

Note I"m using the final version of TG 2 Deep.
Title: Re: Sunset with flecks of sunlight
Post by: agent unawares on February 17, 2018, 06:23:11 PM
Turn up your antialiasing or your cloud and atmosphere samples.
Title: Re: Sunset with flecks of sunlight
Post by: bobbystahr on February 17, 2018, 08:21:43 PM
I'd follow  the preceding advice checking with full resolution crop renders till you get a look you like.
Title: Re: Sunset with flecks of sunlight
Post by: N-drju on February 18, 2018, 03:43:41 AM
My call would also be to increase the amount of atmo samples considerably, even up to 90. Don't worry - it's not too render-heavy and it solves most of such issues.

You can also try separating your main light source into three or four sunlights. I find it very useful and discussed it in-depth here:

http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,23919.msg241696.html#msg241696

This, unfortunately, will add to your render time, but is a great solution to eliminate graininess of light and sky.
Title: Re: Sunset with flecks of sunlight
Post by: Oshyan on February 19, 2018, 01:45:33 AM
You have a lot of noise in your atmosphere due to low detail (you can tell this because there is a "polygon"/low resolution look to the clouds). This is causing inaccurate results. You can try switching on Ray Trace Atmosphere to use a different rendering method that is higher quality, but then your quality depends on your antialiasing setting. Alternatively you can try increasing Detail, I would recommend 0.5 at a minimum, and then increase atmosphere samples until the noise goes away.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Sunset with flecks of sunlight
Post by: N-drju on February 19, 2018, 07:25:35 AM
Oh right, I forgot about the ray-traced atmo option. Indeed, it is a huge helper to solving sky and cloud graininess problems. It makes renders longer but it is worth it.
Title: Re: Sunset with flecks of sunlight
Post by: eapilot on February 19, 2018, 06:03:02 PM
where is the raytrace atmosphere option?
Title: Re: Sunset with flecks of sunlight
Post by: bobbystahr on February 20, 2018, 02:13:40 AM
Quote from: eapilot on February 19, 2018, 06:03:02 PM
where is the raytrace atmosphere option?

I think they mean the Defer atmo/cloud on the Quality tab of the Render dialogue
Title: Re: Sunset with flecks of sunlight
Post by: Oshyan on February 20, 2018, 03:56:19 PM
It's only called Defer in later versions of Terragen. It used to be called "Ray Trace Atmosphere" and it's right there on the Quality tab of the Render node.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Sunset with flecks of sunlight
Post by: Eric Johannsen on February 20, 2018, 10:41:39 PM
Thanks for all the feedback. I got a result I'm happy with.
Title: Re: Sunset with flecks of sunlight
Post by: bobbystahr on February 25, 2018, 11:19:14 PM
Quote from: Oshyan on February 20, 2018, 03:56:19 PM
It's only called Defer in later versions of Terragen. It used to be called "Ray Trace Atmosphere" and it's right there on the Quality tab of the Render node.

- Oshyan

my bad