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General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: sjefen on March 20, 2017, 06:41:53 PM

Title: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on March 20, 2017, 06:41:53 PM
Hi,


It's been a while since I've been active here. I haven't worked with Terragen for ages as well, but
I have just started a project and wanted to share a little crop of what I'm working on.


Regards,
Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: inkydigit on March 20, 2017, 06:48:58 PM
Great to see you again Terje!
The aurora looks fantastic, has a feeling of movement that is beguiling!
Cheers
Jason
:)
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Dune on March 21, 2017, 03:07:48 AM
In response to your query, Terje: http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,19103.msg186745.html#msg18674 (http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,19103.msg186745.html#msg18674)

Good to see you back.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on March 21, 2017, 04:16:44 AM
Thanks guys. It's good to be back and work with Terragen again.

I'm having problems with the shapes of the auroras. It's not exactly what I want, but I'll get three some time. I'm gonna experiment more with this, but for now, I'm rendering this one out big.


Regards,
Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on March 21, 2017, 06:36:12 AM
Quote from: Dune on March 21, 2017, 03:07:48 AM
In response to your query, Terje: http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,19103.msg186745.html#msg18674 (http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,19103.msg186745.html#msg18674)

Good to see you back.

I found it  ;)
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: DocCharly65 on March 22, 2017, 04:11:13 AM
Nice to meet you here
...must have been before I entered the forum :)

Beautiful project! I like the ambience.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: DannyG on March 22, 2017, 12:49:18 PM
The sky looks very nice, the issue with this effect is the light on the surface. Getting that balanced is tricky 
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Oshyan on March 23, 2017, 12:56:09 AM
The aurora actually does light up the ground, although this is a somewhat extreme result, depending on how long of a real-world exposure it was. :D

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on March 23, 2017, 04:08:42 AM
It did light up the scene, but not as much as I wanted it to. I created a light source for it, but I'm gonna fix it a little bit in Lightroom when the final image is ready.
Rendering now at over 9000px in width. It takes forever.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on March 26, 2017, 11:50:49 AM
My render finished at just over 78 hours. It had some problems I had to fix, but I'm not
in the mood for doing this render one more time, so I decided to try out Pixel Plow and render
it even larger so I can print it.

Is there even a limit for how large I can render my images with Pixel Plow?


- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: bobbystahr on March 26, 2017, 12:49:27 PM
Ulco may know as IIRC he used them for his HUGE museum project...
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Dune on March 27, 2017, 02:23:56 AM
Don't, didn't, but you can ask them.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: bobbystahr on March 27, 2017, 10:23:31 AM
Quote from: Dune on March 27, 2017, 02:23:56 AM
Don't, didn't, but you can ask them.

Who did yours then? A superb job from the pics you posted.

Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Dune on March 27, 2017, 12:15:22 PM
A few guys from the forum helped me then, the latter wall I rendered myself.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Tangled-Universe on March 27, 2017, 04:34:44 PM
Great to see you're back Terje :)
Can't wait to see your final render!
In case you want to get rid of your aurora lighting up surfaces you can disable "enable secondary" in your cloud layer, but be aware that it will affect its behavior in the atmosphere as well.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on March 28, 2017, 04:28:15 AM
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on March 27, 2017, 04:34:44 PM
Great to see you're back Terje :)
Can't wait to see your final render!
In case you want to get rid of your aurora lighting up surfaces you can disable "enable secondary" in your cloud layer, but be aware that it will affect its behavior in the atmosphere as well.

I actually want it to light up the surfaces. That's why I added a light source for it 😉
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Tangled-Universe on March 28, 2017, 03:59:11 PM
Haha oh sorry, misunderstood that!
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: bobbystahr on March 28, 2017, 04:50:40 PM
Quote from: Dune on March 27, 2017, 12:15:22 PM
the latter wall I rendered myself.

Now that must have been an exercise in patience..I link folks to that when they want to see what TG is capable of....
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on March 29, 2017, 11:02:43 AM
I have a question.

When I was going to send my scene to Pixel Plow, I used the "gather scene" option in Terragen and put it in a folder of its own.
The problem is that Terragen can't load my obj. files after  this is done for this scene. Anyone know what to to about this?

I can post a screenshot of the warnings when I get back home.

- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: bobbystahr on March 29, 2017, 12:57:37 PM
Quote from: sjefen on March 29, 2017, 11:02:43 AM
I have a question.


I can post a screenshot of the warnings when I get back home.

- Terje

that might be best practice.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on March 29, 2017, 05:01:40 PM
I get this warning, but I don't really understand what the problem is. I've tried pointing Terragen to the new "Project Assets" folder it created, but I
can't get rid of this warning.

- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: DannyG on March 29, 2017, 06:00:40 PM
Quote from: sjefen on March 29, 2017, 05:01:40 PM
I get this warning, but I don't really understand what the problem is. I've tried pointing Terragen to the new "Project Assets" folder it created, but I
can't get rid of this warning.

- Terje

Are you loading this from the library? If so load it from the menu Objects tab instead. The library has some known issues loading objs.
 


Never mind I see you are prepping for Pixel Plow, A Gathered project. Something must be incorrect with your path or the file as gotten corrupt somehow
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: bobbystahr on March 29, 2017, 06:18:20 PM
I get that warning with many .obj files, many from XFROG and almost all from other sources. I think it's a TG problem remembering it's loaded because these objects most often load properly textured...just what I've noticed in my stuff.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: bobbystahr on March 29, 2017, 06:21:46 PM
Are you opening the gathered .tgd? Try doing that from the Folder/Directory if you aren't already.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on March 29, 2017, 08:18:06 PM
Quote from: bobbystahr on March 29, 2017, 06:18:20 PM
I get that warning with many .obj files, many from XFROG and almost all from other sources. I think it's a TG problem remembering it's loaded because these objects most often load properly textured...just what I've noticed in my stuff.

Everything works fine on my computer, even with those warnings, but it didn't when I sent it to Pixel Plow. Wasted some money on that huge image. Anyone know how I could fix this?

- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: bobbystahr on March 29, 2017, 08:25:21 PM
Oh I see, worked fine locally but not remotely...will follow this, seems like a bug.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: bobbystahr on March 29, 2017, 08:28:20 PM
maybe save the .obj files as .tgo and use them instead as a temporary fix? You could send the gathered project to one of us to test and not waste more money if it doesn't work.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on March 30, 2017, 06:16:17 AM
But there are some other objects in the scene that are tgo. files. They didn't get rendered either.
I watched the video tutorial from Oshyan to make sure I did this correctly.

I've attached another image of how the folder I sent to Pixel Plow looks like in case there is something wrong there.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: bobbystahr on March 30, 2017, 10:42:19 AM
Hopefully Oshyan can sort this out then because that looks fine to me.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Oshyan on March 30, 2017, 05:23:46 PM
So what exactly happened when sending it to Pixel Plow? It did render it, but without the objects?

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on March 30, 2017, 05:35:24 PM
Quote from: Oshyan on March 30, 2017, 05:23:46 PM
So what exactly happened when sending it to Pixel Plow? It did render it, but without the objects?

- Oshyan

Yes, the render finished, but without the objects  :'(

- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Oshyan on March 30, 2017, 05:39:19 PM
And you said you had some TGO objects in there that also did not render? Did you get any error messages from those objects?

Have you contacted PixelPlow about this issue? I am not saying it's their fault, but they keep good logs which might help understand the issue better.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on March 30, 2017, 06:16:42 PM
Yes, I had one population with .tgo objects and and 3 populations with xFrog models. Only two of the xFrog models showed the warnings as my screenshot shows.

Everything works fine on my computer.

I have not contacted Pixel Plow cause I wanted to know if there is something I did wrong first.

- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: TheBadger on April 01, 2017, 10:40:31 PM
pretty nice effect!
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on April 08, 2017, 08:06:11 AM
I have reworked most of my objects in the scene. Now I'm only using .tgo objects and I'm gonna try Pixel Plow one more time
when it is complete. I've also worked a little on the shaders. One thing I got from the huge render, was that I could easily see where I had to work
some more. It was easy to see on such a big image where it lacked details  ;D

I'll post a crop to show a little more of where I'm going with this. I know there's a problem with noise in the auroras, but I'm gonna fix that later  ;)


Regards,
Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: bobbystahr on April 08, 2017, 11:24:38 AM
Awesome, I can barely wait...really...and I agree that sometimes y just need it huge to see what's missing. Good luck with Pixel Plow.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on April 08, 2017, 11:36:20 AM
Thank you. I hope there's no problem this time, but I have some more work that has to be done before it's ready to be rendered big.

- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: archonforest on April 08, 2017, 12:43:13 PM
01b looks awesome. Great mood there!!
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on April 09, 2017, 06:06:21 PM
A big test render of the whole image.
Not sure if the ground is to dark or if I should brighten it up a little.

- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: bobbystahr on April 09, 2017, 06:47:01 PM
You could maybe up the GI on surfaces a bit but it's believable to this semi northern type...
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on April 09, 2017, 06:58:39 PM
The render was actually brighter on the ground. I darkened it in post, but I'm now starting to think I overdid it  :)

- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: bobbystahr on April 09, 2017, 07:21:18 PM
Quote from: sjefen on April 09, 2017, 06:58:39 PM
The render was actually brighter on the ground. I darkened it in post, but I'm now starting to think I overdid it  :)

- Terje

I'd roll it back, you did the post on a copy right?
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Jo Kariboo on April 10, 2017, 12:51:00 AM
I very like the landscape and light but the aurora borealis appears to me too much "sharpness"!
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on April 10, 2017, 04:02:07 AM
I'll fix the light on the ground and the sharpness on the aurora.

- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Ethrieltd on April 10, 2017, 05:46:45 AM
Quote from: sjefen on March 29, 2017, 08:18:06 PM
Quote from: bobbystahr on March 29, 2017, 06:18:20 PM
I get that warning with many .obj files, many from XFROG and almost all from other sources. I think it's a TG problem remembering it's loaded because these objects most often load properly textured...just what I've noticed in my stuff.

Everything works fine on my computer, even with those warnings, but it didn't when I sent it to Pixel Plow. Wasted some money on that huge image. Anyone know how I could fix this?

- Terje


I had a few objects I'd downloaded (and baked the textures) do this. I took it back into C4D and exported it again. The .mtlib error went away. Never found out what caused it though.
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Oshyan on April 10, 2017, 01:31:23 PM
The amount of light that should be on the ground depends A: on how realistic you want your image to be (what you have now is on the high side of realistic brightness for aurora-lit landscape) and B: how long your exposure equivalent would be in the real world. If you are simulating a longer exposure, you could plausibly have more light on the landscape, however that would significantly blur your aurora as it moves and shifts over time. So for true realism if your landscape is well-lit, your aurora should be quite soft.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on April 10, 2017, 05:31:26 PM
I will try different styles and see what I like. A more artistic feel is good enough for me as I struggle to get photorealistic renders anyway  ;D

- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: DannyG on April 10, 2017, 06:49:27 PM
I personally dig this, just enough light to see some details on the ground, very well done IMO
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on April 11, 2017, 05:06:38 PM
Anyone have a good setup for a starfield they want to share?
I've tried using some starfield images as background, but they don't look very nice. Maybe it's the
images I've used, or is there some other ticks to get it good?


- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Dune on April 12, 2017, 01:26:18 AM
There are a few available somewhere on the forum. Did you search?
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on April 12, 2017, 02:06:33 AM
Gonna do a search when I get home  ;D
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on April 12, 2017, 03:44:11 AM
Updated the Auroras.

- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: luvsmuzik on April 12, 2017, 02:32:05 PM
I do believe you nailed this one!
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on April 12, 2017, 04:19:25 PM
Thank you!  :)

I'm testing a new version with a procedural starfield made by Jan. After that I'll try to make some color variations to the
distant forest. When that is done, I'll think I'll give Pixel Plow a new job so I can get a huge render for print.

But I have a small question. Does anyone feel the yellow flowers are a little distracting?

- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Oshyan on April 12, 2017, 04:46:21 PM
I think the yellow flowers seem to be kind of "glowing" a bit. :D If they were less bright they would look more realistic and not distract, I think.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on April 12, 2017, 04:51:20 PM
Glowing is exactly the word someone else used  ;D
An easy fix luckily.

- Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Dune on April 13, 2017, 01:29:39 AM
I also think the aurora may be toned down a bit too. Never seen it in real life, but photo's look a bit less vibrant usually (unless artistically enhanced photo's).
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: DocCharly65 on April 13, 2017, 04:37:15 AM
In artistic respects I like the render as it is. Absolutely beautiful!

About realism I can't say anything because I haven't seen this in real life so far. Could be that the others are right. (ok the flowers are in fact glowing a bit more than they would do in reality - but I like it) :)
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on April 13, 2017, 09:29:31 AM
Quote from: Dune on April 13, 2017, 01:29:39 AM
I also think the aurora may be toned down a bit too. Never seen it in real life, but photo's look a bit less vibrant usually (unless artistically enhanced photo's).

Auroras can be pretty intens and colorful. I've only seen it two times in my life and it's a long time ago, but I've done some image search on google.
Most of the images look pretty colorful, but my guess is that they have been adjusted. I want mine to be colorful and "pop" a little, but that's just me  :)

Here's one with a better starfield. It's the one from Jan, so thanks to him for sharing his clip file  :)

I think this will be the last one, but if there is something else you guys wanna point out, please let me know.


Regards,
Terje
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: Dune on April 13, 2017, 10:41:36 AM
I'd say; render along....
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: bobbystahr on April 13, 2017, 12:13:42 PM
I personally would go with blurring them as in my experience well above the 49th parallel they look a lot more like the linked images and with less obvious stars.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BYpOYYLCYAAnPKP.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c4/02/a3/c402a3f7b45a7e49e30ae63c7bac880b.jpg
Title: Re: Aurora Borealis
Post by: sjefen on April 13, 2017, 04:30:31 PM
They could look pretty sharp as well: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/58/16/c0/5816c0c5978ea14bb7440b855322ff31.jpg (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/58/16/c0/5816c0c5978ea14bb7440b855322ff31.jpg)