Massive cheater I am, but it's just a fun render.
Just some colour and displacement image mapping on the planet with a mildly rolling fractal terrain, of the journey that I take to work(along the road, centre bottom).
Today, I commute by Ladana's Balloon Limousines (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8814.msg94473#msg94473). It's no wonder I'm always late! It's OK, my boss is in the Kreuger's Kabs balloon, as long as I make it there before her, she can't say a damn word! And I have the thermals on my side now! Ladana's flying high, drop the sandbags, get the pellet-gun! :D
[attachimg=#]
Cheers!
It doesn't have to be procedural to be good, or valid, at that. And this is excellent use of the Image Map Shader, a legitimate TG2 tool in my book. Great end product.
John
Cheers.
The 'legitimate' part's a bit hazy :-X, but I figure, if Google can take a picture of me, then I can just as easy take one of them. It's only to make a pretty picture with, not to supply to Bomb Makers and Planters 'R' Us, or anything. :D
Cool use of the image map shader.
very nice implementation and a great result/story!
Don't call this a cheat. You have used a legitimate tool very well. Hollywood studios use this technique often.
Cheers, folks! :)
Here's a wee, 1 second tester of some movement. The lower balloons are moving upwards a bit fast! :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiU3LtdiUFs
Pretty cool Martin.
I'm of the opinion that if it works it's legitimate.
And yes, Google is watching.
Nice work. Ground looks very nice, and not like a photo on the floor.
Not shure who got it in the comment, but i like the expression,
If you cant make it, fake it!
Realy like you'r work, and use some of you'r shared stuff.
Always use the planetary grass shader to quickly reveal mountains.
Still cant get my head around the fake tree shader. Keep getting green ground, and grey "trees"
Spectacular work! Would like to see more of this.
I also don't think, that this is cheating. Great image! I like the displacement. Is this a separate texture?
Some minor crits: I think there should be some more blueish haze. The lighting is crystal clear, which looks a little bit unnatural. Additionally for my taste there could be a little bit more detail in the clouds.
Once again, what is cheating? Using a shader that is implemented in TG cannot be cheating.
Thank you, everyone. :)
Microwar: Yes, it's my TG moto. And, really, even an entirely procedural scene is essentially 'fake', I mean, it's hardly 'real'. ;)
Ra: That might be possible if I carry on with the animating, I've reworked the above flight and I'm over 5 hours rendering per 60 frames, at this size. I might just do a longer, 480px animation.
Hannes: Yup, two separate 2048px image maps. A greyscale displacement, followed by the colour map directly after, both are just set in sequence, as child to a single surface layer.
QuoteStill cant get my head around the fake tree shader. Keep getting green ground, and grey "trees"
You may have the wrong slope key set in some distribution, make sure all your distribution shaders for that layer use 'terrain normal' as the 'slope key', if they are restricted, also make sure both high and low colours are checked in the 'tree' colour shader fractals.
I used a single power fractal for this recent 'fake' forest: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=10172.msg105547#msg105547
I'll tidy up the network and post the surface in a bit...
It is a nice image , DandelO :)
But i think the displacement looks a little to much like a artifical bump map.
I would lower the displacement by a half or so .
cool. :)
This is very nice. I really like it a lot. The short anim is promising as well. I'd like to try something like that.
Pardon my naivete, but could you answer my newbie-like questions on the process? Did you do just a basic screen grab of a map (and how do you do it?) and then carefully 'accentuate' their watermarks with clouds? (I tried reading their TOS, and artistic use seems to be legit) Or, did you use one of their APIs or do a grab of a G-Earth image?
Colour image: I visited Google Maps, hit f11 for fullscreen, took 4 screen grabs of my area(with MWSnap, free - http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html) and patched them together to make a 2048px image map. I also clone-brushed out the visible Google tags and such.
Displacement image: I then duplicated the above, desaturated, masked out the river then inverted the colours. I didn't want a displaced river, obviously. ;)
Probably the simplest TG2 setup I've used for years, all the work was done before opening Terragen. All I needed that for was to pop in some balloons, some gentle fractal hills, add clouds and, of course, to render. :)
Here's the network view, practically empty of any work at all! :D
[attachimg=#]
Thank you for going to the trouble to provide instructions. I'm going to give this a spin this weekend.
I was looking at the node map image. I started clicking on it to look at the node cell. I guess I need some sleep! Just got off work....
LOL ;D
:D I've done that before too, Henry.
I'm clicking on them right now!
Small update, the same 60 frames with better motion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6ERPDDSJKY
So, when did they install jet engines on Hot Air Balloons? :-)
i keep clicking Density Fractal 01 and nothing is happening... :D
WORK DAMMIT!!!!
Quote from: njeneb on July 10, 2010, 08:22:41 AM
I was looking at the node map image. I started clicking on it to look at the node cell. I guess I need some sleep! Just got off work....
ditto. :)
sometimes i cant stay awake at work, thanks a lot Lamotrigine
Aye, Marc, that's meant to be the chase balloons rising as the POV one drops a little. Maybe a bit fast, eh? :D
Nice work DandelO. Liked the bike crash as well!
Quote from: airflamesred on July 17, 2010, 07:20:32 AM
Nice work DandelO. Liked the bike crash as well!
:D
I had a couple of different sound effect versions of the accident but I didn't save them before I recently formatted.
There's always something you forget to back up, eh? I'll make some more... Embarrassing the kids is fun, the elder two love that video of their poor little sister.