Hi folks,
after a long time I am back and discovered that terragen has become tremendously better.
Now to the point: it's since seven years I've not been using it so it's like I'm a newbie here :)
On september I'll start a new commercial (still image, not animation); I'll have to realize some floating island ala avatar so considering that usually I work with lightwave, maya and zbrush some of my questions are:
- can terragen2 help me in that or the learning curve is too steep considering tight timelines of professional work (i have 20 days to finish it)?
- is it better to model the islands in another software and then import and detail it in terragen?
- does terragen handle big render resolution on mac without big issues (final images usually have from 6000 to 10000 pixels base depending on details)?
So, I have one week to decide wether to organize this project with software I already own or buy something more, like terragen or similar, to achieve my goal. Every kind of advice is greatly appreciated.
Thank you
Etto
I think I would use Terragen 2 to produce a height fields. Use the border blending to reduce the size away from the edges. Export the height field as a lwo file. Import the lwo file into the program you are most comfortable with.
The height field can be mirrored vertically. Then the bottom part can be stretched to form a area with stronger vertical aspect. Save the new object.
If you are comfortable using Terragen 2 shaders, these can be used on the new object. Import the lwo object. Turn off the Raytrace Objects in the render tab. A new terrain can be made in Terragen 2. The lwo object can be placed and both can be shaded as required and the image rendered.
Honesty, I don't think there is enough time to do the project in Terragen 2 if you are not acquainted with it. But the technique should work with an external renderer.
Terragen 2 has, if not the best, very powerful terrain creation capabilities. The price is quite reasonable. I think it would make a great tool to add to the programs you already use.
Looks like another member did a similar project. You might want to connect to ask for specific advice for floating islands:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=9158.0
Thank you njeneb, it seems a reasonable workflow to me; now I'll try something with the free edition and see what I can do.
PeanutMocha, thanks for the link; as soon as I reach some point I think I'll contact cyphyr for some advice. Interesting discussion, anyway.
Cheers
Hi etto
Sorry I haven't responded here earlier, been wrapped up in "stuff"
Short story: It can be done! Use Terragens native "plane" objects with image maps and masks. See the samples below.
The hard part is getting the vertical sides to displace properly, use a very low value in your Compute terrain nodes (you'll need several)
Long story: well see how you get on with this and I'll see what the addled brain cells can come up with !!
Good luck
Richard
Hi Richard,
I can't see the samples but thank you for the help. In these days I was busy doing some tutorial and today I came up with my first image that I'm going to post :)
It has nothing to do with islands but I experimented with object and population.
I tried to import a lwo object but I had to use the object importer because the first add a empty lwo object in the list as soon as I click on the add menu; anyway I've got the object in but I can only see the bounding box and I don't know how to apply terrains to it.
After the McDuff tutorial (wonderful) I was able to export part of the terrain to lightwave using the lwo exporter and heightfield node as described somewhere in this forum.
Now I try your method Richard and see what I'll come up with..
I'm quite sure I'll buy this app, it's intriguing me ;D
Keep working with Terragen 2. You'll become more than intrigued by the possibilities it provides. I play more with Terragen 2 than any other software now. There is always 'can I do this?' It's fun trying, and great when it works.
The image is really a good start. Pick a feature in it and see what might work better. There are lots of posts on how to do things. And there are lots of tgd terrain files in the File Sharing area. These will allow you do 'reverse engineer'.
First of all thank you.
So, things are getting complicated.. The basic problem is that I imported a modeled island but I can't populate it with trees.. Maybe this is why you suggested displacement on native object or exporting heigh fields. Also I can only see bounding box in the preview window. I know, I should read the manual..
There is not a full manual available... There are some very good tutorials. Lots of posts including files which can be downloaded.
Start by learning about Power Fractals. Most of the program is based on this. Next Surface Shaders. By using power fractals (Fractal Terrain is a power fractal in the Terrain Tab) and Surface shaders; you can make some very convincing landscapes.
Pick one aspect of the program and work with it. When you are comfortable with that part, add something new. The learning curve is steep, but not arduous.
I know, but now the project is started and I need to concentrate on that image realization. Timeline is 10 days :o I know that I can realize it with other apps but I'm trying to understand if tg2 can be of any help to me considering my lack of experience at this moment and the kind of image I need to do. I actually don't need to realize a lanscape but rather a particular part of it, the floating islands.
Maybe tg is not the best software to realize this.. My idea was to model externally the basic shapes of islands with lianas and other features, than import in terragen and shade, populate and render them in it. It could be better for me to finish this work and than relax myself learning this beautiful app..
I just took a look at Richard's node setup in the other post. I sort of grasp his method.
He used planes (flat objects) that were rotated to they faced the camera. Next a image map was used to mask the edges out of the planes he did not want rendered. This provided the shapes for the islands.
I think he used a displacement shader to distort/displace the plane objects into the correct shape. This only works in a 2D way. The displacement resulting is 3D, but will not look right from the side perpendicular to the image map projection.
If I am right, after the displacement has been made onto the plane object, it can be textured like you would a fractal terrain or height field.
If you don't have enough time Etto , cheat it!
Make some kind of Islandish Mountains-Hills with appropriate background in TG2, populate them and comp the lower parts.
Use Photoshop or whatever you use. Then you can try what you want again in no hurry :)
Populations don't work on imported objects, so that won't really be an option. To be honest the "floating island" workflow is not going to be quite as easy as working on a fixed planetary terrain, but it *is* possible. I'll give a brief overview of what I'd do, which is something you could test in many 30 minutes if you've gotten reasonably familiar with the UI by now. If it looks promising, you could continue, otherwise maybe best focusing on apps you know for this (short deadline) project and spending a bit more time learning TG2 after. I'm sure it could become a valuable part of your toolbox and the more you learn about it, the more you'll be able to utilize it.
So here's the *brief* overview of how you could try accomplishing this.
Create 2 plane objects and position them above the planet/base terrain
Make the size of the planes 1000x1000 to start with
In the first Plane Object go into the Default Shader that is created for each Plane by default (click on the Plane in the object list, click the + button next to Surface Shader and choose Go To Default Shader)
Go to Displacement tab and click the + button next to Displacement Shader and create a new Power Fractal Shader V3 under Displacement Shaders
Now set Displacement Multiplier to between 100 and 200 - you should start to see displacement on one of your planes
Do the same for the 2nd plane except set Displacement Multiplier to the same values but *negative*
That's the start of your floating island
Now you need to mess with scales in the Power Fractals, or perhaps trying a Painted Shader with a Displacement Shader to get more specific features
To populate it, feed the chain of displacement-providing nodes that you create to define the shape of the top plane into a Heightfield Generate node in the Shader input, then add a Displacement Offset equal to the height of your plane, disable the Heightfield Generate node so it won't render, and populate on that; this is how people get populations of birds in the sky and whatnot, but in this case the population should conform to your floating island terrain since you're using the same shader network.
Unfortunately I don't have time to explain this more fully or test it completely, but it will hopefully give you a start that you can test in short order. Apologies if I've made any mistakes, hopefully others will correct me if so. ;)
- Oshyan
I never tried this, but wouldn't it be easier to just create another small planet (uncheck atmosphere), hang it over your normal terrain and displace and populate that?
EDIT: actually I did use another planet here, but didn't populate it. But that might work.
---Dune
Hi again :)
Oshyan has pretty much covered the basics of my method although he's missed out the image mapping/masking and the vital step of inverting the lower plane.
My work flow:
create a plane, set its size to 1000m x 1000m
Move the plane to its desired location (x & z)
DO NOT MOVE THE PLANE IN THE Y AXIS
In the planes internal network plug an image shader into the displacement input of the default shader.
MAKE SURE YOU COPY AND PASTE THE COORDINATES FROM THE PLANES LOCATION TO THE IMAGE MAPS POSITION.
Do the same again with another image map shader plugged into the opacity input of the default node, this time with a black and white image that masks out the unwanted areas of the plane.
You should now have a displaced plane sat on the planets surface. To raise the plane off the surface of the planet add another default shader after your main default shader and key in a Displacement offset of say 500m. This will raise your plane off the ground. (I'll explain why this is necessary further down)
That's the top half of your floating island done (simplistically).
To make the lower half of your island copy and paste your plane node and look at the "Edge vector" values. The plane is a single sided object. The default values are:
1, 0, 0
0, 0, 1
Change this in your lower plane:
0, 0, 1
1, 0, 0
This will "flip" the plane over so its normals are pointing down.
Now go into your internal network of the lower plane and change the value of the Displacement offset to its complementary negative value (500m becomes -500m)
In order to populate the plane you'll need to create a population shader at the same coordinates as the planes (copy/paste from your planes position) and plug into the population shaders Terrain input your lowest default shaders output. If you dont use the displacement offset trick to move your plane in the Y axis its populations will not sit correctly on the plane, they will float above the plane.
That's pretty much it, it should all work now. You may have issues with the two planes not meeting properly. Creating higher resolution images together with lower compute terrain settings will alleviate this somewhat but I found that actually moving the Displacement offset to -502m was a good enough cheat.
I hope this is helpful in some way. It really is a dirty hack making Terragen do something it was not envisaged for but it works to a fair degree. I found it very time consuming and labourious (especially with multiple islands) but it may be a solution for you.
Good luck and let us see your results.
Richard
ps I may post a link to a complete project file when I get home.
Ok I've uploaded a simplified Floating Islands scene to the file sharing area, here (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=10674.new#new).
It uses the Sweet Birch Xfrog tree model available [link expired].
Let me know if this is helpful, I've tried to make the nodes fairly self explanatory.
One point of note is that "Cast Shadows" has to be turned off on the plane model as the masking of the plane dose not mask the shadow, so the shadow is projected as a full square shadow, not the shape of the island!
Cheers
Richard
That's what I meant... This thread has really been turned into a nice tutorial.
That's a nice method, Richard. You get nice flat islands that way. Intrigued by this post in its early stage I quickly threw something together (30' work), based on a second planet, which is very easily populated.
I wonder if your method can be made more 'ripped' out of the ground on the bottom Ulco. I would take some hard displacements to do and not have the exploding difficulties.
Quote from: Dune on September 01, 2010, 10:48:41 AM
That's a nice method, Richard. You get nice flat islands that way. Intrigued by this post in its early stage I quickly threw something together (30' work), based on a second planet, which is very easily populated.
Thanks :)
The islands don't have to be flat of course, I've just used a fairly low displacement in this example (250m for the top and 500m for the bottom). It dose have a lot of issues however, foremost of these is the shadow bug (which was why I stopped developing it any further). Also I found that getting the populations to work well on the underside (for hanging ivy and creepers etc) was very difficult and never properly satisfactory. If I can remember how I may post a similar short tut on my work flow for that. I tried using a second planet and it works well enough as long as all your after is a planet shaped rock. If you want something more "pandora-esque" then its next to impossible to displace a sphere into a rough cube!!
cheers
Richard
Wow guys, I'm speechless!! The help on this forum is invaluable!
I just come back home and found all these posts. This morning I've spent half an hour trying Oshyan method and I did this image. I used a basic paint shader for displacement (positive for upper plane and negative for lower plane) and used a distribution shader on opacity with slope 0° and fuzziness 0.
Then I talked with the art director and because I have to do 4 big island in the foreground and many other in background (then you know how many modification you could be asked for in a single day...) plus liana connections between them and other little things, I decided to give up for now and use softwares where I'm confortable with. I started modeling in lightwave and probably I'll sculpt normal maps in zbrush. I have an old vue version (5 infinite) and I think I'll use it for trees and vegetation..
Btw Dune, I had the same idea of using a second planet but only with atmosphere enabled to have better control on clouds distribution around the island; you did much more and if a spherical island was in my needs your solution could probably be the best way to go.
This doesn't mean I've lost interest in this beautiful app; so as soon as I finish this project I'll try the 'challenge' of doing it in t2 analyzing and sectioning Richard's scene :).
And doesn't mean, also, that this thread is come to the end..
Ettore
PS obviously I'll also show you the final result
Richard, quick question on this. I haven't actually downloaded these files but, if I remember right, before, you were managing to populate from the 'object normal'. I mean outwards from the object, instead of only upwards. Am I remembering this correctly, or is that pie-in-the-sky? ;)
If I am remembering it right then, how did you achieve that? Using a planet will only allow you to populate upwards in XYZ space. Of course, you could invert/offset an object and populate the bottom of a planet but, the 'equator' is always going to be a dodgy area...
Quote...its next to impossible to displace a sphere into a rough cube...
Perhaps with huge fake stones only above a certain angle, it would be possible to 'populate' the equator sides with these and thus expand the planet into a horizontal shape. I used two sets of fake stones here, with slope limitations. The clouds are localized from the main planet, the floating planet's atmosphere was unchecked.
@Henry: I think that's possible, just play with the displacement of the rim shader, and throw some 'fast rising clouds' into the crater, add some light source(s) in there as well, etc. Or invert the crater to act as 'molten rock' being pulled up with the 'exploding new world', with cracks and all. Maybe redirect it outwards near the top again where it meets the second planet... Give the rock some glow...
You can displace planets just fine. I tried Dune's approach, see for yourself. You can restrict populations via a distance shader for example, placing a camera centered hovering 'over' the second planet.
Quote from: dandelO on September 01, 2010, 05:35:55 PM
Richard, quick question on this. I haven't actually downloaded these files but, if I remember right, before, you were managing to populate from the 'object normal'. I mean outwards from the object, instead of only upwards. Am I remembering this correctly, or is that pie-in-the-sky? ;)
I've had a long time inkling that you could (I mean used to be able to in an earlier version of TG2) populate from the object normal as you say.
Alas this is not true now (and may never have been :( )
Quote from: otakar on September 02, 2010, 11:18:38 AM
You can displace planets just fine. I tried Dune's approach, see for yourself. You can restrict populations via a distance shader for example, placing a camera centered hovering 'over' the second planet.
But try getting the population to go over the underside of your planet :D
Richard
QuoteBut try getting the population to go over the underside of your planet
Just position the hanging planet underneath planet 1, and rotate your camera?