Another project I'm working on, unfinished yet. It needs cows, more sheds, fences and different crops, and much less trees.
another fascinatingly detailed scene, looking forward to the next iteration!
The ground cover is, as usual, superb, and complemented by the lighting.
Fine work Dune
It the purple on the left side lilacs? I really like the fields, paths and stream. Your work always makes me want to use image maps; I am not very good with them...
Thanks guys.
@ Henry: No it's supposed to be blooming heather in September, interspersed with tough grasses. We have some heathland very close by which is (in some years) astonishingly purple.
This is very impressive work... again. You can see each second invested in this project. Great!
forgot to say, I love the heather!
Our heather, one mile away.
Stunning work. Looking forward on seeing more!
Thanks Ulco. I really enjoy your work. I have been looking at the bw image in Plugs and Pixels, trying to figure out how best to make a good image map for my own work.
Well, the BW image in Plugsnpixels was a PS screendump with all layers open, so seemingly extremely complicated. I now make a few empty layers above a map or a crude drawing of the map layout (may be RGB to easily read the map), with the first layer being 50% black, so that you still see the underlying map. Then on a layer above the black I start drawing in white. Make little black marks in the corners first or you won't copy the whole layer. When satisfied I make a new image, totally black in greyscale tif, same size as the other, name it 'woodmask_terrainX.tif', and copy the transparent layer over that, make it one layer and save. Resize smaller if crude is good enough.
For another mask I open the first one, make it black, copy the next transparent layer over it and save under another name! For me that's a fast workflow.
Ok. So the first image is a 'crude' quick sketch of the layout. The next layer can take care of the trees or creeks or paths maybe. If the image is black and white, doesn't the white area mask the area without alpha channels?
This is great advise, sorry for trampling on your image thread...
Quotetrees or creeks or paths
Each gets one layer in the PSD-base. And I think there's a misunderstanding, as this PSD-base with all the layers is just a working 'base' from which I extract the final masks as separate files. Every time I change a mask, I do this in the layered PSD where you can see all the other layers, then copy this over the old mask, and reload in TG2. And I don't use the alpha channels, just plain gray scale Tiff's for the final masks. Where obviously white is yes and black is no, and all in between. Tiff's because I can then see how big they are, and JPG's will be bigger once loaded anyway. Masks for trees can be really reduced to 1000x1000 or even 500x500 or so (or 200x1200 if that's what's needed for your terrain). In these rough masks I also hardly use greys, but tiny dots and clusters of dots of white, and set up a gradient that way. I get the impression the file size is smaller then, but now that I write this; I must check that out.
The paths and creeks are really fun to make, as you can use all sorts of brushes and textures.
I have had success with streams. When I add a mask for say grass coverage (Surface layer, not objects), it does not seem too work right. I'll get it though.
Thanks for the great advise!
P.S.> Image maps expand into the full memory required for the image. This is the way Blender and Lightwave (when I had it) work.
sounds interesting Ulco/Henry, I have not experimented with greyscale masks made in ps, do you have the link to the page at plugsnpixel, it may help me to make more sense?
QuoteImage maps expand into the full memory required for the image
That's right, and that's why I just use tiffs, because you know the final size. The smaller the size, though in pixelwidth, the better.
And here's the link: http://www.plugsandpixels.com/ezine.html (http://www.plugsandpixels.com/ezine.html)
And if you have a real map as base, you easily make a mask the right size as well. Just fill in the total area covered in the image map shader, in meters.
This is why I use an orthographic render of my "area of interest" as a base, the camera details can be coppied directly into the imagemap location data for perfect match up.
:)
Richard
thanks ulco, Henry and Richard!
Jason
Next iteration. I will probably soften the flax field a bit, and I have to make a lot of fences, which I will probably paint in in PS. Too much work to do in TG2.
I'm currently modeling some more 'farms being built'.
Beautiful. The distribution of plants looks great.
Superb. Where is this going to be used? In print? For some reason, every time I look at your renders historical strategy games come into my mind (you know Civilization, Age of Empires, Total War, etc.). Must be the camera placement and of course me forgetting how low on details those games were in comparison :)
Now that you mention games; I guess it would very well fit indeed. I'm still working on the detail level, not satisfied with the heather yet, as it will be published on a large table in the area where this has been found by archaeologists. So that people can retrace the ancient paths, and wonder what it must have been like 2000-2500 years ago. It will have to be rendered at at least 5000px wide, so I hope to keep memory low. Did a 4000px crop render yesterday (before the small one previously posted), where you can see that the heather is still too flat, the flax too even, the light not good enough, the cows too light, etc. Much to work on.
wow amazing! :o
:o Great!!! :o
Is all I can say, sorry!!!
Now tell me, that second image is actually a picture. Isn't It?!?!?!
Is that longhouse under construction a model I built?
The people you are making this for will be quite pleased!
@ Henry: Yes, it is, very keen of you. Coming in very handy here, although it's not quite the right type, and I might have to replace it. I'm building some of my own right now. You don't mind, do you, if I use your stuff? If you do, I won't. If you don't, I could. :P
@ro-nin: I wish it were TG2. I'm having a hard time getting some decent fake heather together...
I made the thing for you to use. If it works, use it. If not, well I tried. Honestly I am happy to see you using it, if only for testing.
Thanks Henry. I have to ask which one they want.
Here's a crop (where the total is 4800 px wide, with 400MB of memory preallocated). It's about a third of the total width. This bit took 1 hour at detail 0.5 and AA 5. With the same crop at total 5500px wide TG2 crashed, it went over 2.5 GB of memory. I'll check out the limits and render as large as possible, probably in crops. Still needs work on the heather, it's not rough enough IMO. Does anyone have some more comment?
Looks good Dune !
I don't know maybe this is what you want , but the ground seems a little too even .
Maybe some kind of small and bigger bushes or so , to break it up a little , or rougher ground in some places?
Since you asked: i think the cows are too slim to be convincing.
Your heather seems to have lost some colour between the last two renders,
I think it was closer to your photo before.
The flax seems to be a hard one, the colour for the flowers is right, but somehow the impression of the upright plants beneath is still not perfect. it looks not higher than the heather.
Still, great project!
At this high-res it's noticeable: the cows seem to have eaten all the vegetation. The trees just stand out too starkly.
Thanks for your comments, and you're totally right. The cows have eaten a lot of the vegetation (in this period of time a lot of trees and shrub were removed for use by an increasing population of farmers), and they are indeed too skinny, my wife mentioned this as well. I gave the ground some more roughness yesterday, but I'll check it again. I should probably use objects for the flax, but the memory use would be too big, I'm afraid. I'll paint it in afterwards. Or use a crop render without any trees and such.
Very good. I especially like the lighting.
Would the flax really be a memory hog if you used models. I would have thought that several of the grass/crops models modified with differant shaders would do the trick. Was it Ryan who created some fields of grain. Your field is only occupying a small area and would render fairly fast I would have thought, even at high density.
Every time you post these historical renders I get inspired to try my hand at a few of our local sites. Obviously theres Glastonbury itself with the monestry and all its ancillary buildings but that is a huge project. Theres also Glastonbury Lake Village which I tried years ago, the tech (ok and me :) ) just was not up to the job :( Maybe after I finish my current projects I'll give it a go. It really is an inspiration seeing your work.
Keep on posting.
Richard
You're right, Richard, it might not be so bad doing the fields with objects, perhaps even a little crop and blend it in in PS. I'll make some flax and wheat...
Here's the near final iteration, reduced in size. I pulled off a nice 4800x2400 render in 8 hours at detail 6 and AA 0.6, GI 1/1/8. Now I must paint in a lot of fences, and some small stuff, and smoke from 'chimneys'.
It's really very rewarding to recreate something that has gone (as it is of course creating something that has never existed!). The nicest thing is to combine TG2 and modeling of things. But, boy, it takes a lot of time!!