Procedural railroad..........................................................................
yet more great work Dune
Cool :)
Can we have a closer picture , Dune ?
nice, good job on the railroad track! Not so keen on the splochy snow patches, but I guess that not the main point of the render anyway so far :-)
Again, great job on the tracks!
Wow, really? That's impressive. Interested in the details...
- Oshyan
Closer picture without the snow splotches. Credits to Lightning again (nice shrub, although I made the needles a bit too bright), and to the tram manufacturer (I suppose I need another train here, non-electric). There's a crossing road, but you can't see it from down here. I may extend this with a station and some other stuff, perhaps even an old (procedural) platform.
Looks very good to me in close up too, Dune :)
How did you do this?
Oshyan if Planetside could use this kind of roads , railroads , buildings etc. and made them more user friendly , TG3 could be really amazing .
City engine and such quite from the beginning. In fact it is in a nice partially way , already definitely here :)
Just great!
The only limitation(nearly ;)) with TG is your imagination, the amazing things that everyone thought impossible at one point, that now keep coming to fruit, just go to prove this.
I am silently nodding my head ... very good work (<--- read with lots of '!') ,-)
Quote from: Volker Harun on March 06, 2011, 10:47:05 AM
I am silently nodding my head ... very good work (<--- read with lots of '!') ,-)
+1
don't know what to say ! ^^
When it comes to original creativity, this guy Ulco seems to always come up with it ...great work!
;D
Here you see the other road.
Between you and dandelO, I think we're going to see a lot more human artifacts in our landscapes ...great stuff.
That's it. Great render!
There is some simple, angled geometry left where the big cut is, which lends a certain degree of CG-ness, maybe if that bit could be more detailed, that would be awesome.
Cheers,
Frank
Stunning work! The vegetation is very photo-realistic!
The only thing we ought to do is to get the cuts more smooth ... how is the railway, the street running, when the terrain is below 0m? Does it run on bridge?
Or does it go plain wherever the slop goes -> 0°?
I'd imagine it would follow the terrain, whatever the underlying features are, that is, that it would flatten out the portion that is to be road/track, according only to the blending that Ulco has in place, to cut it into the existing ground.
Rotating or moving the entire road, and the blending of the road, whether through transform or functions would just flatten out the areas where it appears according to that rotation/translation, and flatten those areas to accommodate the road/track.
That's where I believe that fractals are kind of difficult to use for such purposes, in that; you can't describe easily how much of a fractal is applied to any given point along the length of the road that curves, this creates the deep and sharp cuts that are quite are apparent here because you have to actually cut into the existing fractal, instead of being able to build up a fractal from the road's centre, outwards.
I'm sure this would be possible, somehow, it certainly is with altitudes, but I can't see an easy way to recreate it laterally from the road centre and outward.
Also, Ulco, if you do manage to make it bridge a chasm, I'll make you my new God! (Secondary planet/plane objects do not count!) ;)
Quote from: dandelO on March 06, 2011, 07:27:47 PM
I'd imagine it would follow the terrain, whatever the underlying features are, that is, that it would flatten out the portion that is to be road/track, according only to the blending that Ulco has in place, to cut it into the existing ground.
Rotating or moving the entire road, and the blending of the road, whether through transform or functions would just flatten out the areas where it appears according to that rotation/translation, and flatten those areas to accommodate the road/track.
That's where I believe that fractals are kind of difficult to use for such purposes, in that; you can't describe easily how much of a fractal is applied to any given point along the length of the road that curves, this creates the deep and sharp cuts that are quite are apparent here because you have to actually cut into the existing fractal, instead of being able to build up a fractal from the road's centre, outwards.
I'm sure this would be possible, somehow, it certainly is with altitudes, but I can't see an easy way to recreate it laterally from the road centre and outward.
Also, Ulco, if you do manage to make it bridge a chasm, I'll make you my new God! (Secondary planet/plane objects do not count!) ;)
That is the point, to bridge a chasm is the easy way ... to follow slopes and do the cut is harder.
The angled geometry at the big cut is so pronounced because the terrain happens to be high there, but I agree about it's 'geometricality'. It can easily be solved with some local extra displacement, but the whole thing is already that complicated that I didn't bother at the time. I may also add a rocky surface for angled surfaces (now it's only one grass layer with three PF's for color). The road is also not good enough yet, I like it to be a double track. But I'm making a platform now, so that's first.
In my setup the cuts even out the terrain, so they 'bridge'. Where the terrain dips, the cuts go 'up'. It could be otherwise, perhaps. But you often have these areas in the real world where they have thrown up a lot of ground for a railway track, and dug it up somewhere else. But you cannot have a very steep or rough terrain, or it'll be too contrived, depending on the smoothness of the valley, that is. I add some roughness later, after making the valleys, or cuts. The thing is that a bridge would be possible (YES, I'll be your God!), if you locally add some (well, a lot of) lateral displacement, and keep it at bay with a simple shape mask (perhaps triangular or so). Do so on the other side of a valley, the other way and hopefully the bridge ends will meet.....
About following slopes. If it would be possible to use the same PF for terrain and warping of the line and lay out the line kind of along the valley edges, perhaps.... but then it would be harder to flatten that area, that's easier of course if the line goes perpendicular to the main terrain.
this is the reason why i didnt make long rails on my scenes (not posted here) that I cant achieve flat surface throughout.
There is a locomotive model over in ashundar by the way i uploaded a year ago
You're absolutely right. I got into problems when making a small path alongside the railway; it became a slippery, angled pathway, only suitable for mountaineers. There should be a way to level out simple shape rigged paths/roads perpendicular to the simple shape.... perhaps I'll post this as a feature request. Also good for rivers.
I found your locomotive, curious to see it up close. Thanks!
EDIT: With platform. The side path isn't that bad, actually.
looks excellent, now all you need are some procedural cables!
You never cease to amaze me, Ulco. Your speed of work is amazing and so are your ideas. That last render, so intriguing. I'm still scratching my head how yo got to level that terrain. When you happen to add a steam train to the scene and get to the smoke part, please share :) I got a little stuck on that aspect....
QuoteI'm still scratching my head how yo got to level that terrain
I'll tell you this and you'll figure it out; the terrain is a PF with values like 300/3000/300 and displacement of 300. You copy that and lower the displacement to 100 in number 2. Then you stack them but inversely blend number 1 by a simple shape and blend number 2 by the same simple shape... voila.
@inkydigit: perhaps a hovering plane with the same smooth displacement as the terrain, and blended by two very thin simple shapes.... you'd need pylons as well though.
Quote from: Dune on March 08, 2011, 02:11:42 AM
QuoteI'm still scratching my head how yo got to level that terrain
I'll tell you this and you'll figure it out; the terrain is a PF with values like 300/3000/300 and displacement of 300. You copy that and lower the displacement to 100 in number 2. Then you stack them but inversely blend number 1 by a simple shape and blend number 2 by the same simple shape... voila.
@inkydigit: perhaps a hovering plane with the same smooth displacement as the terrain, and blended by two very thin simple shapes.... you'd need pylons as well though.
...of course!
Quote from: Dune on March 08, 2011, 02:11:42 AM
QuoteI'm still scratching my head how yo got to level that terrain
I'll tell you this and you'll figure it out; the terrain is a PF with values like 300/3000/300 and displacement of 300. You copy that and lower the displacement to 100 in number 2. Then you stack them but inversely blend number 1 by a simple shape and blend number 2 by the same simple shape... voila.
...
Thanks for the explanation! Make sense. I shall give it a shot.
Modified rail system... still procedural, except for a sleeper mask.
And another one. I don't know if this cute little machine ought to go the other way, but then it's going back. No post. And no compute terrain either, come to think of it, wasn't necessary here.
Only the road needed a few more seeds, because there's a parking lot, which I don't like.
Both renders are great Ulco. So you're painting the masks in these two images?
In any case, the rails and sleepers look really good.
Cheers,
Frank
No, they're not masks, but simple shapes. Could also be done by blue nodes, but I find the simple shapes easier. The only problem of the rails is that you need a good deal of detail (this was 0.6) or they go wobbly.
Quote from: Dune on March 14, 2011, 03:57:47 AM
And another one. I don't know if this cute little machine ought to go the other way, but then it's going back. No post. And no compute terrain either, come to think of it, wasn't necessary here.
Only the road needed a few more seeds, because there's a parking lot, which I don't like.
Oh my god! Is that a Glaskasten loco? Looks wonderful, the rails, by the way. Can't believe it's procedural.
Very impressive Ulco. It is inspirational viewing the work that you do.
It is a Glaskasten loco (I had another google, very interesting what you find). I added some 'attachment stuff' to the sleepers, but the masks don't quite match yet. I also started to sow some grass into the desert, but I have a long way to go.
What we really need in this whole (rail)road business is a 'restricted averaging shader'. The methods we have come up with level the terrain over a great distance (within a masked area), but we need points taken and averaged over a chosen radius (be it color or displacement). Perhaps this is something for a feature request, as roads will be a nice extra feature if it can be implemented a little easier.
The problem is easily recognized in the distance where the track goes underground (no, this is not a metro line), although I can filter that out of course, but it's extra work and a computing burden.
Slightly better version.
And one with procedural road and bushes growing where they are not allowed to.
very nice updates...the road seems a bit too 'crisp', as does the truck, still this is great work Ulco!
masks can be evil ;)
These renders have a lot of potential if you keep at it. There's a lot about them that already looks photo realistic. The actual models are probably most problematic.
Are you trying to develop this to perfection or are the landscapes placeholer for now until you're done with perfecting the railroads?
Regards,
Frank
Pouvez-vous faire un tutorial ?
Can you do a tutorial ?
Actually they all start out as a test, built up from scratch every time (good to get the hang of it). So I click some seeds for a decent landscape, but that's not perfect indeed. I tried to make a crossing (rail crossing road), but couldn't figure it out yet. In a reasonably flat landscape it is not hard, but try making a road or railway in a mountainous area... we really need a 'local leveler'.
Tutorial; make a long (north-south) simple shape and warp (warp shader, redirect (X) shader and displacement shader) this by a power fractal or perlin 3D (for smoother effect). To view, hook into blend input of surface layer. Your line should be snaking north south. There are threads around where this is described. This is the base actually, because the other lines (wider and softer for the verge, narrow for the lines) are also north south simple shapes, with their own warp shader, but warped by the same redirect shader.
With some merge shaders you can make combinations after the warping and use them as masks for vegetation and rocks, etc.
The sleepers (and the attachment stuff) are a very simple painted masks (greyscale tiff into image map shader) set to repeat Y, and also warped by the same warper.
To flatten the area of the rail/road you can also use a wide (soft) simple shape (warped) and use this as a (blend) mask for the terrain; two copies of the same terrain, but one smoothed out (smallest detail larger, stretched perlin in one direction). You'll get a long way now, I'd say.
all we need now is Thomas The Tank and friends.....
Not been following this post, but thought from the start that these rails are a model....i almost mentioned well done on the curved rail, i find it very hard to get a smooth curve, if i could achieve that I could model a full rail yard
Next... completely different setup.
I didn't really think it was possible, but I like this new setup even more than the others! brilliant work!
I know it's not meant to be the central point of interest, but the black smoke against the bright sky is awesome!
I like this one also. Looks like a siding for a large mine.
The smoke was a pain to get right. The rails are just 2 masks (sleepers and bolts+), rest is simple shapes. This can't be done entirely procedural. Well, perhaps it could, but why bother.
Merci pour le tutorial.
Thank you a tutorial.
Ingenious the use of a repeating texture. But how did you get the texture to indent through the Y for the rails? I'm baffled.
What do you mean exactly by 'indent through the Y for the rails'? I just warped the repeating texture, excluding or including things that shouldn't or should be displaced by merge shaders, if that's what you mean. The only thing that can't be done is to get rid of the stuff just under the rails (although I did have a way earlier, but that's doesn't work properly in other ways). There should be a gap.
A snowy version, but I should have put more effort in the terrain. The point here is; I used RT reflections on the rails, but that's no good as you can see, no-RT reflections are way smoother. I have to test what kind of refraction index should be good for metal, I thought a high number...
By the way; measurements of gauge, sleepers and such are based on European (continental) standards.
These are all just great, Ulco! The rails and sleepers really look to be separate objects from the planet, I'd never guess these were done with shaders if I didn't know. 8)
I'd think a higher render detail should fix the jaggy RT reflections, basic specular wouldn't get optimized at render time so 0.6 is fine and looks smoother in that case. That'd be my guess anyway. ???
I think most carbon based metals have a refraction of about 0.4. I had an index for this once. I don't know where it is. Probably in my long gone Blender books I loaned out.
Refraction list; http://interactagram.com/physics/optics/refraction/
thanks for posting that link
there was a time, several year ago when i had been looking for a list like that, in my early days of 3D then i lost interest and forgot about it. then i went back to traditional art.
the wooden planks on the tracks look fantastic!
That list is much more complete than any other list I have seen. Great link!
Not really procedural, but an object, freshly constructed. I didn't bother to add rails to the tracks going through the mountains, but hid it with Lightnings bushes.
And because I can't let go... I wish there was a way to get decent thick smoke coming out of 1 point and widening. Smoke/cloud growing from a central area outwards along a line, or something....
ps. One part didn't render 100% I noticed.
Got the method for making the smoke, but now for all the other mistakes >:( :-[ :-\ By the way, this one took 4.5 hours.
This is outstanding. the smoke; the pov and light - all comes together. That is one precarious run for the tender.
QuoteGot the method for making the smoke,...
Please tell us more.
Painted shader, set at 3D. Paint on a plane 'through' the object. Delete the plane.
Here's the actual image of my query into the floating trees in 'discussion'. Behind the bridge you see trees floating. Strange!
8) Thanks!
The smoke and steam are true achievements. Thanks so much for the tip, will have to make an attempt. Enjoying every new render, what a thread!
i had a floating population problem as well with my "The way through" renders (some of the earlier ones)
i discovered negative displacements from the painted shader were apparently causing the the grass to float slightly above the ground.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=11588.0;attach=28712;image
Quote from: Dune on April 07, 2011, 10:55:46 AM
Painted shader, set at 3D. Paint on a plane 'through' the object. Delete the plane.
Tried this and it didn't work. What do you mean by Painted shader set at 3D?
Here you are, ready to go...
Quote from: Dune on April 07, 2011, 03:46:55 PM
Here you are, ready to go...
Thank you so much Ulco for your file. I continued to try a number of approaches without success. I really appreciate this.
Quote from: Dune on April 07, 2011, 03:46:55 PM
Here you are, ready to go...
Hi Ulco,
Tell me, where does the 'canvas' come from? I don't see an active button or other choice that produces a canvas.
Bob
It's a plane (object), set upright. I've shoved it aside here, as you can see.
Thank you Ulco, I've got it now; and, will be using this in the near future. It has a lot of possibilities for some future ideas I have. Appreciate you coming back on this.
Used my 'canvas' method again for the smoke, and rendered the upper left part separately, even that took 4 hours or so with the dense smoke. Without smoke the whole thing was done in 45 minutes. Even though the smoke layer was only 20m high. Blended the two in Photoshop.
There must be a way to do this differently, I'm not very satisfied with the result either, as there still was a lot of grain (despite RTA). I softened that in PS. Cloud density was 2, sharpness 5, quality 1.2.
Bush still floated near mud level, but I did some painting in PS.
I don't like the ground surface, so I'm moving to another setup again. Thanks for looking.
Stunning work here Ulco. It has been cool watching/looking at this develop!
That is looking fine Ulco. Eventually, with enough experimentation, I feel you will find a better way. I really like the painted smoke method.
I'm amazed by the railroad tracks!
Tried to understand what's being said in the "Tutorial" post, but as pretty much a beginner, I'm having a hard time pulling it all together. Is there a TGD out there somewhere that demonstrates the basic road/railroad technique?
Thanks!
I'm afraid not. But it is better to get to know TG2 from the basics upward and then try the more complicated things.
The basic is this: a repeated image map (you'll have to paint that in Photoshop), which is fed into the shader input of a warp shader. A redirect shader is fed into the warp shader's input. The redirect is fed by a power fractal, with displacement on (which displaces the thing)! Then you have a warped line of the one mask, either as color input into a surface shader or as displacement basis. You can add and merge all sorts of things now, as for the railway you'd need several masks (sleepers, and nuts/bolts). The rails are simple shapes, warped the same way. Smartly blend/merge these into each other.... etc.
There are several tgd's and tgc's available that sort of do this, build it up from there.
I said it in the first page but i can easily say it many times more , you have a very cool technique and images here , Ulco !
2 in fact with the smoke one.
Do you plan to sell it at NWDA or so ? Just curious :)
I don't know about selling, might be an idea. But as you can see here there are things to sort out, and it ain't easy. In the meantime I have figured out why I had the blocked rail sides, but there's still the issue of the 'shadow' sleeper displacement in the snow, right beside the sleepers.
This was done using displacement intersection (favor depressions also works), but I had to insert another compute terrain with a patch size of 0.1 to not get a large sleeper 'shadow'. And if I would alter the other two values of the intersection away from 0/0, things would totally change, and rise and dip like crazy. Weird stuff going on.
This is obviously snow, contrary to its title. I had a sand shader right beside it, which I may try another day.
Updated version.
I tried to follow along as best as I can (for a noob) but my road seems to not only meander (good) but vary in width (bad). I realize I can smooth the effect out a bit by increasing the feature scale of the power fractal, but that would only mask an underlying issue I guess. Any idea what I did wrong here? I hope the node network is clear enough.
You made the wrong links. Here's a basic setup.
Thanks Ulco. This will be a great start for many things I can think of.
Thank you Ulco, this foundation for many types of roads, hiking paths, railroads, runways and etc. open the door for some new ideas ...appreciate your generosity.
Quote from: Dune on April 07, 2011, 03:46:55 PM
Here you are, ready to go...
Hi Ulco,
I tried the 'painted smoke' file now six times. I opened two instances of TG2 and duplicated all the settings of your file. After I rendered the image, apparently the painted clouds will not show up - only the full clouded area. In trying this several different times, I tried different sequences of applying the settings ...but, still not working. Might you have any additional tips on this?
Bob
Thanks for the tgd. I have started working with the simple shape shader to make a canal. It will be nice to make it curve decently.
Quoteonly the full clouded area
Did you check 'blend by shader' in the cloud fractals? If you attach a shader to the blend input of a power fractal or cloud fractal it doesn't automatically check it.
Or post your tgd and I'll check it out.
Quote from: Dune on April 21, 2011, 03:22:26 AM
Quoteonly the full clouded area
Did you check 'blend by shader' in the cloud fractals? If you attach a shader to the blend input of a power fractal or cloud fractal it doesn't automatically check it.
Or post your tgd and I'll check it out.
Thanks Ulco, I will check that out and get back with the results.
Bob
It looks fabulous, very cool train 8)
Excellent idea and art !
Now it just needs some cowboy train robbers on horseback chasing the train for
bags of money :D
Quote from: Dune on April 21, 2011, 03:22:26 AM
Quoteonly the full clouded area
Did you check 'blend by shader' in the cloud fractals? If you attach a shader to the blend input of a power fractal or cloud fractal it doesn't automatically check it.
Or post your tgd and I'll check it out.
Hi Ulco,
I found I didn't 'check' the box for the density shader. However, after trying several times, I still didn't get the painted smoke. Here is the .tgd I made following yours. Would appreciate your suggestions.
Thanks,
Bob
Well, you didn't paint anything, no wonder the cloud doesn't turn up! Here a painted version. If you make another painted shader and paint yourself, you can delete this one. Don't bother erasing. First enable the plane again of course.
Another go at my railroad. I need some thin and quite straight adolescent birches to make a denser stand of them, because I don't really like these fat XFrog birches (here). The light is a bit flat, and the smoke needs to be a little more billowy. And I'm thinking of making the camera more wide angle. No post, by the way. Oh yes, and the area of grass cover is too small.
Different birches, different sky (a bit too soft, I'd say), but I'm also not satisfied with this smoke (distribution minimum should be up 40 cm, for one).
very nice but could you explain HOW you made the road and the railroad bed go where you wanted it to on the terrain?
Smoke going straight up in air seems like train not moving. There is no engineer in the train to operate.
On bridges, try make vertical patterns will look more like the rust and stains from rain going down from wooden ties to area below. The bridges seem too regular and homogeneous for a real bridge to be, with more work it look good.
Thanks TheOne.
@Shaba1: on page 6 there's a tgd with the basic principle. But you cannot precisely get the road where you want it unless using a mask.