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General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: Keiyentai on November 06, 2011, 10:23:36 PM

Title: Ice Planet 2
Post by: Keiyentai on November 06, 2011, 10:23:36 PM
Just testing some settings in Terragen 2.3 crits comments always welcome I rarely post stuff.
Title: Re: Ice Planet 2
Post by: Pentagular Dark on November 07, 2011, 12:56:53 AM
Brilliantly realistic! I like it.
Title: Re: Ice Planet 2
Post by: Dune on November 07, 2011, 02:57:48 AM
Very nice, but one crit; the sun is shining through the mountain.

By the way, I wish there were more people posting. We must keep this community alive and kicking! Also TG2 users good enough not to have any questions or C&C hungry. It could be very stimulating. Or aren't there any?
Title: Re: Ice Planet 2
Post by: Keiyentai on November 07, 2011, 06:21:22 AM
Ya I noticed that so I am currently making a HD render for a friends desktop and changed the camera angel. I have been using Terragen since it was first released to the public I have just been a huge critic on my art. Still don't know all the odds and ends of TG2 but I like a challenge. Once my HD version is done rendering...so far 6 hours and going lol.  :-\ friggin reflect shader.
Title: Re: Ice Planet 2
Post by: Jonathan on November 07, 2011, 06:58:30 AM
Lovely render - agree about the sun shining through the mountain...it often happens to me too :) Look forward to the big render. J
Title: Re: Ice Planet 2
Post by: Zairyn Arsyn on November 07, 2011, 08:09:59 AM
looks pretty darn good to me :)

i agree with the above about the sun shining through the terrain.
Title: Re: Ice Planet 2
Post by: Hannes on November 07, 2011, 08:33:34 AM
Check: Atmosphere/Atmosphere/Quality/Receive shadows from surfaces. This makes the sun disappear behind the mountains. Rendertimes will be longer too. :(
Do you have checked "Raytraced reflections" in the reflective shader? If you only need specular highlights, uncheck this. Rendertimes will be shorter.
Great image by the way! ;D
Another tip for the clouds: decrease the smallest scale of your cloud's density fractal (0.01 for example) and raise the roughness to 1.9 under "Density". This will produce more detail. You could play with the edge sharpness as well. It's all a matter of taste, but it's worth a try.
Title: Re: Ice Planet 2
Post by: Tangled-Universe on November 07, 2011, 09:02:07 AM
Great looking render :) I love those hazy clouds, really nice!

Quote from: Hannes on November 07, 2011, 08:33:34 AM
Check: Atmosphere/Atmosphere/Quality/Receive shadows from surfaces. This makes the sun disappear behind the mountains. Rendertimes will be longer too. :(
Do you have checked "Raytraced reflections" in the reflective shader? If you only need specular highlights, uncheck this. Rendertimes will be shorter.
Great image by the way! ;D
Another tip for the clouds: decrease the smallest scale of your cloud's density fractal (0.01 for example) and raise the roughness to 1.9 under "Density". This will produce more detail. You could play with the edge sharpness as well. It's all a matter of taste, but it's worth a try.

These are great tips. Please keep in mind that the "receive shadows from surfaces" will take roughly twice as long to render, if not more. An option could be to render a crop of the sun with that setting enabled and composite it in post.
On the other hand, calculated shadows casted from the terrain onto the clouds are more accurate and may add in realism.
So it's a trade off you'll need to choose from.

Always be careful when someone posts values to enter. 0.01 could make sense if your scales are already small, but if you have huge scale clouds you'll end up with details which will either never be notice-able/visible and it would also add unnecessary rendertime since you have a huge number of noise-octaves consequently (feature size / smallest scale = #noise octaves).

Adding roughness will create more detail in the fractal, but you'll need a minimum cloud density and edge sharpness to make it visible, but to some extend that's also possible by increasing fractal contrast.
These settings inter-relate heavily. It's difficult and you'll need to develop a bit of feeling for it.
A higher roughness value tends to create more "floating" small clouds around the main features which often looks less nice.
An approach could be to increase edge sharpness a bit first and see if that works.
If not, then revert to original edge sharpness and stepwise increase fractal roughness.
In your particular case I wouldn't increase density, because obviously you're going for some kind of transparency here which in my opinion you shouldn't touch! :D
Title: Re: Ice Planet 2
Post by: Keiyentai on November 07, 2011, 01:28:58 PM
 ;D Awesome. Thanks for all the tips. Really appreciate it. As for the clouds I was trying to mimic like the ice/snow dust effect kind of like during an arctic storm. Anywho here is the new one.  9hour render  :P will try some of the tips with next render. Once again thanks  ;D
Title: Re: Ice Planet 2
Post by: Zairyn Arsyn on November 07, 2011, 04:00:20 PM
this one looks a lot better imo, dig the reflections along with the displacement have in it.
Title: Re: Ice Planet 2
Post by: Jonathan on November 08, 2011, 12:12:01 PM
Great second render....with the sun low on the horizon, I feel chilly just looking at it...the colour of the lighting is spot on. Well done :)
Title: Re: Ice Planet 2
Post by: inkydigit on November 08, 2011, 03:09:53 PM
these are real nice, you should post more often!

:)
Title: Re: Ice Planet 2
Post by: TheBadger on November 09, 2011, 02:35:59 AM
Very good, I like the second one better too. I think maybe it needs a little more snow though. Some flat areas (more or less) to make the ice more understandable. Just a thought.
Title: Re: Ice Planet 2
Post by: stew on November 09, 2011, 02:39:11 AM
wow! i love the horizon colours and tones! inspiring!!

  ;D