I like this one, especially the planet in the sky.
I am a little curious as to the lines in the sky? As I edited in Photoshop CS5 these became more apparent.
Is that a function of not enough color levels available in the Tiff file, or a render issue?
My guess is the tiff needs to be higher bit depth to avoid the streaks?
Nice crisp work :)
I also see the banding. There can be various reasons, mostly it's due to lack of bit-depth, so not enough information to store the precise gradient.
Sometimes it also occurs when saving it to a compressed format, so if you don't see it in your TIFF/EXR(32-bit) output then it's likely compression.
But, it can also occur in the renderer when you reduce the sample jitter in the sky (jitter should be considered as a randomnization function to distribute sample-points (samples) for calculation). I don't think you reduced that as that's not the usual thing somebody starts playing with.
Hi elipsis1
I'm still not sure, how much is render and how much are you doing in post? Whats your work flow? Just curious.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on March 12, 2012, 07:00:44 PM
Sometimes it also occurs when saving it to a compressed format, so if you don't see it in your TIFF/EXR(32-bit) output then it's likely compression.
When I load it up in photoshop it says it is an 8 bit tiff? How do I enable 32-bit TIFF?
Oh and here is a newer version of the image with less banding. I changed the mode from 8 to 32bit, then did post work.
Thanks for your help! ;D
EDIT: too much sharpening?
Cool. Nice composition and this terrain works well with water.
Well I got my banding issue fixed. Save as "EXR" got me a 32bit file. I guess the Tiffs are only 8bit?
Have to convert down to save as jpeg. So much learning to do!
Thank you all for your comments :)
EDIT: hmm banding is still there, but much less pronounced... argh...
There are many topics on this if you search the web.
It is a common problem in some situations (like a sky with little or no other objects and a gradient) and not only in TG2.
If you look at the EXR file you directly saved from TG2 there are no banding or very little at all.
Try to use a lower contrast in the image etc.
Use some dithering or-and noise to break the banding.
Try different converting methods with dither-noise etc. if you have to.
With very little dither-noise added you will probably get no banding , Elipsis1.
Hi,
I also suspect some of the banding may come from JPEG compression. A common compression scheme will compress the blue channel of an image more than the others, which can mean blues are more prone to showing artifacts like banding. That's a bit tricky for those of us commonly rendering blue skies! Obviously you were also having issues with the TIFF though, which doesn't do any compression.
As Kadri says banding is a common problem in some aspects of images and there's quite a lot of info on the web about how to minimise it.
Regards,
Jo
I tried "add noise" in photoshop and tweaked the amount, but didn't like that very much... I just chose add noise, perhaps there is a different option for dither noise?
Anyway, I did find that I liked the Gaussian blur / mask combo quite well, although that can be problematic with masking. I suppose there is a way to render a mask in Terragen? Distance shader or something?
Try adding a very thin cirrus cloud layer. Reduce the edge sharpness to 0.2 and increase the base softness and wispiness to around 0.9. % or 10 meters for the cloud depth. This should let the celestial objects to shine through, but break up the sky gradient.
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