Planetside Software Forums

General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: dandelO on May 11, 2013, 06:50:24 PM

Title: Speed trap
Post by: dandelO on May 11, 2013, 06:50:24 PM
Kind of unfinished but haven't got many other images close to hand for the moment. I'll get back on to this one sometime soon...

Cheers! :)

[attach=1]
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: Zairyn Arsyn on May 11, 2013, 11:41:00 PM
he returns!

this is a excellent render, spectacular terrain and atmosphere.

Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: Jo Kariboo on May 12, 2013, 12:04:45 AM
Very impressive and beautifull !!!   :D
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: Dune on May 12, 2013, 04:12:52 AM
Really nice, Martin. So that's why you haven't shown up, to secretly work on this powerful image  ;)
I notice a road line shimmering through the overblown sand (left front). I had the same in one or two renders and managed to get it out of the sand by hardening and whitening the sand mask and inversely blending the line by that.
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: TheBadger on May 12, 2013, 07:43:17 AM
Road surface looks real, real.
Love the sky and atmo. Terrain looks good.

Sand needs a little life though. But pretty darn nice as is.
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: ADE on May 12, 2013, 08:58:54 AM
crackin one martin, the atmo is really cool, man, u have to share the way u make that road with me :))
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: otakar on May 12, 2013, 12:17:31 PM
Very nice, the sky and the terrain. Have encountered quite a few of those traps on I-15 :)
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: DannyG on May 12, 2013, 12:35:43 PM
Lots to look, very nice !!
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: dandelO on May 12, 2013, 01:33:05 PM
Cheers, all! :)

Ade, this is actually one of the images I mentioned on the phone, and damn, was that really about a month ago already?
Anyway, I wouldn't normally worry about sharing the settings but this one is a bit of a silly network because it is an updated, older .tgd(desert road in file sharing) that is really too complicated and clunky to learn much from, if I'd started from scratch I'd have made it much less so. There's far too many daft connections, hidden nodes and simple-shape-shaders that make preview navigating and node masking a horrid experience.(see screenshot).
I'll make a better, more sensible one to share later, though.
I'd love to be able to hide simple shape bounding boxes as this is(part of) the problem. I can get around that in other ways but I'll need to start again. :/
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: Matt on May 12, 2013, 05:05:58 PM
Welcome back Martin!

That sky is excellent. I wouldn't know it was Terragen! Please teach us :)

The rest is very good too. Two things that I would suggest: 1) make the lens flare colour match the colour of the sunlight (make it yellow/orange), 2) the foreground car "feels" too reflective, even for a dark paint colour, but if you reduce the reflectivity it might make the car less visible, so I would prefer a lighter/brighter paint colour.

Matt
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: dandelO on May 12, 2013, 07:49:16 PM
Thanks. :)
The lens flare was semi-hand made, a basic flare was applied and then the 'flecks' were made by a few little brush strokes with a radial blur filter overlaid to colour-dodge which gave a nice kind of spectral feel, now I look again, some of the flecks don't match the light's direction, doh! There was also some more kind of dirt and lens grain in a disabled layer that I left out as it looked too contrived, need more image editing practice I thinks.
Probably right about the car, I rendered maybe 20 different car crops so, there's plenty variants for me to choose from. I might do some more, though, these are all the same car model, it's like the old Porche Challenge game on the PS1 at the moment, and that was never that great either!

Cheers!
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: jo on May 12, 2013, 08:50:12 PM
I agree with Matt, the sky is excellent :-).
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: mhaze on May 13, 2013, 04:30:42 AM
Great image dandelO good to have you back.
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: Hannes on May 13, 2013, 04:34:30 AM
Please tell us something about this incredible sky. Is this really made in TG? If so, how on earth did you do that???
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: dandelO on May 13, 2013, 06:57:48 AM
Jon, Matt, everyone.
I'm going to have to let you all down. The clouds are a photo. Damn! I've even let myself down! :D
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: Dune on May 13, 2013, 11:11:02 AM
Go and stand in the corner then!  >:( ....................  ;)
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: dandelO on May 13, 2013, 12:37:24 PM
By any means necessary, Ulco!
Doing some cool, non-landscape TG experiments now, and not a photo in sight so, no corner for me at the moment.
I think I have the render bug back in full(fool?) effect. Spent so long rendering music recently, I forgot how much fun was to be had doing visuals. Back for the meantime, anyway...
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: Dune on May 13, 2013, 02:02:45 PM
That's what I like to hear!
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: Zairyn Arsyn on May 13, 2013, 06:53:57 PM
damn!  ;D
i was thinking there was something fishy about those clouds.
i was going to say "those clouds look too real to be terragen" i but i didnt.

Quote from: dandelO on May 13, 2013, 06:57:48 AM
I'm going to have to let you all down. The clouds are a photo. Damn! I've even let myself down! :D
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: dandelO on May 13, 2013, 08:14:53 PM
Heehee!
Well, I did wonder how long it would take until someone either asked for a sky clip or, cried "J'accuse!"
To be honest, it was no big surprise that it turned out to be Matt who seemed to smell the aromatic fish first!

I think I'll take it as a compliment that anyone thought I might be that good at all! ;D
It is, indeed, a lovely sky though, eh? I've got loads of sky photos that have been too good to let pass by on the wind. Say one thing about about Scotland, say it's always f*@?ing cloudy! :D
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: dandelO on May 13, 2013, 08:20:22 PM
Quote from: dandelO on May 13, 2013, 06:57:48 AM
Jon, Matt, everyone.
I' going to have to let you all down. The clouds are a photo. Damn! I'e even let myself down! :D
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: dandelO on May 13, 2013, 08:42:39 PM
Quote from: dandelO on May 13, 2013, 06:57:48 AM
***Jon***, Matt, everyone.
I'm going to have to let you all down. The clouds are a photo. Damn! I've even let myself down! :D

Hannes: I'm sorry, I mistook your name in your post for 'Hetzen', which is why I wrote 'Jon' in my reply. :/

Jo: I'm sorry, I mistook your name for 'Jon', which is why I wrote that in my reply. :/

That's ^^ my stories and I'm sticking to it/them! ?¿?
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: Bjur on May 14, 2013, 02:01:19 AM
Great scene.

Btw., node tree isn't newb friendly.. (http://www.gif-paradies.de/gifs/avatare/fun/fun_0098.gif) (http://www.gif-paradies.de)

Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: choronr on May 14, 2013, 02:32:02 AM
Notwithstanding the sky photo, this work fires enthusiasm ...so good to have you back.
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: TheBadger on May 14, 2013, 03:57:49 AM
DandelO,
Just put the music to an animation  ;)

Bjur,
I dont feel like node trees ever become friendly :(
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: efflux on May 29, 2013, 01:29:13 PM
Very nice work. One thing I would say though is that the background is stealing the show. the sky and cliffs are great. Your eye is directed to that gap. To counter this you need to make the cars really stand out. Have one closer and maybe brighter colour otr something with a different POV. The background is really well sorted yet you need to almost forget about it now and get the cars as focus.
Title: Re: Speed trap
Post by: dandelO on June 05, 2013, 09:59:37 AM
Something regarding the overly-reflective looking car paint... The reflectivity isn't actually all that over the top, what is making it appear so is a fractal shader the same colour as the sand, after the reflective shader. I think I should have masked out the reflectivity by the invert of the fractal-dirt node, instead of simply adding the fractal to the bodywork on top of the reflectivity as it is still clearly showing through the fractal... No update yet, just something I realised when thinking about it.