A flower or two has finally tried to bloom hereabouts, but snow fell yesterday and some persisted in the shadows all day today.
Needed to see a sunnier place.
plants - Walli, Ulco, TheBadger, Chris Stein, Mandrake, Jochen Meyer, xfrog
I really like this. The only thing that kinda bugs me is the brightness of the fake stones. IMO. :)
Lichens look great! the brush (brambles?) look fantastic too.
Nice render.
Thanks for using the shrooms. Hope they did not abuse your ram too much?
Agree with Yossam.
A great one! Wonder how come non of my renders are this sharp >:(
Excellent! The lichen on the rocks is particularly good.
8) Nicely composited plant life.
Very good details and sharpness here. These small places in nature can yield some very good ideas.
excellent stuff!
love the 'shrooms!
lots of great crisp detail here!
white stones a bit too bright maybe... but only maybe, could be camera settings!
:)
J
Thanks for all comments.
I expect I'll make another render of the stony area and tone down the "marble" fragments. Really I didn't intend them up to be so bright, it's something in my stone network that is boosting my chosen colors, but I left them white because they reminded me, not really of marble, but of the white quartz litter you're supposed to look for when prospecting for the mother load.
I wish I could take credit for the lichen but I retiled/up-sized a bark image texture from Mandrake's dead branch model and it happens to uv map quite well to Jochen Meyers dead tree.
The sharpness is probably due to the pixel filter and render settings (26 hours to render on my old intel quad Q6600 :
Pixel filter - Catmull-Rom sharp
Detail 1
AA 16
GI detail 5 quality 6 radius 8
Occlusion weight 1.3
Bounce 1.3
Gamma correction 1.8
Contrast .25
You can really tell the high detail settings, it's very photoreal in that respect. There is one thing that occurred to me, there's a 'stripiness' in the upper left corner, vertical banding. If you're going to attack this again, have a look what that could be. It's worth it, that's for sure!
Dune : Thanks for pointing that banding out.
I recently moved my monitor to a higher position. Everything on my monitor now looks a bit darker from my new lower view angle. I must say I didn't even see any vertical banding in the shadow area in the upper left until I actually stood up and looked down at my screen.
I'm in the middle of a re-render and the preliminary pass for the upper left buckets is done. Interestingly there is no banding visible at this point, although I didn't change anything but the shaders for my largest size fake rocks.
So it looks like I will be in suspense to see if banding is going to re-appear (I'm guessing it will) after Terragen applies the final GI surface detail in the last minutes of the render.
Looks nice!
Not sure but the banding looks like a straight line of the plant distribution.
Kadri : Not sure yet, adjusting levels on the image certainly brings out the banding in the heavy shadow area. Perhaps Jitter and soft shadow related ? soft shadow samples are at 11 on this.
Also I had some odd grid like patterns in the underlying terrain in some of early stages of this image, but thought they were gone.
Yes could be something like that too but is there a line like pattern on the ground and slope kind of distribution of the plants?
The close-up composition is very well done. The render settings certainly deliver a strong and detailed scene. I really like this image. The only thing that detracts my eye is the dark denseness of the shadows. I keep trying to see 'deeper' into the shadow detail. Perhaps some post work will bring that out if you think it would add to your concept. Once again, this is a fine render and lovely concept, I hope we'll see more of this type of theme.
Kadri : I'm using only a power fractal for plant distribution. But this test shows the banding is not related to any populations.
I disabled all plants and rendered only the ground in this test. As I watched the render Banding definitely appears just during the last seconds of the render during the application of the GI surface pass. On the left is the render when it finishes the last bucket and the timer stops counting. On the right is 20 seconds later when the last GI is applied.
zaxxon : Thanks, I'll experiment with the darkness of the shadows. I think you're right. It's okay if they are dark but ideally some detail should be there if you try to see deeper.
I had this same issue with one of my renders. It is almost like a grid to my eyes (my eyes are old). Mine was in some fake stone shaders with image maps applied. Thought I was seeing things at first. :o
It's in the terrain for sure, and the plants follow those lines, kind of, and it's exagerated by GISD. Maybe due to a fractal warp shader that causes a kind of erosionlike bands? Or one insignificant seeming PF set with stretched Y?
I was just posting something like Ulco said.
GISD sometimes exaggerates parts that are in shadows -cracks,edges- more then i would like to.
I would go closer to the ground and to that part to see what is going on and change the sun position too maybe.
But it could still be also related to the render engine picking more then one condition and exaggerating all of it.
Curious what is going on.
Have you tried it with a different sun position?
Thanks for the suggestions - this is starting to feel like a "bad seed" kind of problem.
I'm doing many, many tests now, changing one variable at a time. Have taken out all plants, all fake stones, and taken out all surface group shaders except the base color. This leaves only the terrain block . It uses only the default nodes, but with another seed and a smaller displacement value and little different simple shape .
Even with only the basic terrain enabled, the banding still appears at GI phase. I've run about 30 different variables so far.... like sun position, ambient occlusion instead of global illumination, GI levels, gamma, fall off, occ weight, ray detail, camera lens fov, prepass padding, etc.,etc.
Will report my results when I come to some useful conclusions.
Interesting. Have you tried it with GISD off too?
Oh yes, GISD off entirely is the easiest work around. With GISD off there is simply no banding. I could render with GISD off and then use that to comp in the shadow areas. Or better, I can use GISD and do the render using Narrow Cubic which does not produce the bands.
Some preliminary findings -
1. A very small compute terrain patch size (0.01) can minimize the appearance of the bands. Tends to make them resemble cracks.
2. A very small Radius in GISD such as 3 or 4 pixels reduces the bands but this is in my opinion equivalent to just slowly turning off GISD. I assume a radius of 0 would mean effectively no GISD.
3. Using all setting the same except the pixel filter method :
The Catmull-Rom sharp pixel filter has a banding problem
The Mitchell Netrivali pixel filter has a banding problem but bands will be in new spots
The Narrow Cubic pixel filter has little or no banding
The Cubic B-spline soft pixel filter has minimal bands
These images have the fake stones tuned back on and all used the same very small gradient patch size so the banding is already quite minimized.
Great presentation. My taste says Narrow Cubic looks the best.
Interesting that the pixel filters changes the appearance in that way.
Maybe time for Planetside to say something.
Maybe there is something we don't see.
Not sure of course but curious if this belongs kinda a little in the "Bug" area ?
Have you tried "Microvertex jittering" , "Detail jittering" and "Do ray traced shadows" on and off Fleetwood ?
What kind of terrain is it? Standard powerfractal on a planet or a hightfield?
Kadri : Yes I tried both Microvertex jitter and Detail jittering off with no effect.
I tried turning ray traced shadows off, but it removes almost all shadow so there is not enough shadow area to be a test. It becomes a radically different scene.
The terrain is very much the default scene terrain (just those same four nodes) except the fractal terrain power fractal substitutes a different seed and the fractal warp uses a scale of 500 instead of 1000.
The simple shader is the same size and shape as default but I turned on displacement for it and gave the displacement a smooth step edge profile and a big width. That's it.
I see.
Not much left to try i can think of right now.
Do you still try different things?
Thanks for your suggestions.
I'm still curious to know if the problem is the in terrain fractal itself or if maybe I have corrupted my TGD file. I may try a couple more tests, maybe rebuild the same terrain in a brand new file, not just copy the old file over. But for now planning to tweak a few things and re-render with Narrow Cubic.
I am curious too.
Actually if you could share only the terrain i would like to test it too.
If possible of course. If you don't want no problem of course ;)
Sorry to interrupt.............is the pic attached basically the same thing? It is the default scene with 4 surface layers............that's all.
That also looks like a problem posted a while ago by (forgot the name... Yesmine, maybe) where banding occurred in grass pops. Did you use the GISD in that last file Richard? And what filter? I looks like the same issue.
Yossam : Doesn't look the same. The bands or lines in my render are not regular and change depending on the pixel filter used and also they are in a 25-40 degree slope area. Your regular grid appears like a tiled image.
Kadri : This is the Marble Hill base terrain. I made it by recreating the values by typing in the parameters just to eliminate the possibility of making a copy of a corrupt TGD.
Still has the GI banding. As it is set the crop only takes a couple minutes to finish and show the banding.
Quote from: Dune on April 20, 2014, 03:36:53 AM
That also looks like a problem posted a while ago by (forgot the name... Yesmine, maybe) where banding occurred in grass pops. Did you use the GISD in that last file Richard? And what filter? I looks like the same issue.
What was the solution? Do you remember Ulco?
Quote from: Kadri on April 20, 2014, 08:07:27 AM
Quote from: Dune on April 20, 2014, 03:36:53 AM
That also looks like a problem posted a while ago by (forgot the name... Yesmine, maybe) where banding occurred in grass pops. Did you use the GISD in that last file Richard? And what filter? I looks like the same issue.
What was the solution? Do you remember Ulco?
I think this is the thread. It wasn't exactly solved but had the appearance that the bands were due to displacements in the terrain. ------> http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,17984.0.html (http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,17984.0.html)
I see.
Thanks for the file Fleetwood. Curious what is happening.
GISD is on (default) and the filter is narrow cubic. I'll try the other filters to see if anything changes.
Quote from: yossam on April 20, 2014, 12:46:24 PM
GISD is on (default) and the filter is narrow cubic. I'll try the other filters to see if anything changes.
He tried that on the 2. page Yossam.
Fleetwood i looked at your file.
Not sure but from what i see i think you are too close to the ground (for the scales you use)
and the Warp shader itself or the combination makes real banding on the ground that is not easy to see at first.
If this is normal and only an unfortunate union of the shaders or an error-bug of TG3 i don't know.
Thanks Kadri, that explanation sounds pretty likely. Maybe GISD doesn't like tiny distances.
With my camera position the scope of the preview window has to be bumped with the [ key to allow for close display.
It didn't occur to me that I might need to revise all the terrain scales for a closeup render like this that is confined to only a few meters of Terragen space.
Next time I move the camera in really close I will try fractal scales more appropriate for what the camera takes in or else keep it big and boost my objects by a factor of 10.
Still it is interesting that we see this only now.
I tried it with a default TG3 scene only without the simple shape shader and look what you can see if you get close enough.
That is interesting. Perhaps the equivalent of getting down to polygon level, about one step from seeing "the man behind the curtain" :)
Yeah i actually though about the fundamental elements of terrain in TG3 :)
I have done more test .
I think it is a combination with the "Fractal Warp shader" and the "Multi-scale modulator".
When i searched for the same pattern only using the"Fractal Warp shader" or only the "Multi-scale modulator" i could not see that pattern.
But i have done too many tests to give an accurate TGD file or to say that i am sure.
Quote from: yossam on April 20, 2014, 12:44:39 AM
Sorry to interrupt.............is the pic attached basically the same thing? It is the default scene with 4 surface layers............that's all.
Maybe it is because those same layers are exaggerating the displacement they have already?
I tried it with 4 basic surfaces but could not get a similar pattern.
Can you give more information or the TGD file Yossam?
I know which layer is causing it, I just don't know why. Fleetwood was right. I have a fake stone layer last in the stack. There is a tiled image map applied to the stones. I can adjust the width of the rows by adjusting the size of the image map. I don't remember having this before, or I've never noticed it. ???
Yes that is normal.
I hope Matt or Jo will chime in and shed some light on this.
Yes would be nice to hear what is going on really.
I noticed a similar lattice effect on a model using GISD on only one flat Default Shader.
Also, these nasty errors around edges where GISD is visible against an image map background. Same thing?
Low GI sample quality/High cache detail level. The occlusion weight is very high, which makes the effect very noticable on the teapot.
Zoomed into the lattices, seems to be polygonal.
What's the terrain Patch Size in the ground shots, Kadri? As small as the lattices?
Quote from: dandelO on April 21, 2014, 01:32:22 PM
What's the terrain Patch Size in the ground shots, Kadri? As small as the lattices?
Martin ( hello :) ) i don't remember but i tried it with different values. 1 , 0.1 and i think 0.01 even.
Was mostly the same if i remember correctly. I will have a look tonight ones more.
There was a problem at rendering polygons if you remember.
Maybe that is the same issue you have there and different then the pattern on the landscape?
Then the black outlines of tree objects behind smog comes to my mind.
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,17186.msg166818.html#msg166818
The same?
It's definitely to do with GISD, in my images, at least. Just thought that the lattice patterns could be the same thing I found. The outline of the window renders was still visible in some other situations but was really badly noticeable against a darker area of an image map bg, as you can see. The light, sky area isn't as bad.
Sorry if this isn't related, just thought that it was very similar to the problems apparent in this thread.
Quote from: Kadri on April 21, 2014, 02:20:02 PM
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,17186.msg166818.html#msg166818
The same?
Yup.
Martin here is the TGD file of the same image. You can try it for yourself too.
I tried it before with GISD or GI fully off etc but there was still the pattern.
I think it is a real displacement .
The problem with the object smoothing was a render problem if i remember right.
Even with a very small compute terrain number like 0.001 and smoothing there is a pattern.
Smoothing only makes the pattern very smaller.
It resembles kinda an image map displacement seen from very near and without smoothing
For example change only the "Clumping of variation" to 0.255 in the "Fractal terrain 01" node and see what happens.
This is the same scene only that value different
I would basically change the parameters or the noise flavor or Variation method etc. if i got those patterns.
Maybe with that kind of combination this is normal.
Maybe not. I don't know
I have done more test. Beware that all the things below are in the "I think" category.
* Different Noise flavor or different Variation method still does have -different ?- patterns.
* I thought when we are closer to the ground we will get smooth-kinda surfaces.
But it looks like needles very close with displacement and no Clumping of variation.
* Not sure if there is a pattern (but it looks like it has) without Clumping of variation.
But with Clumping you get a pattern with any "Variation method" or "Noise flavor" .
* Using "Clumping of variation" and "Fractal warp shader" together does get a much apparent and different pattern.
So the joke on the previous page about the fundamentals of terrain doesn't look like a joke so much to me now.
Still curious if this was always so?
The conclusion for me for now is "Don't get too close to the ground and use different scales".
Thank you Kadri for your tests. This is more food for thought.
:)
How is your render going on Fleetwood?
Will we see another version ?
I'm pretty close, I've got a version rendering now .....
:)
Final with revised rocks and gamma level. Ultimately I rendered a separate crop of the upper left shadow portion with GISD set off, and comped that area in to a full Narrow Cubic render (31 hours), in order to avoid artifacts. Even using the Narrow Cubic pixel filter wasn't sufficiently free of banding.
Looks great! I think it turned out beautifully, very nice image and render. The shadows are much more pleasing to my eye, very nice!
Just beautiful
Almost could reach out and touch ...you've invoked beautiful realism here,
Yes, the comping made it a beauty. There's only one patch of striping still visible, but I don't want to spoil your fun ;) (it's in the shadowy part of the trunk under the finger)
I tried if the banding had to do with bucket size, but abandoned due to other things. But I think it's really up to the crew to come up with a solution.
Looks great :)
Quote from: Dune on April 22, 2014, 02:20:15 AM
...
I tried if the banding had to do with bucket size, but abandoned due to other things. ...
I haven't tried it with different bucket sizes because at least the pattern i got
were on the ground and not depending on the look-direction of the camera.
Quote from: Dune on April 22, 2014, 02:20:15 AM
...But I think it's really up to the crew to come up with a solution.
I think so too and had always kinda the "Where is mama-papa ?" feeling of a child at testing.
Seriously i am still curious Ulco ;D
looks amazing ! :)
Thanks for all help and comments.
Quote from: Dune on April 22, 2014, 02:20:15 AM
Yes, the comping made it a beauty. There's only one patch of striping still visible, but I don't want to spoil your fun ;) (it's in the shadowy part of the trunk under the finger)
I tried if the banding had to do with bucket size, but abandoned due to other things. But I think it's really up to the crew to come up with a solution.
I noticed the striping on the trunk shadow, but kept it, telling myself it can be a "special bark fungus pattern" ::).
I think it's being caused by "noise variation" in the Power Fractal combined with very small scales (around 1mm). With Kadri's file I was able to make it happen with just the Power Fractal, without Fractal Warp Shader and without Compute Terrain. But I couldn't reproduce it when I set noise variation to 0.
Unfortunately I think you're just reaching the limits on how far you can zoom into a Power Fractal. I don't know if this is something that can be fixed. But I guess that with smaller numbers for "lead-in scale" you might be able to zoom in closer.
Matt
Thanks Matt.
I wasn't sure if this was something to be fixed or the way Terragen works too.
Good to hear it from you. It is probably one of the things we should know at working.
Thanks for looking into it Matt.
No photos allowed in this section ;)