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General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: Dune on October 07, 2014, 02:27:56 AM

Title: Winding river
Post by: Dune on October 07, 2014, 02:27:56 AM
Toying about with warped SSS's.
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: Kadri on October 07, 2014, 02:37:46 AM
Looks nice Ulco.
I like the way the strata looks too.
And what is that thing on the right side near the river by the way?
Deliberate?
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: choronr on October 07, 2014, 02:43:09 AM
From left to right; top to bottom, details are abound. And, the colors are striking. Very good Ulco.
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: Oshyan on October 07, 2014, 02:46:26 AM
Good lord, those strata layers are phenomenal. The whole thing looks rather under-antialiased (or over-sharpened), but it's an amazing-looking scene. I'd love to see a higher quality render.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: mhaze on October 07, 2014, 04:14:11 AM
Excellent rocks and that strata...Wow!.  Sadly though the rocks on the valley bet look like spots they seem too uniform in size and distribution.
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: Tangled-Universe on October 07, 2014, 04:43:19 AM
That looks quite nice Ulco :)

I suppose that for detaling the strata you use one of the methods from the "rectangular noise" thread?
It looks like I can recognise some of the squarish shapes there.

I think it's a nice extra touch to the strata, but the effect is a bit too strong to my taste?

If you're interested I can show you some of my own results for getting rectangular'ish noise.
It's also based on conditional scalars, but I use more "octaves" for base noise, then a simple single fractal warp at proper scale, then stretch twice separately (for X and Z) and recombine using merge difference. Something like that from the top of my head.
What you then have is a basic "simple" noise with not too much detail and complexity and it's in colour so you can use a displacement shader to use this noise for displacement (obvious to you, but I describe this for others)

With this basic noise you can add additional transform input nodes to resize the noise to create additional "octaves".
I did this up to 5-6 layers.

Key things are:
1) The diffrent scales for voronoi in the base noise functions, they should be different, but not too much.
2) Do not displace too much
3) Determine ideal displacement for main noise function, then if you resize noise with transform input then rescale the displacement accordingly.

I may add my precise methods and source files later this year, as they are now part of a freelance job I'm working on.

Cheers,
Martin
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: ndeewolfwood on October 07, 2014, 05:51:45 AM
Excellent setup...don't stop here with this one. Some tweak and it could be perfect.
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: Dune on October 07, 2014, 07:38:30 AM
Here's the same, but unsharpened. I admit I threw the basic Irfanview sharpening over it, not very thoughtful.
@Kadri: the thing is a loose huge boulder, broken off the hard ground layers, but I also admit it looks like 'something'.
@Martin: I'd like to see what you came up with, but this is not really rectangular noise from the thread, though I admit (again) I've been playing with that as well. This is just a hard layer made by a stretched hard PF, which is displaced a bit + displacement by a smallscale strata shader + a 'sort of rectangular noise' by combining one PF voronoi with its rotated self.

The valley was made with a soft warped simple shape, displaced up 3 times into soft strata by using 3 color adjust shaders, each warped for additional bending, etc. The river itself is taken from the valley, through a color adjust to make him riverwide, and warped extra again for the winding.
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: Tangled-Universe on October 07, 2014, 07:43:53 AM
Thanks for sharing this method Ulco, very interesting way to create your terrain and strata :)
I forgot to say I like your lighting quite much. Shadows are nicely detailed, yet dark "enough".
It's very subjective matter, but I like it (here).

I'll post something in the rectangular noise thread as it's more appropriate to do it there.
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: Kadri on October 07, 2014, 07:51:09 AM
Thanks for the explanation Ulco.
Nice technique to make the landscape.
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: DannyG on October 07, 2014, 09:12:02 AM
Yep... topshelf work Ulco.
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: TheBadger on October 07, 2014, 04:10:29 PM
Very interesting Ulco.  :) Really like the little river too.
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: zaxxon on October 07, 2014, 05:46:45 PM
That's a winding river I'd like to walk along. Hopefully you'll treat this one as more than an experiment, definitely floats my boat!  Nice vegetation and lighting, this really deserves some further work. Very nice!
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: inkydigit on October 07, 2014, 06:35:08 PM
Beautiful terrain work and lovely lighting too! 8)
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: folder on October 07, 2014, 09:10:21 PM
Great work Ulco

But your explanation was over my head and I admit it how do you displace a SSS by using the color adjust shader and are you warping by using the warp shader. Sorry if this is a basic question

David

Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: Dune on October 08, 2014, 12:50:16 AM
Well, you use the warped SSS as a mask for the basic (first node) terrain colors, and feed that through a displacement shader to raise the sides of the soft valley (so a wide river area is left flat). Then you can select a range of the same warped terrain colors with color adjust shaders and displace more (for some sort of ravines). And use stretched (XZ) PF for the strata.
The river follows the same basic warp, but has an additional warper after it for the 'sinuses'.
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: otakar on October 08, 2014, 12:04:04 PM
Killer strata!
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: folder on October 08, 2014, 12:35:22 PM
Ulco

Thank you for the reply -generous as always

David
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: folder on October 08, 2014, 10:25:22 PM
 "Well, you use the warped SSS as a mask for the basic (first node) terrain colors, and feed that through a displacement shader to raise the sides of the soft valley (so a wide river area is left flat). Then you can select a range of the same warped terrain colors with color adjust shaders and displace more (for some sort of ravines). And use stretched (XZ) PF for the strata.
The river follows the same basic warp, but has an additional warper after it for the 'sinuses'."
but i
Ulco as i said thanks for the reply but i am a bit of a visual person can you please provide a tgd example so that i can experiment  again thanks

david
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: Dune on October 09, 2014, 02:39:52 AM
This is what I'll do for the time being. TG crashed just before saving, but I managed a screenshot. No inclination to set it up again. The colors in color adjust are say 0.2-0.24 and 0.3-0.35, the color in the fractal terrain reduced to 2 to avoid spikes. Color adjust to river is black at 0.99. Upper SSS is 200m wide (X), with smooth step set at 99.5%.
Can you manage with this?
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: folder on October 09, 2014, 09:04:52 AM
yes thanks so much Ulco

david
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: folder on October 11, 2014, 12:21:20 AM
has anyone else tried the setup graciously given by Ulco above i have tried and this is my result

david
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: kaedorg on October 11, 2014, 02:14:03 AM
It seems that you kept a positive value in the displacement shaders

David
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: Dune on October 11, 2014, 02:56:13 AM
Some mistakes, so I made it right for you. Check out the differences...
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: choronr on October 11, 2014, 03:06:26 AM
Just a bystander ...thanks Ulco.
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: mhaze on October 11, 2014, 04:52:28 AM
I made the first one work but had to make some minor changes. The change to the fractal terrain input. ;D
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: folder on October 11, 2014, 06:33:12 AM
thanks Ulco for the correction

david
Title: Re: Winding river
Post by: zaxxon on October 11, 2014, 10:08:47 AM
Thanks Dune!