Next image for the book will be the same area as Iron Age, Atlantic forest and Glacial, but with a different use of land. Winter this time, the archaeologists agreed (luckily). But I have an issue; I want the lower areas to have snow remains, so I used favor depressions (with smoothing), but... with a max height. That max height is very abrupt, no matter how soft I make it, and if I change the heigt changes in coverage are very abrupt and unpredictable. I'm off to experiment more, but has anyone an idea how to make that happen?
This is still a WIP, so it needs much more finesse, like distant woods, fences, etc.
Next.
Looking real imo...love the river/creek effect with the snow..... and the sky in the last clip got me.
The foreground in these is looking fantastic. This has the look of older snow that's beginning to melt a bit. I see no problems with the look of the snow there. Is that what you're referring to?
- Oshyan
I got these nasty blue-grey patches like in test 10, but probably because I set intersection shift to a negative number, and minimum to a positive number (which does work in certain circumstances). Together with the smoothing and max height that caused some trouble you can see at closer inspection.
I think this is what I'm after, only have to shift the path texturing, so it won't flatten were there is this remaining snow (which is not visible, another strange thing). Also have to make a number of younger black alders to make the swampy wood patches denser. And I'm going to crack the ice were the ford is. And lessen the darkness of winter heathland. And add grass objects to the front area, as it's hard to mimic grassy vegetation at this level.
Well you see something I cant see, totally gob smacked...this image could be where I live in the spring. Brilliant.
Thanks. Next iteration, added some fractal warp to the stream and some cracks where these guys passed. Still one nasty patch, lower middle, but I'll clone that away. Now for the fences...
Another great impression of former times!
I will wait for the cracked ford ice -- untill then ... I prefere the ford with less ice on the water.
And the sky! -- Looks great.. you can really feel and smell that there's more snow coming.
hhey.. iis itt mmy kkeybboarrd orr iss itt reallly ccold hhere? ;)
update 6:09pm: ahh the cracked ice came while I was writing...
mhh... I don't know what I'm missing at that ford... I should look at a real one, but I don't know any nearby
Just brainstorming:
Perhaps some little shelfs and chunks of ice because the ice was broken and frozen again, broken again, and, and, and,...
And to the left and right perhaps some more areas wher the darknes of thhe water is shining through, because there are so many other melted areas.
This all looks great. Just one missing thing IMO and that's a lot of wetness on that path, especially around the water crossing. But not just there because all this snow is surely melting and making that path overall pretty muddy, or at least the edges.
- Oshyan
Didn't realize what was bugging me till Oshyan mentioned melt puddles....good call...needs some wet tracks maybe from the dudes as they certainly picked up some water with all that cracking.
Thanks, that's feedback I appreciate.
Here's the total in low res.
Well done, and it no longer looks like here...had a snowfall while I slept and there's 'bout 5 inches and still falling....all ground is quite covered now and I hope it's doing similar out of town as last trip beyond city limits I could still see the ground in far too many places...I really don't want a drought here come summer.
Update of the front section in final res (without soft shadows though). Good enough, IMO, anyway, I don't want to fuss too much before sending of the concept. Maybe they want to change the whole lot >:(
Quote from: Dune on February 07, 2015, 10:28:27 AM
Update of the front section in final res (without soft shadows though). Good enough, IMO, anyway, I don't want to fuss too much before sending of the concept. Maybe they want to change the whole lot >:(
Well this is waaaay better and I thought it was near perfect before...you continue to amaze. And yeah, never send a final Final....they'll always want changes then, been there only once and now they get sketches from me 'till money crosses my palm. I've become it seems more aggressive re: getting paid since I retired...weird that.
Nice progression to this last image. I take it you work overhead on the placement of your pops?
What do you mean by the latter sentence, Bob? I just make masks in PS for different habitats, and add some fractal for finer distribution in TG.
Your attention to detail is staggering and inspiring. I love the atmosphere that the sky brings and the the way you've created the muddy, grubby feel of melting snow and ice.
Quote from: choronr on February 07, 2015, 03:06:03 PM
Nice progression to this last image. I take it you work overhead on the placement of your pops?
Actually Ulco I have no idea what I was on about there; it must have been before my brain was connecting with my fingers and they were not communicating correctly...I seem to have been rambling....sorry 'bout that. I really should wait till the coffee has taken effect before trying to communicate, heh heh heh.
and I quoted Bob instead of Ulco...done it again...need more caffine....
Quote from: Dune on February 08, 2015, 03:33:52 AM
What do you mean by the latter sentence, Bob? I just make masks in PS for different habitats, and add some fractal for finer distribution in TG.
I meant did you use an orthographic camera view in the preview window and use the Painted shader to paint the area where you wanted populations.
I guess I already anwered that; I make a set of masks in a layered PS file (above the terrain heightmap).
Thank you.
Brilliant, inspiring work Ulco. The detail is extraordinary and lends tremendous believability to the images. Tremendous!
Thanks, Doug.
Update of the inhabited area, and a pig boy :o
Impressive details here. The smoke turned out nicely as well as everything else. I find the term 'Pig Boy' kind of funny; never heard that one before.
Every scene could use a Pig Boy, found that a humourous term as well...
Something else than a cowboy for a change ;)
I should be aware of the term as pig barns are proliferate around here...summer is a smelly time in parts of Manitoba growing pigs for the oriental market....go figger.
Are the pigs a special breed? they seem to have very long legs!
Glad to learn about the Pig Boys; but, be wary of the Sheep Boys.
They must be high endurance pigs to be able to outrun the hungry wolves with those legs :)
I love it when you put life into your sweeping scenes, Ulco. At your high resolution there is always something to discover.
Yes, and did you find the moose?
The pigs are kind of like the Iberian pig, black/grey patched and high-legged, not the cosy mudloving fatso's of today.
Interesting - I learn something new everyday.
Quote from: choronr on February 10, 2015, 02:47:48 PM
Glad to learn about the Pig Boys; but, be wary of the Sheep Boys.
Welsh/Scots Sheep Boys, hee hee hee
My final render came back from Pixelplow. Always exciting, and luckily, they're só fast! A few hours, while my i7 would have taken 24 hrs or so. Recommended (again)!
But, I saw the artifacts came back that I complained about earlier, and I now get the impression they 'grow worse' with higher detail/AA settings. I didn't see them this clear/large when I made my last crop tests, but the farm settings were a bit higher (0.8 AA8).
The culprit is a snow layer with displacement intersection or favor depressions, but also a height constraint. I needed the latter for snow remains in the lower region only, but I think that's making TG compute colors wrongly.
Does anyone have a clue about this behavior and what to do about it? I might have to clone the grey patches out or rerun the low part with different settings, but I hate to fiddle like that. And snow ill be quite different.
could it be the amount of intersect on the favour depressions tab? I had something similar, oddly enough orking with snow. Never did totally solve it completely but the intersect amount was part of it.
I think so, but I needed the settings I used to get the right coverage of snowy depressions. I have to experiment with this. But the problem is also that you don't see the patches in the preview!
Hi Ulco,
There's a piece of unfinished documentation in the alpha forums which deals with the intersect underlying feature.
Depending on which mode you use it's probably something to do with intersection zone vs softness.
It's a difficult feature to use, but I guess I won't need to tell you that.
Cheers,
Martin
Yeah, tell me about it. I'll have a look, thanks Martin.
I have found that using the displacement intersection and smoothing does not work. I have used larger scale/s (lead in, scale, smallest scale) to get the smooth effect when using the displacement intersection. The problem is, the values are always different. You have to try and render, try and render. By the time I have it right, I am getting tired of looking at the render.
I cloned it out partially. Some parts are not too bad at all, looks like ice, and it's marshy, so it's fine. See what the client thinks.... up to the next; 1345 AD and 1650 AD...
that's a right bugger when those blue patches appear, had the same trouble some months ago
Further to this I found last night that Contrast in any PF involved has an impact on those incidents.
Thanks, Bobby. Maybe it's something to do with the snow shaders I added as well (reflectivity, luminosity, translucency), as it seems to be mainly in the bottom half, though that's also the lowest area. Something to dive into, some day.
I like the distribution here a lot. Not sure why you guys are bothered by the color thing though. Does not bother me at all here.
That's good to hear, Michael. I'm fine with it after all, but it's not supposed to happen!
Quote from: Dune on March 02, 2015, 10:48:02 AM
That's good to hear, Michael. I'm fine with it after all, but it's not supposed to happen!
heh, a happy accident then...my old boss at a screen printer would say every time I proofed a bad screen,"Save that, it's an original!"...sorta just happened here eh.
Ulco, if you have a scene I can look at, I'll try to diagnose the weird grey patches.
Matt
Thanks, Matt. I'll try eliminating all unneccessary stuff from this scene. But it often happens with certain settings of displacement intersection.
wow i missed this one beautiful :)