Gimme a lil' C & C. :D
Soft shadows maybe.............it will make your render time increase. IMO the shadows of the trees midground are a little too sharp for the atmosphere. ;)
Quote from: yossam on May 02, 2015, 06:23:22 PM
Soft shadows maybe.............it will make your render time increase. IMO the shadows of the trees midground are a little too sharp for the atmosphere. ;)
I hear what you're saying, Yossam. I tried one render with soft shadows and it really changed the way the fog looked (for the worse, IMO). Actually, I've removed shadows on most of the objects in the mid ground, so it's still the landscape shadows. Maybe I'll try one more with lesser settings.
I'm gonna send you an IM for something I want you to try, just a thought. ;D
Do you have clouds in the sky or just the fog? If no then put a really thin 2D cirrus in at nearly full coverage as a diffusor...?
Excellent setup and mood. Something that might do it good, IMHO, is to strengthen the light on midground a bit, give it a bit more contrast between light and dark areas. Just a teeny weeny bit, a tad, a wee drappie. And I get the tendency to shift the camera ~2 m to the left, to get the big tree a bit more to the right, I think it's júst off balance.
Great mood and light... Looking forward to see where this goes!
:)
J
Good work but ditto Dune's remarks
Hmm. Some are saying soft shadows and some are saying more contrast. Can I be all things to all people? Perhaps. Here's one with Yossam's GI settings and Dune's more light (although I decreased the strength on surfaces by an equivalent amount: 20%). However, I stripped the shadows cast by all remaining mid-ground objects.
Moved the camera to the left a bit, too.
In regards to having light and rain, this is actually a quite common effect where I'm from. We call them "sun showers" where it is actually pouring rain due to a low hanging cloud passing by and still the sun is out due to the extreme angle of the sun at these northern latitudes.
Well I think you've nailed it with this one...looks very like the Pembina Hills(Manitoba Canada) around here in a Summer Sun Shower...
Soft shadows and contrast go very well together. Your update is better, but fractionally, to be honest. I was more thinking like this example (though not a proper landscape, but the only example I could find). But it's your image, of course, and it's only my opinion.
Well, you did say "Just a teeny weeny bit, a tad, a wee drappie." I guess I misinterpreted... :o
If you have some specific values or percentages of certain settings, I'll give 'em a go.
Gonna try one with high soft shadows overnight.
The latest iteration...
Yeah, I stated it very carefully ;) I don't know any values, but maybe if you increase sun's strength from 5(?) to 7 or 8 you get more contrast and light on that lighted patch of land? It also depends on how thick your clouds (for the shadows) are, so it's a mix of values.
What sometimes also works is project a soft round dot (image map) from the area where you want light towards the sun, camera FOV a very low angle (1-5), works like a spotlight if you inversely mask clouds by it.
Quote from: Dune on May 04, 2015, 08:08:39 AM
Yeah, I stated it very carefully ;) I don't know any values, but maybe if you increase sun's strength from 5(?) to 7 or 8 you get more contrast and light on that lighted patch of land? It also depends on how thick your clouds (for the shadows) are, so it's a mix of values.
What sometimes also works is project a soft round dot (image map) from the area where you want light towards the sun, camera FOV a very low angle (1-5), works like a spotlight if you inversely mask clouds by it.
Crazy, I'd like to see a .tgc of this type of setup(the blurred dot bit)...sorta get it but need to see what it looks like in terragen terms...
I think I showed it before, quite a while ago, but here's the principle. You need to make a black square with a white patch, can be quite small of course.
The results for the overnight version. It's different. I don't know if it's better or not. Also, I put the shadows back in for this one. Gonna try your little trick for the next.
Quote from: Dune on May 04, 2015, 12:01:54 PM
I think I showed it before, quite a while ago, but here's the principle. You need to make a black square with a white patch, can be quite small of course.
Indeed you did Ulco, I totally recognise that, I just never saved the image. Thanks for indulging the old pensioner...heh heh heh
Tried Ulco's little trick. Couldn't get it to work. Must be another check box or something I'm missing.
Quote from: Upon Infinity on May 04, 2015, 04:14:41 PM
Tried Ulco's little trick. Couldn't get it to work. Must be another check box or something I'm missing.
Have you got the projection camera on the ground where you want the light to happen and pointed at the sky area where you want the light coming from?
Yep. I tried it in 2 different scenes. This is the default one. Logically, it should work but I don't understand how terragen masks with black / white images.
Quote from: Upon Infinity on May 04, 2015, 04:14:41 PM
Tried Ulco's little trick. Couldn't get it to work. Must be another check box or something I'm missing.
Hadn't tried it last post...seems I'm missing that certain something as well.. ...
Have you tried Richard's cool trick
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,18788.new.html#new
Maybe the FOV is too small? Or you should try a harder dot... or harden it through color adjust. Angle needs to quite exactly like the sun's. You can test whether it's working by setting it to repeat; blowing lots of holes in the clouds. Richard's trick is harder as you need to get the simple shape exactly under the sun. I tried using a rotated simple shape, but failed to get it working. A bit strange, as the fumarole rotation of a simple shape worked. Life is complicated ???
Tried a harder dot. Tried a wider FOV. Definitely doesn't work with default values. I'm missing either another shader or a checkbox or something. These are the kind of standard operations PS needs to make a lot easier to perform.
"Digging" a hole in the cloud layer is a great suggestion by Ulco. I do that too sometimes and it takes a bit of fiddling to get the hole in the right position. This is how I usually do it:
1) create a new camera and have it look down on your landscape from great altitude
2) disconnect the current density shader of the cloud layer and
3) replace it with a distribution shader
4) create a simple shape shader (texture position) of a soft circle, set size to the size of the hole, like 500x500 meters for starters.
5) use the simple shape shader as blend shader and choose to invert it.
Now there are 2 ways to find the spot of where to put the hole in the cloud layer. Do it by math (sun angle etc.) or by eye/fiddling.
Math is mystery to me, so I choose the fiddling :)
6) From your new camera high up right-click in the terrain where the sun needs to shine directly on the surface and righ-click to choose "copy coordinates"
7) paste the coordinates in the simple shape shader
8) re-render preview and see that hole in cloud is away from that position, as the sun has an angle and direction.
The lower the angle the further it's off.
9) move the simple shape shader in the direction of the sun's direction
10) if the hole isn't well visible then set cloud density and edge sharpness to 1 and make the simple shape shader hard-edged.
11) Once you have pin-pointed the coordinates then re-connect the density shader for your clouds and don't forget to change back your cloud density and edge sharpness settings if you did change those.
12) Use the simple shape shader as blend-shader for your cloud density shader.
13) If the hole is too harsh then make the shape softer
14) If you like some variation, instead of a clean clear hole (omg, ambiguous talke here), then reduce the white of the simple shape to a grey value, like 50% grey.
A lot of steps, but actually not so much work!
You can also do this in an empty scene to make it easier.
Then copy/paste the sun from your project into the empty scene and repeat the process.
Instead, then try to make the sun shine directly at the origin 0,0,0 and measure how far the simple shape shader deviates from those coordinates.
Use those values to add/subtract them from the coordinates you measured in the 3D preview from your project file.
Btw...to control direct/indirect light etc. etc. it might be a lot easier to export your render into render elements and combine those in Photoshop into a final render.
You can then change the components which make up a render separately, which is quite powerful.
No need to re-render if you need stronger GI on surfaces. Just increase the exposure of the indirect lighting on surfaces pass and you will have the same result, for free!
You did use another camera? Well, here's a quick setup. You have to load again, can't upload a tif.
Looks like I was missing the colour adjust shader. What does that one do?
Anyway, it works. So, thanks!
Good that it works. Color adjust is just to harden the color; more white if needed.
cool, thanks Ulco.. ...
I still can't reproduce the results from a new file unless I copy and paste from Dune's. There must be a checkbox or some stupid setting I'm missing somewhere. I've compared all the settings side by side and still can't find it.
Sometimes, this program really frustrates me. >:(
T-U, does your method not use Through Camera projection? If not, I think you're making it harder on yourself than it needs to be (to find the right spot). Ah, I guess it's because you use an SSS instead of projected image map. I can see why you might do that, but using Through Camera really makes it easier IMO, and once you have the base circular masking image, you can somewhat adjust its size using color adjust, in fact if you made it intentionally a softer gradient (of the circle), you could adjust it quite a bit that way, both in size and in sharpness.
- Oshyan
Upon Infinity, there are a couple of problems with your file. Some that are less obvious and it's understandable you didn't know about them. But the main problem is that the camera you have the image connected to is pointing directly at the horizon. It's making a hole right near the horizon that is just visible over the mountains in my test here with a simple gradient circle image. I'm not sure what you used for a mask image, so it may be less visible for you. If you instead connect your Render Camera to the Image Map Shader camera input, the hole will be higher up and more visible (using the same image). That being said *neither* camera is pointing *at the sun*, which is necessary to get the "sun shining through a hole" thing you're aiming for. So really what you want to do is take Camera 01 and aim it at the sun and continue using it as your camera input to the Image Map Shader.
The greater problem in this particular case is a combination of you using the Mask Shader input on the *Density Shader* for the clouds and using the Coverage Adjust *in the cloud layer*. The Coverage Adjust (in the cloud layer, specifically) is basically an operation that happens after the initial density input is determined, so increasing it takes density up and beyond the density that comes from the Density Shader. In particular, in the case of the "0/blank/no coverage" value that the density shader input would have in a blank area of the noise shader (i.e. between cloud shapes) it essentially puts cloud there because it's adding a blanket amount of density across the whole cloud layer, to all parts of it. That's why you have cloud *everywhere* (which may be what you want) and why masking the *density shader* directly is only getting you an area of "different cloud shading" (less density), rather than an *actual hole*. The hole only exists as a "blank spot" in the *density shader*, once you increase coverage in the cloud layer it adds density/"coverage" in that blank area; it's still less dense (due to the hole) than if you didn't mask at all, but it doesn't work as you'd expect. If you *weren't* increasing Coverage Adjust in the Cloud Layer, then it would make an actual hole with the setup you already have.
So there are a couple of ways to fix this. First, you can try using Coverage Adjust on the Density tab of your Density Fractal node *instead* of Coverage Adjust in the Cloud Layer (which you should set to 0). This is the preferred and recommended approach in many cases because it behaves more as you would expect, if you're just using a single Density Shader and you want it to *control the density of your cloud layer exclusively*. This is the simplest setup, really. However, setting Coverage Adjust in the density shader instead of in the Cloud Layer *will* affect the look of your clouds because it applies the Coverage Adjust in the noise generating Density Shader rather than as a sort of overall effect on top of the density shader (and clamping and other settings can affect this too).
So if you want to keep the look of your clouds exactly as they are, the other option is to use the Final Density Modulator input in the Cloud Layer. *That* input probably does what you are actually expecting the Mask input of your Density Shader to do. Since the cloud layer's other settings operate *on* the Density Shader and can basically change it in potentially dramatic ways, the best way to ensure you're directly affecting the "final" density is to use this input - "Final Density Modulator".
*Phew*. I know that's a lot, but hopefully it's helpful and you've learned a bit more about how things work. I think the key take-away here is not the specifics of how to work with cloud layers, it's that when you're experimenting with a technique someone else suggests and demonstrates, then when you try to adapt it, start out with it being how they describe it and make sure it works *that* way first, and then change settings *one by one* to get the result you want. I think if you had been able to successfully take that approach you would have noticed when the Coverage Adjust changed things and messed up the result and would have found it naturally on your own rather than getting confused, as you understandably did (since this effect is otherwise non-obvious). If you try to adjust other non-essential settings (like Coverage Adjust) to your taste before getting the fundamental effect to work, then you don't really know how those settings might affect what you're trying to achieve (based on someone else's example).
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on May 05, 2015, 04:30:18 PM
The greater problem in this particular case is a combination of you using the Mask Shader input on the *Density Shader* for the clouds and using the Coverage Adjust *in the cloud layer*. The Coverage Adjust (in the cloud layer, specifically) is basically an operation that happens after the initial density input is determined, so increasing it takes density up and beyond the density that comes from the Density Shader. In particular, in the case of the "0/blank/no coverage" value that the density shader input would have in a blank area of the noise shader (i.e. between cloud shapes) it essentially puts cloud there because it's adding a blanket amount of density across the whole cloud layer, to all parts of it. That's why you have cloud *everywhere* (which may be what you want) and why masking the *density shader* directly is only getting you an area of "different cloud shading" (less density), rather than an *actual hole*. The hole only exists as a "blank spot" in the *density shader*, once you increase coverage in the cloud layer it adds density/"coverage" in that blank area; it's still less dense (due to the hole) than if you didn't mask at all, but it doesn't work as you'd expect. If you *weren't* increasing Coverage Adjust in the Cloud Layer, then it would make an actual hole with the setup you already have.
So there are a couple of ways to fix this. First, you can try using Coverage Adjust on the Density tab of your Density Fractal node *instead* of Coverage Adjust in the Cloud Layer (which you should set to 0). This is the preferred and recommended approach in many cases because it behaves more as you would expect, if you're just using a single Density Shader and you want it to *control the density of your cloud layer exclusively*. This is the simplest setup, really. However, setting Coverage Adjust in the density shader instead of in the Cloud Layer *will* affect the look of your clouds because it applies the Coverage Adjust in the noise generating Density Shader rather than as a sort of overall effect on top of the density shader (and clamping and other settings can affect this too).
Yeah, that fixed it. Thanks! I was copying and pasting the nodes into a new file and wondering why it only worked when I included the cloud shader itself. Even then, I still couldn't find the flaw. And after so many attempts, I was getting exasperated.
And yes,
to get the effect I was originally after, I need to point it at the sun. However, that was only secondary to my understanding the logic of how the operation worked. After that, applying it the way I want should be easy.
And the last one (at least until I get more inspiration for it) brings back the shadows for the mid-ground objects along with Dune's hole in the cloud trick.
In any event, I've a few dozen more scenes to work on.
I think that was what Dune was talkin aboot...looks a lot better all round now I think.
Right, this is it!
Pointing at the sun is paramount, that's why I had the camera and sun settings in my screendump.
Last one is very nice
Quote from: Oshyan on May 05, 2015, 03:44:15 PM
T-U, does your method not use Through Camera projection? If not, I think you're making it harder on yourself than it needs to be (to find the right spot). Ah, I guess it's because you use an SSS instead of projected image map. I can see why you might do that, but using Through Camera really makes it easier IMO, and once you have the base circular masking image, you can somewhat adjust its size using color adjust, in fact if you made it intentionally a softer gradient (of the circle), you could adjust it quite a bit that way, both in size and in sharpness.
- Oshyan
Yes/No/Neither.
I use a SSS to 'cut' out a piece of the cloud density shader. So there's no projection in that sense.
It just takes a bit of fiddling to get the SSS in the right position to get the sunlight shine on the right place through the clouds.
Don't let the number of bullets scare anyone off. I could have halved the number, but chose to keep it detailled.
If you do it in an empty scene then it's about 5 minutes work to figure out the X/Z difference of the SSS and the hole in the cloud.