Hi Gang
I have been inspired by some of the recent canyon renders. I made the following image using a modified version of ProjectX's Procedural canyon shader, my models and I've been playing with some of the voronoi function nodes for some of the wavy rock effects. I'm not entirely happy with the result so far. The stones need changing obviously but I'm unsure of what else to change. I'm thinking of toning down the colours somewhat, but not too much. It sems to lack something, drama, composition, something.
Comments and critiques welcome.
Thanks
Richard
Those displacements, realistic or not, look really cool! ;D
I really like the colours too, only thing I'd change is to tone down the purple shades a little.
Further you could try to roughen the surfaces a little bit more, because the overall look is a little bit too smooth to my taste.
The bridges are a nice touch, works nice with the scene. Great work!
Regards,
Martin
First of all: this is a very interesting image to look at.
However, I think I understand why you're looking for having something else, still.
It is difficult to come by, but maybe it's the ground. The ripples don#t look good, and somehow, there's too much yellow.
Then there's the question of depth. Upwards, the impression of depth is great, thanks to the hanging bridges. But on the ground towards the far away canyon walls, the imression of depth is lost.
If you're looking for more drama, why not have a few floating fog-like bands travel through the canyon, partially blocking sight? Maybe a little bit of vegetation can also help add a sense of scale for the ground?
This is what I could think of for now. Keep it up, as I said, a very interesting image to look at!
Cheers
Frank
I'd point the camera upwards and add some larger boulder-like lateral displacements to the cliff sides for variation. Other than that, it's a very nice image!
I must say I'm surprised at how much use my shader is getting, I thought maybe a maximum of 3 or 5 people would download it :o
I like it the way it is...is unnatural but cool...displacement and colors
Just to add to the confusion.... I think the ripples look good, although they seem to lack a matching displacement(?). I have seen rocks like this. The "purple" is good as it provides some contrast to the yellow. I agree with Frank that the yellow is a bit too strong although mainly just in the foreground.
The top rope bridge seems out of scale... too big for something so far away relative to the lower bridge.... Perhaps you scaled it to fit across the gap? This makes the canyon look a lot lower, reducing the potential drama of the shot.
The displacements on the canyon wall might look unrealistic, but with the added human element of the rope bridge they could quite easily be mysterious carvings. The only other suggestion I can think of is to make the lighting a bit more dramatic.. a good gutsy shadow never goes astray in a deep canyon... and perhaps the odd tree or bush growing out of the odd crack to add some extra scale... or even fake it by making the higher plants deliberately smaller.
Great image all the same :D
I'd add some haze to the ground to get that Myst-like look ,-)
This is very Myst-like. Cool.
Thanks for the feedback guys. I hadn't realised the Myst connection although I can see it now of course. That may be why I have been unhappy with the image, subconsciously I may have seen the similarity and kept trying to get away from it. My Terragen installation seems very flakey at the moment and I'm having trouble completing any renders at all ... I think I may have to wait till the updated version comes out, hopefully that will be more stable .. (please, oh pretty please).
I actually like the weird displacement on the cliff faces, kind of naturalistic but impossible at the same time, also could it be "moon writing" :) The sand is just an image map displacement but I agree about the colour, needs to be muted down somewhat. One of my biggest bugbears are the fake rocks and stones, cant get them to look convincing, they just wont "fit" in the scene properly. I've been trying to use the cracks & gashes shader but it crashes as soon as I connect up the network (or sometimes when I render :( )
If I can get the damn thing to work I'll post some more WIP's later this afternoon.
Richard
Well I decided to take the Canyon off in a slightly different direction and the updated Terragen certainly helped (yea much more stable :) ). I was able to get the cracks & gashes to work although I don't think I completely understand its variables yet. I've posted three versions below, The first is the native render straight out of Terragen, you can see a great many artifacts, holes and spikes. The second is the cleaned up version and the third is with a water plane. The reflections are wrong but I was able to play with the transparency in the foreground quite effectively, its just a layer with an alpha ramp on it.
Let me know what you think.
True to my contrarian nature, I'll chip in and say I liked the first one best.
;D
Really! The last one with the water is nice, too, but I liked the surrealistic air of the first version.
yes me to the first is very Ancient looking
I must say I like the second one better. The first one is very special and all, but I like the second best.
This is great. You've got the stone textures down.
I'd say I liked the first one better, but the water is a nice touch. Something about that first POV was perfect.
Great work.
I'd say the first one is better for colours because they look much richer. Probably partly due to lighting but those rock displacements and colours are very nice. Possibly the purple could be reduced slightly but I'd say that's not a major issue.
The next images have nice larger rock features and the water is cool. One rope bridge is a better idea in my opinion and high up. You want this to look big. The clouds are good and there seems to be a better sense of distance at lower level.
Overall this is very interesting because it's moving TG2 in a different direction with the canyons and cool displacements. I love this sort of stuff.
Hi Gang
Well I think I have nearly finished this one, only a few bits to add to it and the prospect of a weekend long render to get it up to a decent size (lol). I think the tropical water adds dramatic element to the image and the clouds certainly add to the sense of scale. You can still see a few spikes here and there but I'll clone those out in the final version, not worth trying to track down the culprit only to find that its controlling something else I need in the image.
Enjoy
Richard
The water's colour bites my eye - but it keeps the focus within the scene. I like this version most.
I like the transparency effect - postwork or rendered?
I know you didn't necessarily savor the Myst allusion earlier, but I love this look and this reminds me of the game as well as the books.
I still prefer the richer colour combinations in the first image but the terrain in the later ones is better. Artifacts are always a problem. There are various ways to reduce them but it's a compromise. Reducing detail in the terrain by increasing smallest feature size or reducing displacement detail can help. There are some other methods in TG to smooth out overlying displacements but I haven't experimented much. I tend to like to use overlying displacements for detail rather than rely on the terrain fractal alone but it's difficult. Also, I discovered that the alpine fractal is great for gorge like terrains using canyon style functions because it seems to be voronoi style basis. The gorges are all long and hooked up in a network. The trouble is that the alpine fractal slows rendering down a whole lot. Using a straight voronoi noise function graph can work for terrain if you build up lots of other detail. I have used this. It is part of the terrain in my Planet Spinner renders in this forum. The trouble is that larger features tend to look similar since it's not a proper fractal with all it's scale variations.
Keep it up. This is an interesting direction to take things that will get some great results.
Also, here's another thing I would suggest. Don't get bogged down in one idea and from a single POV. Move on and use what you've learnt. Keep moving around the planet or you'll end up with a planet that looks good from one POV. TG2 is not a stage set anymore but that's the beauty. You want something with endless views to explore with tiny features like sand or big like continents. Things that may not even be seen in many renders. In many of my planets there is sand but the renders don't even show it much.
And another point I know of from using Mojoworld. When you create a planet try to keep everything in similar scales. Sand is sand sized on every planet for example. Then your clip files all become very easily moved from one planet to another. The more work you do the faster you develop new planets from old. It's easy for the scales to get all out of sync. I fall into the trap of making everything too big. I suspect a lot of people will. Remember we are working on a sphere. Too big features will show up the spheres curve more. It will not look like earth in scale. I'm working on getting everything smaller.
I hope my points are of some use but my Mojo experience is good for TG2.