Whats your top THREE Terragen tips?
Just for fun really but maybe we might learn something.
I say "three" so everyone gets a chance to add something.
If, after a while, you see a "missing" tip please feel free to jump back in and add it of course. :)
They can be about anything Terragen related, Heightfield operations, post processing, work flow, node networking etc.
To start the ball rolling here are mine:
1. Save "Iteratively" (scene-01, scene-02, scene-03 etc.) and Save often, cant be stressed enough really. Even with Terragen's updates there are still crashes but more importantly its next to impossible to get back to an earlier setting that looked promising if you have not saved and saved progressive versions.
2. Know your scale. Terragen luckily has several visual tools that come in at a default size. One of these is the Heightfield Generate or Load function that loads at 10,000 meters square. You can change the size of this and get a good idea of the size of the piece of terrain your looking at. You can now scale your shaders accordingly.
3. Drag and Drop Colour Swatches. You can drag and drop one colour swatch to another.
Next :D
Richard
Interesting topic.....hmmm lets see....
1. You should never need more than 600, 128 samples for clouds, atmosphere respectively
2. Always keep your node network organized
3. Always do test renders before moving on to final HQ render (this one is kinda obvious)
4. To create interesting renders, try to follow some composition rules like rule of 1/3 distribution
1. Add thick Cirrus-Clouds to lower the contrast of shadows and lighted areas.
For normal clouds:
2. Increase Cloud Density by a factor of 1000, decrease edge sharpness by a factor of 2000.
3. Increase the Contrast inside the Clouds' Density shader
1. When there are vegetation in the scene, opt for AA of 5 minimum.
2. Do high quality crop renders of different parts of scene before you commit to final render.
3. Edit renders in EXR (HDR) mode.
This topic is great, but all my best tips are already her :)
I'll post some other tips I think is good.
1.
Cloud quality - I usually don't look at the samples. I just use 1 for quality . At least for my final render.
It may not speed up the rendertime, but you will almost be sure to have good quality on your clouds.
2.
Detail to terrain - This may be old news for many of you, but I recently discovered that the heightfield shader
have the option: Fractal Detail. This is a very quick and handy way to get some extra detail to your terrain.
3.
Preview window - When I have my shaders ready and are pleased with my angle I'll let the preview window
finish rendering, or reach to detail 80. Then I just hit the pause button and can for example work with my tree population.
I hate it when the preview window starts rendering when I make some changes that really don't affect it anyways.
Quote from: cyphyr on September 23, 2007, 12:32:40 AM
Next :D
My tips are random. :D
1. Always use your imagination.
2. When rendering, if nothing appears after 30 minutes, stop the render and reduce some of the quality settings.
3. If you get bored, don't bother creating new nodes - just connect existing ones in a different order.
Quote from: Dark Fire on September 23, 2007, 11:40:49 AM
3. If you get bored, don't bother creating new nodes - just connect existing ones in a different order.
LOL :D
1. Experiment with everything. Use nodes in ways in which they weren't originally intended to be used.
2. Always make sure your lighting is interesting, and brings out the scene's strong points
3. Always do crop tests. The preview render rarely shows exactly what you'll get, and your mind has a tendency to fill in the details with something that's beautiful.
1. Volumetric Clouds are Passée - Everyone seems to use them and 95% of the time they don't pass the litmus-test anyway, whilst taking an eternity to render. Cirrus clouds are quick and VERY realistic - plus comparatively fewer works feature them.
2. Cheap Overcast Skies - In the Background Shader for the Background Object, move the colour more towards white. Add a cirrus layer or two to subtly brake things up a little if you need some more definition.
3. Haze and Scale - Often, a contributory factor in outing a scene a fake is the incorrect scale of the scene as suggested by the haze. Too much haze has hills which should be near appearing like distant mountains gone wrong, and vice versa.
:)
1. Multiple Power Fractals can be your friend, if you don't mind paying for it. It's a really easy way to add detail to the terrain, providing you use the Scale, Lead-In Scale and Displacement properly.
2. Know just how high your quality setting should be. Really high samples, detail and anti-aliasing setting can add tons of wasted time to your render.
3. Open nodes that you frequently use and tell them to stay open. Now, in all fairness, this only really works if you have two monitors, but it's still a really handy thing to do. I generally set one of the render windows to stay open so I can adjust the camera and detail settings without leaving the terrain window so I can make faster adjustments.
1. Contrast is your friend - Using the Render Effects Contrast setting can be to your advantage by even a small increase. This is because the human eye makes differentiations that your picture might not pick up. This is best used in correlation with Render Effects Gamma Correction. An example - .5 Contrast; 1.8 Gamma Correction.
2. Blue skies are beautiful - Just a blue sky without one cloud can be a marvelous site. Some settings (learned from many on this site and through experimentation) -
Atmosphere, Main tab - Haze Density: 1.25
Atmosphere, Height Control tab - Haze Exp Height - 5000
Atmosphere, Lighting tab - Haze Glow Power - .35
Atmosphere, Lighting tab - Blue Sky Glow Power - .35
Atmosphere, Tweaks tab - Fake Dark Power- .2
Atmosphere, Tweaks tab - Bluesky Density Colour- 1.33
Atmosphere, Quality tab - Number of Samples - 32 to 64
These work best with the contrast settings in the first suggested tip.
3. Two-in-One -
Terrain - Many of you know this, but it's a good suggestion for beginners. Try using the Merge Shader to link a Fractal Terrain with a Transform Shader to create your base terrain rather than depending upon the TG2 default Terrain. I prefer to feed this sort of setup into a Compute Terrain node.
Group - Create groups for even seemingly simple node networks (like the one just mentioned). This keeps your work neat and helps to organize clip files. Another idea that I learned from Volker is you can insert a newly created group (or clip file) inside of the target node's Internal Network to keep things even neater and better organized.
I included the last two as two in one, since these are already practiced by some of the "old-timers" here and could be useful for some of the newer (or slower, like me) guys.
Quote from: calico on September 24, 2007, 01:59:16 PMlt Terrain. I prefer to feed this sort of setup into a Compute Terrain node.
Group - Create groups for even seemingly simple node networks (like the one just mentioned).
How can I group nodes together? Can I select a bunch of nodes (shift click) and then press some shortcut key to group them all under a parent node?
Right-click in the node network area to create a Group (from Other). Then take a group of nodes you have created for a special purpose, select them each with the mouse while holding the shift key and drag them into this group. Right-click on the Group header to do
Group: Capture Nodes. You can also select the settings of this Group and change its name and color.
I don't know of any way to shiift-click like what you're saying to group them like that.
If you wonder about putting a group inside of a group of nodes, select all of the nodes you want to move (or the Group) and then Ctrl-X (cut) and then right-click on the node where you wish to use these nodes to select Internal Network. Once inside the Internal Network of the target node, do Ctrl-V (paste). You might need to back up some (Alt-Middlemouse) in the Internal Network to see your newly pasted nodes.
Quote from: reck on September 24, 2007, 02:36:48 PM
Quote from: calico on September 24, 2007, 01:59:16 PMlt Terrain. I prefer to feed this sort of setup into a Compute Terrain node.
Group - Create groups for even seemingly simple node networks (like the one just mentioned).
How can I group nodes together? Can I select a bunch of nodes (shift click) and then press some shortcut key to group them all under a parent node?
Oh I get you. I was thinking of something else. I thought you could put nodes "inside" a parent node, as in an internal network and group nodes like that. This way you would only see the parent node, but you could look at it's internal network to it's child nodes, exactly how objects work. When you have lots and lots of nodes this could be a nice feature as you could group (place) nodes together and create more space.
Yes. This is what I am saying. By saying "target" node, I mean the node that you want these nodes to target.
Quote from: reck on September 25, 2007, 06:11:21 AM
Oh I get you. I was thinking of something else. I thought you could put nodes "inside" a parent node, as in an internal network and group nodes like that. This way you would only see the parent node, but you could look at it's internal network to it's child nodes, exactly how objects work. When you have lots and lots of nodes this could be a nice feature as you could group (place) nodes together and create more space.
Well, I wrote the documentation so many of my tips are in there. ;) But here are a few that seem to come up quite often still.
1: Well, the first one has to be to read the documentation that's available already. These forums are a tremendous resource, but you pick up information piecemeal, bit-by-bit, and it's not really designed to give you an overview of things to get you going quickly. That's exactly what the documentation is for. If you're just starting out, the documentation area should be your first visit. The documentation will be expanded and improved in the future as well, so that's something to look forward to.
2: The "Ray-traced Shadows" options in the Atmosphere and Cloud Quality tabs are very seldom necessary and add tremendous amounts of render time. You should only use them if you need shadows to be cast *from terrain* onto/into your clouds/atmosphere, respectively. In most cases this is not going to happen. Even in cases where it does happen it's often either not desirable or the render time increase simply isn't worth it. The only exception currently (which should be fixed for the final release anyway, making this workaround unnecessary) is the need to use Ray-traced Shadows for the atmosphere when the sun is behind terrain - the sun glow will show through the terrain due to a bug.
3: When in doubt, update your graphics card driver and/or all other system drivers. Make sure you're as up-to-date as possible before assuming a problem is in the software program you're using (TG2 or otherwise). If you do encounter a consistent problem try other similar applications to see if it is TG2 only, or if it is a more general problem. For example TG2 uses OpenGL for several display functions, so if you're having display issues try another OpenGL application such as Blender. If there are problems there too, it's probably an overall issue with your system or drivers, rather than a TG2-specific thing.
- Oshyan
hey guys ! any more tips since last time ? ^^
One I'm finding is true beyond a shadow of a doubt -
Lower displacements are the foundation for the surfaces that follow. To cut down on displacement fragmentation and just plain displacement ugliness, control the build up starting from the lowest displacement. Displacement adds as the nodes with displacements are added.
Calico, true!
Else you can activate the smoothing, which is fun on lower values.
cool !
Superb thread! My top three have all been mentioned, here's some of my TOP 10 then ;)
1. When running out of memory (in a scene where you have not reached the limit), save your project, close and restart TG. From my experience, after a few renders, TG does not want to give memory back, so this becomes necessary rather frequently.
2. Don't be afraid to experiment with lighting. This may be obvious, but the very same scene at mid-day will look totally transformed with the sun below the horizon. Or add multiple light sources, also makes for wondrous effects...
3. Learn to work in the node network. At times it's much faster than trying to click through the shaders to find that powerfractal that needs tweaking - and along with this, rename your nodes from the defaults, it's hard to remember what Surface layer 01_1_1 was for :)
Quote from: Oshyan on September 25, 2007, 03:54:14 PM
2: The "Ray-traced Shadows" options in the Atmosphere and Cloud Quality tabs are very seldom necessary and add tremendous amounts of render time. You should only use them if you need shadows to be cast *from terrain* onto/into your clouds/atmosphere, respectively. In most cases this is not going to happen. Even in cases where it does happen it's often either not desirable or the render time increase simply isn't worth it. The only exception currently (which should be fixed for the final release anyway, making this workaround unnecessary) is the need to use Ray-traced Shadows for the atmosphere when the sun is behind terrain - the sun glow will show through the terrain due to a bug.
What about the "Do ray-traced shadows" option in the "extra" tab of "Renderers" menu? Same thing?
Erwan
Quote from: elegac on January 16, 2009, 04:36:24 AM
Quote from: Oshyan on September 25, 2007, 03:54:14 PM
2: The "Ray-traced Shadows" options in the Atmosphere and Cloud Quality tabs are very seldom necessary and add tremendous amounts of render time. You should only use them if you need shadows to be cast *from terrain* onto/into your clouds/atmosphere, respectively. In most cases this is not going to happen. Even in cases where it does happen it's often either not desirable or the render time increase simply isn't worth it. The only exception currently (which should be fixed for the final release anyway, making this workaround unnecessary) is the need to use Ray-traced Shadows for the atmosphere when the sun is behind terrain - the sun glow will show through the terrain due to a bug.
What about the "Do ray-traced shadows" option in the "extra" tab of "Renderers" menu? Same thing?
Erwan
No, that setting controls overall shadow rendering and is enabled by default. It should not normally be disabled.
- Oshyan
This is AWESOME!! :D
How about to continue this cool topic?????
No problem. I got one that I think of:
1. Name your nodes cryptically according to what they do. Saves a lot of time finding out what the heck it was that they were there for, after adding another hundred or so. Especially handy of you come back to a scene after a year or so.
Use the null shader to simplify your node mess!
If you have two monitors use them, if not, buy another monitor.
Build your landscape in grey tones first.
Use simple shape shader and displacable objects to consruct your landscape
The random button is your friend, use it!
It's all about masking - pfs, sss, and surface/distribution shaders
That little blue square at thetop right - click on it helps you visulize what's goin on!
Old thread, but a good one...
Here's one that someone might find useful. When working with populations most of the time you want objects to sit on the ground. When you have displacements down the chain after the Compute Terrain node you need to remember where those displacements are. So, to simplify things, I always create a surface layer, name it something like 'a test layer' and stick it at the bottom of the shaders group. Then I only need to remember to anchor each population to this node. I use 'a test layer' to test coverage of various masks as well, but disable it after each test.
* There's a mask for that ;)
* Mix colours using low values for coverage and fractal breakup rather than overlay different shades of the same colour. Start with a dark colour and overlay lighter colours using decreasing values for coverage, breakup and breakup shader scale (sample green attached)
Quote from: bigben on August 12, 2014, 05:58:25 PM
* There's a mask for that ;)
LOL. Awesome tip :D :D
When using fractals for terrain, a quick way of seeing a greyscale map of where things will go is to plug the generator node for the terrain into the planet's final surface shader. This way you can see on the actual surface where hills and mountains will appear (this is a great way to intuitively set lead in distance and feature scale for what you need), and it previews much faster due to there being no displacement. Works great for making global cloud formations when viewed from space too.
Major downside is that you have to remember to reset all the node connections before the final render to make sure everything looks right.
Sometimes when i look at a node window i forget where it is in the node network.
Especially on a big project with many nodes it happens more.
I wish when i double click on a node window that the node network would jump to the node directly.
Not sure if there is an option for that.
A basic workaround is that when you go in the internal network of the node and then click "Up level" at the left side.
The node network jumps right where that node is and shows that node right in the middle .
Quote from: Kadri on August 13, 2014, 11:35:57 PM
Sometimes when i look at a node window i forget where it is in the node network.
Especially on a big project with many nodes it happens more.
I wish when i double click on a node window that the node network would jump to the node directly.
Not sure if there is an option for that.
A basic workaround is that when you go in the internal network of the node and then click "Up level" at the left side.
The node network jumps right where that node is and shows that node right in the middle .
the bottom of the 2 buttons should follow pressing the first and that should help
Strange that we can be looking at something always for years and somehow don't see what we should see. Thanks :)
Quote from: Kadri on August 15, 2014, 04:11:28 PM
Strange that we can be looking at something always for years and somehow don't see what we should see. Thanks :)
I often get that feeling when someone answers one of my queries...s'normal.....
That's how biology works, search pattern (like when great tits search for caterpillars, they won't easily notice a moth); you've got a matrix in your head of what you want/need to see and all/most else keeps out of your brain. I musta dmit I never noticed that lower link... :P
Quote from: Dune on August 16, 2014, 02:52:04 AM
That's how biology works, search pattern (like when great tits search for caterpillars, they won't easily notice a moth); you've got a matrix in your head of what you want/need to see and all/most else keeps out of your brain. I musta dmit I never noticed that lower link... :P
took me a few years as well Ulco....gotta pay more attention is my problem as I looked at it and said hmmm, handy and then forgot about it when I needed it...sigh...pot-heimers I fear....
here's mine...
1. Scale - as mentioned in some of the previous posts, scale is very important and easily overlooked - particularly in relation to fractal textures and haze settings. I always have a human figure .obj to terragen scale ready to drop into a scene - immediately gives an indication of a real sense of scale.
2. Camera animations - I often see a great looking scene ruined by a camera move that's impossible in the real world. In fact I'm at work looking at one right now :-) Try to think of the physics of the camera - is it possible? Imagine your camera is on a crane or a dolly and try and think the limitations they may impose on a camera move. I animate my camera in Maya, and I have a script that tells me how fast my camera is moving in miles or kilometres per hour - that way I can keep the animation real and is one less thing that might "take you out of the scene".
3. One handy thing I found (and this might just apply to Maya) is if you import an object from Maya and want to texture it using procedural shaders in Terragen - you need to delete its UVs.
Quote from: digitalguru on August 20, 2014, 09:46:15 AM
....
3. .....want to texture it using procedural shaders in Terragen - you need to delete its UVs.
Or use a transform shader set to use world space.
Quote from: j meyer on August 20, 2014, 01:16:47 PM
Or use a transform shader set to use world space.
Great idea!
excellent - thanks for the tip!