Planetside Software Forums

General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: Hannes on September 17, 2022, 05:14:44 AM

Title: Rising
Post by: Hannes on September 17, 2022, 05:14:44 AM
This started as an animation. And after some quite frustrating tests (previewing animated stuff is almost impossible in TG) I decided to make it a still.
There's a lot of cloud layers to represent the water stuff. The boat's bowwave is a mix of a population of white grass clumps and a small low quality cloud layer directly in front of the boat.

I know, there are not too many people who use TG's animation features, but I'd love to see some further development here. If you try to animate some things, and you have to render test animations each time to see what you'll get, is really annoying.
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Kadri on September 17, 2022, 05:46:47 AM

Looks great Hannes.

Yeah animation is unfortunately more hard in Terragen.
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Dune on September 17, 2022, 05:56:35 AM
Awesome. I love your ideas, as always. And using white grass is a great idea for a bowwave, I really like that out-of-the-box thinking. But why several cloudlayers, and not one with a mask (thru camera)? That might be faster...

I very much agree with your mentioning the animation capabilities (one of the things I could use very well, and now very much hesitate to use for commissions), and I think Matt should update his plans here. Is he still working on TG, is it a GPU renderer, or has he mostly abandoned work on TG and is busy with something completely different? The forum is getting quieter every day, it appears like users are leaving, though I have no clue what happens on FB. Is there a (GPU) future ahead, or should we (as last Mohicans) also leave?

Sorry if I hijacked your thread, Hannes.
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Hannes on September 17, 2022, 06:08:32 AM
Thanks guys!
No problem, Ulco. This is exactly what I think. Sometimes I feel a little lonely here. I'd love to hear something about TG's future (if there is any!). I love this program so much, even if there are things that bother me. Can we expect some bigger steps forward in the nearer future? I know, the team is quite small, and thus the evolution is of course slow, but nevertheless sometimes it feels a bit like a sinking ship. I desperately hope, that I'm wrong!!!
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Hannes on September 17, 2022, 06:54:30 AM
Quote from: Dune on September 17, 2022, 05:56:35 AMBut why several cloudlayers, and not one with a mask (thru camera)? That might be faster...
I used three cloudlayers for the falling water masses, all with separate and different settings and warpings. One cloudlayer for the bowwave, two cloud layers for actual clouds, one for general mist, and a last one for the mist directly on top of the water, where the water hits the surface. I don't know, if I could have done that with less layers. And as I wrote it was initially planned as an animation. I already simplified the setup for the still image, but I guess camera projection wouldn't have been an option. And who knows, maybe I'll dare to animate it again... ;)
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Dune on September 17, 2022, 08:52:43 AM
Do tell me if you go! :P  I'll shut the door then.

Clouds; I see, thanks.

Title: Re: Rising
Post by: zaxxon on September 17, 2022, 10:07:01 AM
Once again: Amazing!!!  That you ever planned to animate this in TG is absolutely 'Herculean'! (and a little nuts!)  ;)

I can imagine how frustrating it must be for Matt and Planetside to try and develop and maintain TG when so much of the competition is free and under robust development.  GPU support is an absolute necessity these days and using applications that have that makes it's very difficult and time consuming to use the current versions of TG.  Developing a 3D renderer from the ground up has to be a monumental task and integrating it into the existing functionality even more difficult. The folks at World Creator have had a very slow go at it even though they have a moderate sized Dev team; I purchased a pre-release of World Creator 3 (now called World Creator 2022) in November of 2020 as an Alpha, the Beta came about six months later and to this date the full release with terrains larger then 1K has yet to happen.  And to add insult to injury my maintenance license is now expired if I want the 'full' version.  But due to Covid and the difficulty of creating such software I can understand and sympathize (somewhat) with the effort. Whatever the story is with Planetside and the TG development it would be good for Matt to share what the future looks like. I doubt if there are 'secrets' that need to kept from the 'competitors' at this point after all.  ;)  However, TG has been a great tool for me for many years and I hope that it continues in some form, and hopefully we'll get some news here before long.
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Mahnmut on September 17, 2022, 12:38:52 PM
Great Render!
from the thumb I thought it was the millenium falcon.
cool approach to the falling water, I my try to copy that, have been thinking about waterfalls lately.
Sorry to hear about the problems (?) concerning planetside.
Obviously, I can not revive the forum by upscaling all my old pictures.
May TG rise like your starship!
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: aknight0 on September 17, 2022, 04:01:57 PM
Agreed that the radio silence approach to development seems counterproductive.  

Cool ship Hannes!  Reminds me of that scene from Dune where the transports come out of the lake.
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: mhaze on September 18, 2022, 08:01:58 AM
Brilliant!
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: raymoh on September 18, 2022, 08:52:16 AM
Hannes, I can only too well understand your thoughts on the future of Terragen. I too am beginning to wonder if we will see Terragen 5. My subjective perception is that the further development of Terragen is lagging behind the development of the operating systems (no matter if Windows or Mac) more and more. I am well aware that only a (too?) small team is working on the development of Terragen, but time seems to be working against them.
As a Mac user, I wouldn't be surprised if sooner or later an information window would pop up with the terse remark : "This program will no longer be supported with a next version of macOS".
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: pixelpusher636 on September 20, 2022, 08:21:41 PM
Hannes as always you've blown 💨 my mind! This is so fantastically done and I love the guys scrambling on the tugboat too.
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: pixelpusher636 on September 20, 2022, 08:31:27 PM
Quote from: raymoh on September 18, 2022, 08:52:16 AMHannes, I can only too well understand your thoughts on the future of Terragen. I too am beginning to wonder if we will see Terragen 5. My subjective perception is that the further development of Terragen is lagging behind the development of the operating systems (no matter if Windows or Mac) more and more. I am well aware that only a (too?) small team is working on the development of Terragen, but time seems to be working against them.
As a Mac user, I wouldn't be surprised if sooner or later an information window would pop up with the terse remark : "This program will no longer be supported with a next version of macOS".
I have insulated myself indirectly from this window ever rearing it's ugly head on my system.
Not quite what I'd call "active measures" but one of my macs is so old El Capitan is the furthest I'm able to upgrade to without going through the Macpro 4,1 to 5,1 dance. 🤨 I guess I'm at greater risk of not being able to run TG at some point. Nice to see another Mac user on the forums, I thought it was just me!
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Hannes on September 21, 2022, 03:02:13 AM
Thanks a lot, Pixelpusher!! :)
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: pixelpusher636 on September 22, 2022, 10:11:22 PM
Quote from: Hannes on September 21, 2022, 03:02:13 AMThanks a lot, Pixelpusher!! :)
and thank you Hannes! Seriously the expert posts are not only inspiring but they can also show us new possibilities with TG. Between you and dune you have this area cornered. Well done!
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: masonspappy on September 23, 2022, 02:03:52 AM
Late seeing this - but it is remarkable! The White Grass gimmick is great!

I'll echo other's thoughts about TG's lack of development.
I've wondered (a lot) recently if TG staff might simply abandon TG and declared it "Open Source" , and the code put out in the public domain for others to develop branches as they saw fit. We use to describe a product's viability in terms if "mindshare" which TG no longer has.  The TG webpage that shows where TG was used features no projects later than 2019.  It seems like  the very small group of users & enthusiasts here are what's keeping TG alive nowadays.

I would love to see any sign of further development but it's just not there.  Which is sad because TG still has an amazing render engine that stands out from the others.

Title: Re: Rising
Post by: pixelpusher636 on October 05, 2022, 08:03:00 PM
I've only been frequenting the forums for the past year or so and occasionally prior to that. So I've missed a lot of your amazing works until today when I found the jackpot (https://planetside.co.uk/blog/featured-artist-hannes/). 

So many amazing works but one of my favorites is "Rehearsal" that lighting is insanely good and the girls facial expression and posture is very realistic. Nice work Hannes!!
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Hannes on October 06, 2022, 01:23:29 AM
Quote from: pixelpusher636 on October 05, 2022, 08:03:00 PMI've only been frequenting the forums for the past year or so and occasionally prior to that. So I've missed a lot of your amazing works until today when I found the jackpot (https://planetside.co.uk/blog/featured-artist-hannes/).

So many amazing works but one of my favorites is "Rehearsal" that lighting is insanely good and the girls facial expression and posture is very realistic. Nice work Hannes!!
Wow, thanks a lot!!! :)
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: pclavett on November 09, 2022, 07:26:04 PM
This is an amazing composition..... using grass for the bow-wave, that is brilliant ! That scene looks like it was from the movie Battleship..... but the boat was bigger ! The water veils are just amazing ! Superb work !
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: SILENCER on January 03, 2023, 10:45:59 AM
Looks great!
But man that's punishing doing this in Terragen
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: WAS on January 03, 2023, 02:13:36 PM
object mask used to create t he cloud shapes? Or did you manually stick 'em in there?

This would make an amazing animation, but totally get how testing to even get bugs out would be laborious.
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Hannes on January 03, 2023, 03:18:43 PM
Quote from: SILENCER on January 03, 2023, 10:45:59 AMLooks great!
But man that's punishing doing this in Terragen
Indeed! Thank you. :)

Quote from: WAS on January 03, 2023, 02:13:36 PMobject mask used to create t he cloud shapes? Or did you manually stick 'em in there?
Most of the cloud layers for the non-cloud stuff had some masks, yes.
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Doug on January 04, 2023, 05:52:42 PM
Quote from: Hannes on September 17, 2022, 05:14:44 AMThis started as an animation. And after some quite frustrating tests (previewing animated stuff is almost impossible in TG) I decided to make it a still.
There's a lot of cloud layers to represent the water stuff. The boat's bowwave is a mix of a population of white grass clumps and a small low quality cloud layer directly in front of the boat.

I know, there are not too many people who use TG's animation features, but I'd love to see some further development here. If you try to animate some things, and you have to render test animations each time to see what you'll get, is really annoying.
i am making a orca - killer whale jumping out of the water
can't get the water dripping effect yet

are you going to put up a clip or tgd file of the water stuff?
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Hannes on January 05, 2023, 02:27:09 AM
I'll try to extract something out of this file. May take a little time.
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Doug on January 05, 2023, 08:29:41 AM
Thank You. That would be great.
One of those misty things would be cool to look at to see what you did.
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Hannes on January 05, 2023, 08:48:16 AM
OK, here is most of the stuff in a stripped down version. It was built for a huge spaceship, so you have to scale down the stuff to work with an orca.
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: Doug on January 05, 2023, 02:43:26 PM
Thank You.
Trying it now.
Title: Re: Rising
Post by: mhaze on January 10, 2023, 10:33:55 AM
Impressive work.