Since the summer of 2021 I have been dealing with Terragen, whereby it may be that I still have Terragen smaller 1 on an old drive. In between there was a longer break. Since have I tried, me in TG to work in. Forum examples from Dune, Hannes, WAS and others have helped a lot. Likewise the TG Wiki, which is easily readable with a translation into German in the browser. Nevertheless, learning consisted of true and false.
Now I'm 68, I'm no longer learning to write or speak in English. The translations with DeepL go very slowly, because the back translation often does not say what I actually wanted to write.
An underwater example that I believe is correct. If I remember correctly, I took the wave plane from a forum example of Dune and adapted it.
I could have made the shadows even softer, the deeper the softer.
Waves plane without mask. | Waves plane with mask.
unterwasser-g22-01.jpg unterwasser-g22-04.jpg unterwasser-nodes-g22-04.jpg simple-wellen-shader.jpg
Masks for scene:
complement-coulor-01.jpg
Render Camera – y Rotation 0
Setting up a scene: Either in front of the camera, similar to the theater, or customize sine functions.
Rotational plane example calculation with Python:
rotation-kamera.jpg
The calculations are always correct, but sometimes the values have to be swapped. Delete minus sign, only one, where it belongs.
unterwasser-g22-04.tgd
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Clouds by moonlight
Semi-finished, there is still a lot missing.
First attempts July 2021, received many gray hairs. Last attempt December 2022, already better. For the stars, I'll probably use a layer with Gimp and then add them in post-processing. Forestation etc. is still missing. Tips for clouds in moonlight would be desirable, but have not found any renders created with newer Terragen versions. I found a few that were created with TG 2.
wolken-bei-mondschein-dezember-2022.jpg clouds-moonlight.jpg
Example - Input only mask shader (beta):
masken-moonlight.jpg
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Semi-finished, there is still a lot missing. Bright area in the distance, just a plot of land for a village still missing. Side trees with Blender without textures, better ones should be planted in the foreground.
Cloud experiments started with Overcast A1.tgd from WAS from the Cloud Library.
waldgebiet-01.jpg
Hill with crater shaders. Spheres for size comparison only - Sphere left bottom Radius 2, Sphere right bottom Radius 1.
Inspirations Old Masters of painting
Albert Bierstadt
- A Storm in the Rocky Mountains
- Mount Corcoran
- Sierra Nevada
- California Spring
Friedrich Preller the Elder
- Hünengrab auf Rügen
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Preview did not open, after post the images are now all displayed large. I thought they stay small and only open large when clicked.
Welcome to the forum, and thanks for showing and sharing your setup with us. The extra mask is working well in the underwater scene.
Regarding the largeness of the images; I always just click attachments, add files, and leave all at default. That way thumbnails appear. But maybe that works differently in Mac or other browsers?
Thanks for the answer as well.
To the underwater scene with the humpback whales at Discord.
All objects removed.
Disabled a spotligt that was only aimed at the Eye of the Whale. The eye would otherwise have been barely visible.
I always align the spotlight with a spotlight camera. I then adopt their position for the spotlight.
Stage design theatre, three layers of simple shape shaders. Long enough to find suitable sections, edges and ditches.
unterwasser-szenenaufbau-01.tgd
The radius for the camera mask is actually too large, I left it that way for this scene.
Cool! You don't always need a compute terrain, btw. In many cases it can just be taken from the main line, and just 'dangling' loose for the computation of the surface for populations. So, in your case the merge shader goes directly to the base color shader. That way a scene will render faster (depending on how many shaders you have used before the compute terrain). You would have to check out any differences in appearance.
Thanks for the tip, I will give it a try.
Still have a similar riverside design in mind. But that could still take a long time.
Mount Corcoran (https://www.arthistoryproject.com/artists/albert-bierstadt/mount-corcoran/) or Sierra Nevada (Further down the page.)
It still occurred to me to have started a scene from ancient Greece. Tubes only as a scale for figures. TG render became blurred in Daz Studio. Import figure in TG, the hair became a disaster. For this scene it is enough to render the figures with transparency, then insert them afterwards. Just a first draft. There is still a lot missing.
Looks like an interesting idea. I don't know why the hair didn't come out well in TG, but you'd need at least a good AA (6 or 8 ), and certain variables like translucency and reflection may need another approach than in DAZ. I always import DAZ figures, though most (fibre) hair is made in ZBrush, it works pretty nicely.
Cool stuff, Mele, and willkommen!!!!
I hope to see more of your work. I like your Greece image especially, since I#m travelling to Greece each and every year, and I know some places where it looks almost exactly like in your image.
Can you show us an example of your hair not displaying correctly?
Thanks for the answers!
I should mention that I learned with a TG Free version on a weak Windows machine. I didn't get TG Professional until December 2022. A powerful computer is now also available, but not yet set up.
That the old computer is too weak, I noticed very clearly with the divers in Blender. The diver was displayed correctly for two to three seconds, then her jacket was removed again. Possibly through Windows memory management.
Screenshots with the hair. Greek Woman 01 to 04 and more I have published on www.3d-board.de/board/46-terragen/ (Thread: Strand, Brandung, Gischt und Schaum) page 9 and Greek Woman 05 and more on page 10. Not sure if more than one page can be accessed without logging.
Tested in another browser, it only loads the first page from the thread, at the bottom with the registration notice. I think it's a pity, because I had started the last thread for Terragen beginners.
Imported the figure once again. Now I know again what I was doing.
After importing from Daz in TG - Image 01
These three were not imported - Image 02
Added these under Opacity, a cutout - Image 03
After that it looked like in - Image 04
And after that I began to tinker and try out many things.
Hmmm... in your previous post "greek-woman 04" somehow looks weird, the hair is too thin, whereas " greek-woman 05" look good to me. So, this is still in DAZ?
And in your last post the first image looks better than the second one, even though I could imagine, the opacity maps may not be working correctly. Hard to say...
I had some trouble with DAZ hair as well. Importing the right maps is indeed one thing, TG doesn't always load all maps correctly. Then the opacity; this works as on/off, no gradient (and that may be different in DAZ). Above 0.5 will be interpreted as full opacity (though a value lower than 1 does affect the amount of shadowing between strands, in RT mode at least). You also need a pretty good AA for such fine strands, as I wrote before. I whitened some of the hair maps a bit in Photoshop, to increase whiteness of the thinnest 'greyish' hairs, but that's fickle work, as you don't want to merge the white strands together too much.
Then I also do a little translucency (0.1), and a little reflection (usually 0.2 or so with 0.2 roughness), though that works best in PT mode. In RT mode hair with translucency often 'grays' a bit overall. But in short, in all comes down to experimentation to figure out the best settings.
Exported characters from DAZ also have a lot of common textures that would be loaded several times for one figure, so I always take a figure through Poseray to merge certain groups using the same texture (in group tab), then converting groups to materials (in material tab). This will reduce number of parts in TG from maybe 20 to 7 or so. You loose all materials, but I reload those in TG (so maybe make a note of what goes where before), and save final character as tgo. Sometimes recalculating smooth normals will also be needed, for smooth angles (in group tab).
I hope this helps a bit.
All previous images were in TG.
For this I had the scalp with a glass shader, the white level under Opacity set to 14, which made the hair fuller.
First image, my notes so I don't forget.
The other two images in Daz.
In this scene, the figures are not obscured by anything, so I can render them as a layer with transparency. Just need to align the shadows properly.
In the MTL I always rewrite the paths. Put a texture directory in the TG directory. I should take a look at PoseRay, with grouping sounds good.
I only later realized how important translucency can be with trees and curtains behind glass.
Love the clouds in the hills scene.
Regarding the underwater scene, it's probably best to setup your mask with distance shaders to follow the camera wherever it may be, at whatever direction.
Thanks for responses so far!
It would be possible for some underwater scenes, but not for a scene containing the wave plane. You could enlarge the wave plane and also connect its wave mask to the camera.
For my needs and single renders, when I have found a good position for the render camera, I save this setting and do not change its position anymore. Then I build the whole scene according to it. With small videos I wanted to start later. Then it might be considered. Radius always depends on subjects. Small objects in the foreground, smaller radius, large objects a little further away, larger radius.
I will probably do one or two more underwater scenes, but that's all I have planned. I'm just not sure yet if I'll buy corals and sponges as a collection or try to make them myself.
I also want to finish the scenes I've started.
Smart to increase the opacity to such high value, it apparently works the same as increasing mask whiteness in Photoshop. I used to believe a slider set to 1 was a maximum, but since a long time learned that that is not always the case. Like here.
Regarding sponges and corals; there must be free objects around, like here: https://sketchfab.com/tags/coral-reef (https://sketchfab.com/tags/coral-reef)
The hair has already become better with more translucency. Only the hairlines of the scalp do not like me yet.
Had looked at CGTrader two collections. When I wanted to buy them, it no longer worked. Have contacted the artist via form. Because he was a Russian, there were some problems, maybe with payment. Only later I found his offers also at ArtStation (https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/BNK5/corals). These also seem to be available again at CGTrader.
In the meantime I had decided to make some myself this year. I don't know yet if anything will happen. My first starfish still had defects. Swapped diagonals, took a negative for displacement. But also defects in the shape and texture.
My first house got better. Texturing with TG wherever possible. Example front door glazing. Window curtains translucency a little over 1, too much lightened the room. Wanted to make another wood texture. I didn't get around to it because it was just a practice object.
Quote from: Dune on March 21, 2023, 02:40:56 AMSmart to increase the opacity to such high value, it apparently works the same as increasing mask whiteness in Photoshop.
In this case, only for two out of three textures.
Should mention I started the scene with gamma 1. With Gamma 2.2, the values could be a bit off, but the principle remains the same, I think.
Hair 1 and Hair 2 - Translucency 3, Opacity 14
Scalp - Translucency 3, Opacity 1
hair-side-view-01.jpg - bald spot on temple.
Scalp - Translucency 3, Opacity 5
hair-side-view-02.jpg - bald spot on temple closed. It would be way too much on the forehead again. Here the partial editing of this texture with an image editing program could be the better choice to edit only these areas.
Cool! I'd say, the path tracer wins. Probably longer render times, but it's worth it. Too bad about the bald areas. Maybe it's the texture map?
And by the way, there are some weird polygon shadow artifacts. I could imagine, running the models through Poseray, recalculating normals and maybe subdividing there could help.
The hair masks are not necessarily designed for other 3D applications. The hair was also rendered a little thinner in Blender.
After the import, the figure in TG and Blender is blind for the time being. Someone is telling me what shaders to look out for to bet on that one glass shader. I made it easier and swapped out the textures for small transparent images. But what I didn't save, the TGD file, in which I set a glass shader on the scalp. Today I no longer get the same result.
Image - an enlarged section. If I need it, I will look for these places in the mask and edit them.
The PT renders the water better, but I'll save that for the final render.
What I do in DAZ is merge the pupils, irises and lacrimal for an eye texture, the sclera gets an eye texture as well, but also an extra reflective shader. The cornea gets a glass shader (default). Tear gets a skincolor and reflection. But it's different for different generations, different names, different combinations.
My notes:
Eyes after import into Terragen - Image 01.
Had this scene also started with gamma 1, so the values are slightly different. This difference became very clear when I rendered this scene again yesterday. Then saved the render once as a tiff and once as an exr. Exr became much brighter and paler. As a background image in DAZ, both were blurred. It could be related to a missing Nvidia graphics card. Have to get my new computer running first, then I will test it again.
Or:
Rendering as a transparent layer in DAZ - Image 02.
The day before yesterday evening I saw a very beautiful evening sky. The horizon is still a little yellowish, a few lower clouds are already pitch black against dark blue background. A little later a crescent moon could be seen, the bright radius was only about three to four times that of a lunar disk. The higher clouds were darker gray than my previous ones. I will keep this image in mind to try again later.
Experiment - Standard Scene with Moonlight
Sunlight: outside the area visible to the camera on the right edge.
Moonlight 01: weak light matching the clouds.
Moonlight 02: of strength and hue to match the scene. Same position, atmo/cloud disabled.
Rendered with Gamma 1, no changes made to the atmosphere.
base-standard-01.tgd
Looks good, and thanks very much for sharing this with the users!
Took a screen capture of your Moonlight nodes, great local cloud lighting achieved. Thanks Mele.
schmeerlap - Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad.
A little further with clouds in the moonlight - image moonlight-007
wolkenschichten-right.tgc
lighting.tgc
Render Camera
Position: xyz: 6686, 1727, 2098
Rotation: xyz: -5.8, -106, 0
Some more experiments.
Build scene around camera.
Create a river or a gorge.
schlucht-02.tgd - image schlucht-02
Added Fractal Terrain 02.
schlucht-06.tgd - image schlucht-06
Now played with Seed from Fratal Terrain 02 - schlucht-07 - I like it, I'll keep working on it.
More experiments.
Someone was looking for a scene in which two figures are crossing a ravine on a log. But got sick afterwards and didn't use it, although it's very simple. I also explained the assembly step by step as simply as possible. Maybe one day I'll expand on this as a scene myself.
Since I didn't like the view of the exit, I used a fog cloud layer. The variant of WAS with Distance Shader is the much better solution in this case.
Image tree-trunk-bridge-01
For the tree trunk I used a Sphere.
Image tree-trunk-bridge-02
With fog or without, the morning sun would also be an option.
Image tree-trunk-bridge-off-01
Or push everything together, increase Smooth step and increase Twist. Remove the river, create a simple shape as a pedestal under both fractals. At the exit there is now a rest area for a campfire.
Image tree-trunk-bridge-off-02
With the ceiling pulled in, it should make a spacious cave.