something different than clouds this time.
The hero rock is based on a sphere object.
Regards;
Frank
PS: sorry for the quality.. had to compress the jpeg a lot to fit it in here.
This looks nice so far.
I like the small pebbles/stones...it's a pity TG messes up some of them.
The big stone has interesting shapes (very ridgy!), but I think it could use a bit more variation.
Looking forward to see where this WIP goes...
Martin
I don't know yet where this goes. I have spent some time to give the stone bed some attention, and am very happy with it.
The hero rock came out because at first, i tried to add another surface layer on top of the stone bed to add bigger rocks. That however screwed up the underlying fake stone bed entirely and I haven't been able to find a cure. <insert heavy swearing here>
Then I thought "why not try a sphere?", and that got me into doodling mode ;-)
I'm not sure the sphere is a good idea for hero rocks. It doesn't seem to accept displacements from a power fractal, but it accepts displacements from the displacement port of a surface shader, which - unfortunately - can only be controlled through color.
Not sure yet, but I believe I let go of the "hero sphere" concept.
Funny how this developed, I really wanted to perfect the stone bed, and then got crazy on trying other stuff. At first, I tried to cover the stone bed with thick snow, but that too screwed up the stones totally - Damn, I was angry that I couldn't figure this out.
Maybe someone else had succes with adding thick snow on top of a stone bed?
Cheers,
Frank
Crap, Frank, what are you complainin' about? ;D This is awesome. And to think it's a sphere could make me just want to give up trying anything. I'd like to learn how to make a rock bed like that, in my spare time. :P
thanks calico, but: the big rock looks cg at first sight. It's reasonably ok if things look cg on second sight, like the stones bed, but the hero rock doesn't meet this criteria, so to speak :-)
The rock bed is constructed based on the methodology I once posted here that prevents small stones to grow on larger ones. the rest is fine tuning, which admittedly can take quite some time and a few hundred crop renders ;-)
Now that I write his, I wonder why I have posted it in the first place ;D ;D ;D
Cheers,
Frank
Whenever I use the fake stone shader I always get some stones that look strange. I see in this image you also get the same problem I get. I've highlighted some of the stones below. Is this some kind of bug that's going to get fixed? I can never get rid of this problem.
Also will we be able to use the rock object to create hero rocks in the final release? Seems strange people are having to resort to using spheres when TG has a built in rock object.
BTW apart from the strange rocks this looks really nice.
Strange Frank, the sphere object seems to accept displacement from a Power Fractal just fine here. I am feeding it through the Default Shader it comes with, admittedly, but that doesn't really mess anything up. What problem are you having and how are you setting up your network?
- Oshyan
interesting... I can't try that out now, but will do later.
Have you disabled color from the power fractal, just to be safe?
Quote from: FrankB on January 17, 2009, 04:22:55 AM
interesting... I can't try that out now, but will do later.
Have you disabled color from the power fractal, just to be safe?
Tried that out and it works. Strange, probably I was the one who had displacement unchecked, and didn't notice.
Well, then I shall give the hero rock from sphere another chance :-)
Thanks for the doubt, Oshyan :-)
Cheers,
Frank
I've managed to get spheres displaced fine with PFS' before, too. Weird.
I've also had snow layers over and through rockbeds(as in this poor image attachment from my very early TG2 days. I must add, ignore the most part of the image, it's the rocks at the bottom I'm referring to. This image was made in TP2 with the 'broken' intersect underlying options for the snow and no real transparency for the water, though.)
Is this the type of thing you mean, snow, over and between stones?
[attachimg=#]
Oh, Christ! On seeing this displayed here, under my name, I don't mind admitting that I'm pretty embarrassed right now!
It's nasty on the eyes! And that stag!? Jeez! :-[
lol
good light too FrankB !
PS : the displacemnt with PF works fine but as said by Oshyan, you have to get rid of the default shader :) (at least that's the way it works at home)
and @reck : i think you can really do good rocks with the fake stone shader, it's hard but i am sure we could even fo hero rock with it ;)
Would you do a favor for me (us) and give the link for this? I remember it, but can't find it.
Quote from: FrankB on January 16, 2009, 06:34:32 PM
The rock bed is constructed based on the methodology I once posted here that prevents small stones to grow on larger ones.
Quote from: Matt on July 01, 2008, 02:39:08 PM
I think what Jim wants to do is prevent the other displacements from appearing where the fake stones are, am I right? For this you need to mask the other displacement using a mask representing the stones. The Surface Layer doesn't have a blend shader option like some of the others (although it will in future), but instead of this you can plug a mask into the fractal breakup input and set the surface layer's coverage to 0.5. It's not exactly the same as a proper blend/mask, but it's close enough for most purposes. For the actual mask, use a separate copy of your fake stones shader, with no inputs (unless you want to chain other fake stones shaders), and give it a white colour. That should give you a stones mask. You can invert this mask by using a function node after the mask (Function -> Inverse -> Complement Colour), or by simply enabling "invert breakup" on the surface layer.
Matt
was it this technique ?
well, I don't remember the thread and posting either, it's so old it may have been deleted already. But here's the concept:
Use a merge shader, set "choose by altitide" = "highest"
Plug one fake stone shader into the input port of the merge shader, and the other fake stone shader into the port "Shader A" of the merge shader. You can even scale that up, so like:
fakestone1 ==> input port merge shader1
merge shader 2 ==> Shader A port of merge shader1
fakestone2 ==> input port of merge shader 2
fakestone3 ==> shader A port of mer shader 2
... and so on, if you want to add even more fakestone layers.
Frank
Quote from: dandelO on January 17, 2009, 03:16:12 PM
Is this the type of thing you mean, snow, over and between stones?
Yes, but I can't tell from this camera distance if the stones are disorted.
Also, you have used an older version for that, I don't know if the newer version were introducing new issues with that....
If you can reproduce that, especially with smaller stones, with the now current version, I'd like to see how... because then I would have apparently made a mistake.
Frank
Very good start on the sphere. The rock seems to hover above the ground due to the lighting.
Keep on going!
I'm re-rendering the sky in my last image at the moment, I'll hunt out the .tgd for that file(I think it's still there somewhere) and try and reproduce it in this beta. If I remember correctly, though, it was just a simple surface layer after the last stone shader with power fractal displacement, 0.25 smoothing, and intersect underlying. I'll play with the same settings used over the top of my ascending 0.1-1m scale stone shader, it if I can find the original file...
I love so much these desolated landscapes!!!! ;D
Brazil is a country ssoooo full of life. >:(
Even what should be dry is living...
Nope. I'm running into increasingly frustrating problems when I try and replicate snow through rocks(even just lying on rocks correctly, as in this problem... http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5368.msg55988#msg55988) in this beta.
I've said before, when intersect underlying was 'essentially broken'(in TP2), I could get far better results with it.
I've had a number of scenes I'd have liked to re-do but because of this I can't get them to work.
I'm on it, though. I'll keep at this because it's been bugging me for quite some time.
For now, when I lay a snow layer over any rocks, the actual stones are displaced instead of just the snow layer. Maybe a merge shader with 'highest=raise' would disregard any stones underlying snow?
I used to be able to just: check intersect underlying, set my displacement multiplier to the depth of the snow layer pile-up and, here's what I thought was the coolest part, use the displacement offset of the snow layer to raise the whole plane of snow(beneath the piles I wanted visible in the shot, like in that image above). You didn't even need a displacement function node/shader plugged in to the snow layer. Frustrating.
Well, you might want to use a distribution for the snow and an inverted for the stones (pure blending, do not use it as density shader).
You may want to add a displacement shader to the snow to fake the intersect underlying (I guess that displacement offset should be another easy way).
Another approach is to activate smoothing for the snow layer and to forget any inverted distribution.
Hope this helps
Volker
When the Intersect Underlying feature was "broken", I probably (or should have) suggested that you shouldn't use it because the results would change in future. That's what has happened. Different settings would be needed to get anything like what you had before. I completely understand the point of view that "it looked good, I don't care if it was broken, I just want to know how to do that again", but unfortunately I can't support every old behaviour that we had already stated wasn't working correctly.
I think you may be able to get similar results by using "Favour depressions" and then adding some displacement offset to the layer. If I recall correctly, that's similar to how Intersect Underlying worked when it was "broken".
It looks like there may still be some bugs (Saurav's weird shadows, Frank's stone problems, and maybe something with the fade-in of the colour), so I will go back and try to find out what's happening. Please let me see any project files if you think there are problems with this feature, because they may only occur with particular setups that I have not tried already.
Matt
Thanks, Matt, for the official reply. :)
I understand that it was broken, I just wish I understood the fixed version better, the parameters to me are confusing.
Moved this portion to here... http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5572.msg57520#msg57520
I think the 'intersection zone' is the point connecting the underlying layer and the surface layer itself, the zone is measured outwards in both directions from this point? If there's an intersection zone of, say 2, does this mean the zone is 1m into each layer from the mid-point?
Is 'intersection shift' the displacement amount of the intersecting parts of the layers, with 'minimum intersection shift' being the lowest it's allowed to displace?
These settings, when used in conjunction with the displacement/offset options just get me lost in a mindriot.
I apologize for turning your image thread into a support topic, Frank. I'll post a general topic about this elsewhere.
@Matt: thanks for the explanation, I will certainly try favour depressions with a little displacement offset next.
Everyone else: here's an update for you. This time everything is just right, except maybe that I got a little overexcited with the roughness on the "hero" ;-)
But apart from that, I would consider this final. Also, now that I figured out the displacements for the hero rock, (I was so dumb ;-) ), the version you see now has become a very handy little tool for placing hero rocks. You know, I have been making stone beds for a long time now with various sized mixed in, but was tired of hitting random seed a hundred times, before *just the right* hero rock would appear at *just the right place* :-)
It was just a time killer in scene composition.
The hero rock is very practical, as it can be moved around and placed anywhere you want them in your scene. The hero rock, along with the stone beds, will be available through my site, soon.
Thanks for the interest in this thread thus far :-)
Cheers,
Frank
PS: sorry for the big file size and the compression artifacts... the jpeg compression doesn't seem to be overly excited about these myriads of little stones, so I had to reduce the jpeg quality a lot.
oh my !!!
very very good !
Great improvements! Very nice job.
Very good :-)
Nice variations with the stones. The artifacts spoil it a bit but otherwise very realistic.
That's a cool stone and rockbed. Perhaps you could try a little less warpy fractals and some more speckled texturing.
Also, to my taste the image is a bit too contrasted, can't see much/any detail in the shadows.
I know you prefer/like this :) so probably useless to mention lol ;D
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on January 21, 2009, 06:22:27 AM
Also, to my taste the image is a bit too contrasted, can't see much/any detail in the shadows.
great details on my monitor ^^
Quote from: seth93 on January 21, 2009, 08:44:51 AM
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on January 21, 2009, 06:22:27 AM
Also, to my taste the image is a bit too contrasted, can't see much/any detail in the shadows.
great details on my monitor ^^
On your monitor, now you mention I must tell I looked at this at work.
hehehe i knew it !!! :D
Thanks my fellow Terrageneers ;-)
Martin, you're right though in that the contrast is pretty high and some of the detail got lost or less visible in the shadows, but I took the artisitc freedom to make it so... just because I like it better that way.
The warp amount is completely adjustable easily, so it will be simple to create more or less warped displacements, whichever you like best.
there's still a bit of chance involved whether those cut-off displacements turn up on the stone bed or not, though. I don't know if there's anything I can do about it at this point.
Cheers,
Frank
It looks better indeed at home (what a relief :))
It looks like it was created by nature ...very, very good!