Trying something along the lines of the old windows wallpaper Bliss with an added tree
using Wallis' grass and old pine which are both excellent,
question I have is how do I get proper looking bark on the trunk nothing that I tried worked it stays flat as pic with standard colour image on trunk of model, tried adding various levels of displacement, displacement image, image map shader connected to object. The bark texture that comes with the model looks great but that ain't what appears here, it's kind of blurred and stretched around the object. Any help appreciated.
[attachthumb=#]
an ok picture but i didnt like the texture on the tree and a could see the grass stop
Not a bad effort. The composition is there, the landscape is there too. I like the shape of the tree, it's interesting, the texture isn't though. Also the branches seem to taper off towards the trunk.
A trick I found with grass populations, is to use a distance shader to taper off the population, then use a surface shader with matching colours to take over for the mid to distance. Saves shed loads on the render, it also allows you to add some variance of colour over larger areas.
Nice touch with the close-in stalk near left.
Thanks Hetzen, yes I intend to amend the grass pop as it is rather immense and isn't at all required really for distance.
I think I've figured out the texture on the tree have to use 'through camera' 'image projection' and keep displacement down as too much creates some very strange results.
If an object is say 10 meters high and you decrease it to 1 meters, the displacement gets relatively big. And vice versa. They should be 'in line' with eachother. Another point is that in the object file (making) a certain measure (number of elements, I thought was the word) is given to the trunk, and the texture gets 'the same' measure. Hard to explain. It seems like the texture is too big for the number of elements of the trunk, so try a finer one, and see what happens...
If you resize/rescale the tree using the scale functions of the single instance object, you have to scale the images, procedurals to fit the new geometry.
@ Hi tee...
I've made for you a render of the Oldpine... trying to get bumping trunk and brunch...
If this is what your are looking for then make a reply and I try to explain what I have done...
OK it's difficult for me to explain but I'll try...
first thing in the oldpine dir I've created "pinebark2_bump.jpg" and "pinebark_Bump.jpg"
second thing in the TG2 I select 'Surface Shaders' Tab -> Multi shader 01_1 -> Go to 'Multi shader 01_1'
-> shader 1 ->Branch go to 'Branch' then select 'Displacement tab' changing 'Displacement Multiplier' from 0.01 to 0.05.
->for the 'Displacement image' I've loaded 'pinebark_Bump.jpg'
-> change of the 'Displacement offset' from 0 to 0.03 (you can try other values) that 's all...
repeat the same thing for shader 1 ->Trunk except for the 'Displacement image' I've loaded 'pinebark2_bump.jpg'...
I'll attach the necessary files and the TGD file...
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Edit*
for the pinebark2_bump.jpg ,I can(t upload it (too big) , convert pinebark2_bump.tif to pinebark2_bump.jpg increase contrast and luminosity that's all...
I too have had a quick fiddle and came up with this. I have zipped all the files, including the maps and the displacement maps and the new TGO and you can download them from here http://www.gintdev.co.uk/mr-miley/Mileys%20modded%20Walli%20Old%20Pine.zip (http://www.gintdev.co.uk/mr-miley/Mileys%20modded%20Walli%20Old%20Pine.zip)
It looks a bit like this:-
Miles
Thanks MrMiley, downloaded :)
Gosh lots of variables to what would seem a simple thing, I did increase the size of the tree considerably which obviously had a affect.
Thanks aymenk, mr miley, njeneb and dune for the input I'm going to go a see if I can make sense of it and make it work.
Well I tinkered and tinkered and couldn't get the old tree to look how I wanted, so changed that and lowered pov slightly. Used distance shader on grass so it only appears on the immediate hill.
http://private-tee.deviantart.com/art/Bliss-131385759
That works much better. I bet it rendered a little quicker too.
Just a couple of things which may improve this a little more. On your tree leaf shaders, it would be good to get some translucency and a tiny bit of reflectivity going on on those leaves, to help the tree pop out a little more.
The composition could also do with something to focus on within the frame you've created, be that a forest, or maybe a lake object, a river or a dusty track, or just a variation of surface colour on some of the mid ground peak's slopes, or just larger patches of colour variation in the sevanah grass. The painted shader could be of use here. Make a copy of your camera node (so that you have a saved reference of where your POV is) then elevate and rotate down over the area you want to paint your feature (this stops your brush strokes disapeering of into the horizon, and tends to stop related TG crashes). Then paint an area to put your forest/road/river etc.
Lastly, I'm afraid your clouds need some work. They look a bit cartoony. Although I'd leave that for now, just let them cast their shadows on the landscape and come back to them later.
But this does have a lot of potential of being very good.
Cheers
Jon
Nice image, however its a little too weighted too the left foreground, also due to the sight line the visual focus goes to the mid middle ground and mid background of the image which the eye excerpts the central visual focus to be, but these areas are empty space. Negative space need sensitive handling in art, and in this instance the viewers eye is not enraptured as this composition demands that it should be.
This image has asymmetric instead of symmetric balance that takes the viewers attention too were perhaps it should not be; unless there is a deeper reason for taking the eye of the viewer on two opposing visual journeys within the same image. Overall a nice image, but its message is not immediately discernible too the viewer. ;D
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
I guess I have to make a new, free, gnarly tree thing ;-)
Quote from: Walli on July 30, 2009, 08:14:18 AM
I guess I have to make a new, free, gnarly tree thing ;-)
yeah...go on please!!!!
:D
Thanks for the comments, the thing I'm finding with Terragen and this type program is there can always be an improvement, a slight tweak, a different approach to a certain section and it's never ending and I'm constantly learning from using the program, looking at other work here and elsewhere on net doing tut's etc, but you have to draw the line somewhere and say ok that's enough. Maybe I'll go back to it when I've upgraded my system, at the size I rendered it it took 43hrs which is pretty hefty.
So I've got some pointers to look at now
trans and reflect on leaves
the camera node info is very interesting I wouldn't have thought of that, I would have just dabbed in the middle distance there and hoped for the best from my pov.
Clouds hmm I followed Franks tut and was pleased with my result. What I actually did was do the clouds in a fresh project and tweaked till I got a cool looking skyscape of clouds and saved clip file the inserted into this project, of course my pov and amount of sky in pic was different from the cloud project so clouds didn't appear quite the same. but sure that's something to work on.
Cyber-Angel is an Art critic by day no ? I understand where you're coming from completely but my inspiration was from a minimalist perspective and the idea of coming across a scene like that with just grass and hills as far as you can see you would be drawn naturally to the tree and perhaps take a load off and enjoy the view grab something to eat drink, plus I though the sky was pretty bold anyway. I did have the idea of putting a headstone under the tree as someones fav final resting place, but didn't pursue it.