One population and six single objects. Used FrankB's stone bed and Hero rock. The distant terrain is a DEM of Moonlight Peak reduced in height. Walli's grass and the leafless bushes from a friend. Enjoy and critique please.
Bob
uh, that's a sad environment, so barren... Is it really like that?
Bob, if you want to retain the individual stone colors, you have to apply the fake stone pack last in your network. Otherwise the following surface layers will cover it all with their colors.
Regards,
Frank
looks like 15 minutes before rain in a very dry area, very well done - please do another shot, 2days after rain with all this landscape covered by green grasses and blossoming flowers ;-)
Quote from: FrankB on September 15, 2009, 02:53:06 AM
uh, that's a sad environment, so barren... Is it really like that?
Bob, if you want to retain the individual stone colors, you have to apply the fake stone pack last in your network. Otherwise the following surface layers will cover it all with their colors.
Regards,
Frank
Thanks Frank; in some areas it does look like this. This reminds me of driving north about 20 miles from my home through the Gila Indian reservation area. The mountain very much resembles our 'South Mountain' which is in walking distance from my home. The area was once a cotton farming venture which was given up a few years ago.
I will go back a take a look at my stone bed connection; I thought I had it right - thanks for the suggestion.
Bob
this looks very convincing, Bob....I like this!
Quote from: Walli on September 15, 2009, 03:09:09 AM
looks like 15 minutes before rain in a very dry area, very well done - please do another shot, 2days after rain with all this landscape covered by green grasses and blossoming flowers ;-)
Thanks for visiting Walli; you've given me a great idea. I will do some reworking of the scene. Regading the rain; we only have had 2.7 inches of precipitation this year. Usually, we have about 6 to 8 inches by December ...a very dry year.
Regarding plant populations in this scene: I tried to get very close to the ground, When I run the mouse over the bottom of the picture, I do not get any X, Y, or Z numbers. I tried both the painted shader and the distribution shader to get plants to show up in the lower area; but, they do not. Also, when placing a single object in the lower area, they only show up like they are buried in the ground. I guess I must adjust the distance above the ground until I get a reading from the X, Y, and Z positions; correct?
Bob
depending on your terrain/shading network you might want to try to use an extra compute terrain node and pipe this into the populator - so that the populator is aware of the terrain changes
It's beautiful, but I don't think I'd want to walk far. ;)
Hi Bob,
Try using the "[" or "]" buttons in the preview window when you find you can't get co-ordinates to show up. They should change the clipping distance so you can correctly position your objects.
Quote from: Walli on September 15, 2009, 05:03:33 AM
depending on your terrain/shading network you might want to try to use an extra compute terrain node and pipe this into the populator - so that the populator is aware of the terrain changes
Thanks Walli, I now remember having to do this sometime in the past. I will give it a try. Looking forward to rework the scene.
Bob
Quote from: RArcher on September 15, 2009, 10:48:52 AM
Hi Bob,
Try using the "[" or "]" buttons in the preview window when you find you can't get co-ordinates to show up. They should change the clipping distance so you can correctly position your objects.
Hi Ryan,
Thanks you for the tip. I've never tried this before. I will try it in an attempt to rework the scene.
Bob
Inky and njeneb: thanks guys for visiting; look for this WIP to be improved upon.
Bob
Quote from: RArcher on September 15, 2009, 10:48:52 AM
Hi Bob,
Try using the "[" or "]" buttons in the preview window when you find you can't get co-ordinates to show up. They should change the clipping distance so you can correctly position your objects.
Hi Ryan,
Which '[or]' button are you referring to?
Bob
The ones on your keyboard. Simply click once on the preview window to make sure that it is the current focus, then use the "[" and "]" buttons to adjust the clipping plane until the close-up ground portion of your render is visible and you can get the proper co-ordinates.
Quote from: RArcher on September 15, 2009, 02:17:57 PM
The ones on your keyboard. Simply click once on the preview window to make sure that it is the current focus, then use the "[" and "]" buttons to adjust the clipping plane until the close-up ground portion of your render is visible and you can get the proper co-ordinates.
Thanks for getting back Ryan, I tilted the camera upwards until I was able to get coordinates all across the bottom. This eliminated part of the bottom portion of the scene; but, the balance is still ok with 1/3 terrain; 2/3 sky.
You don't need to change your camera at all to make sure you get the co-ordinates to show. I am probably not explaining things well. Here is a picture reference sort of:
This is just the default scene, and I've moved the camera down to around 100mm above the ground. As you can see on my screen most of the preview window is black and the co-ordinates are not showing correctly.
(http://www.archer-designs.com/temp/viewport/viewport-clipping-1.jpg)
By pressing the "[" key once I then get this:
(http://www.archer-designs.com/temp/viewport/viewport-clipping-2.jpg)
Pressing the "[" key again I get the full view visible and the co-ordinates are working fine.
(http://www.archer-designs.com/temp/viewport/viewport-clipping-3.jpg)
Quote from: RArcher on September 15, 2009, 02:58:23 PM
You don't need to change your camera at all to make sure you get the co-ordinates to show. I am probably not explaining things well. Here is a picture reference sort of:
This is just the default scene, and I've moved the camera down to around 100mm above the ground. As you can see on my screen most of the preview window is black and the co-ordinates are not showing correctly.
(http://www.archer-designs.com/temp/viewport/viewport-clipping-1.jpg)
By pressing the "[" key once I then get this:
(http://www.archer-designs.com/temp/viewport/viewport-clipping-2.jpg)
Pressing the "[" key again I get the full view visible and the co-ordinates are working fine.
(http://www.archer-designs.com/temp/viewport/viewport-clipping-3.jpg)
I really appreciate you're taking the time to explain this procedure. I was not aware of it. I'll see if I can get this to affect my scene. Thank you again Ryan.
Bob
Hey Ryan, I think I've got it. Now hopefully, I'll be able to get those populations to show up where I want them. I seem to be learning something new every few days with this program.
Bob
Quote from: RArcher on September 15, 2009, 02:17:57 PM
The ones on your keyboard. Simply click once on the preview window to make sure that it is the current focus, then use the "[" and "]" buttons to adjust the clipping plane until the close-up ground portion of your render is visible and you can get the proper co-ordinates.
Hi Ryan,
After you establish the focus by selecting the "[" or "]", do you click on the 'look at' point to set the view? Thanks,
Bob
Bob,
All that the "[" and "]" buttons are doing are adjusting the viewport so you can correctly see features that are extremely close to the camera. It is not affecting to do with the camera or focus or anything else.
Quote from: RArcher on September 16, 2009, 04:16:52 PM
Bob,
All that the "[" and "]" buttons are doing are adjusting the viewport so you can correctly see features that are extremely close to the camera. It is not affecting to do with the camera or focus or anything else.
Thanks Ryan, when I tried to repopulate the 'Walli's' grass which had a 0.013 spacing setting, it took almost an hour to re-populate (I used the Painted shader for the grass)!
Bob
You probably do not need to use a such a small spacing for walli's grass clumps. You've set your spacing to be 13mm which is why it is taking so long to populate.
0.013 sapcing ?!
wow that's very very small !
what is your grass scale ?
Quote from: RArcher on September 16, 2009, 04:59:43 PM
You probably do not need to use a such a small spacing for walli's grass clumps. You've set your spacing to be 13mm which is why it is taking so long to populate.
I kind of realized this; but, when I first tried 0.5 and 1, I didn't get any plants to show up at all. 'a' and 'b' are set at 1000. When trying larger areas, I got just a few of the grass clumps to show up where I painted the mask.
Quote from: Seth on September 16, 2009, 05:10:43 PM
0.013 sapcing ?!
wow that's very very small !
what is your grass scale ?
To suit the proper scale, I selected 0.07 and 0.075.
oh I see :)
I always am very impressed with people working on real scales... That must be pretty tough to do everything right.
To be honest, my last renders (Promenade and all) had grass 10 meters high ^^
I found it easier to find a good pov at this size (camera moves) and the light is different "up there".
Quote from: Seth on September 16, 2009, 05:27:55 PM
oh I see :)
I always am very impressed with people working on real scales... That must be pretty tough to do everything right.
To be honest, my last renders (Promenade and all) had grass 10 meters high ^^
I found it easier to find a good pov at this size (camera moves) and the light is different "up there".
I'm planning on something like what you describe for my next image ...we'll see.
Can I ask you why you're using "real world" scale ? Is that for some bigger project or is that just because you always do that this way ?
here is my point : if you want to do very detailed ground texture (from close-up) and still have far horizon, it will be easier with fake scales...
So I was wondering why do you use real scale ^^
Quote from: Seth on September 16, 2009, 05:42:09 PM
Can I ask you why you're using "real world" scale ? Is that for some bigger project or is that just because you always do that this way ?
here is my point : if you want to do very detailed ground texture (from close-up) and still have far horizon, it will be easier with fake scales...
So I was wondering why do you use real scale ^^
I think it is a carry over habit I got into while using Terragen Classic; always looking for a well balanced scene while hunting for that good point of view. I'm looking forward doing what you suggest. It should be interesting setting up 'close-to-the-ground' compositions. After what I've learned from Frank, you and Ryan regarding this picture, hopefully the next project will yield a good close-up scene.
great !!!
That is really interesting Franck. I would have thought by your renders that you were at real scale! I always use actual scale in my images as I find it easier to think in terms of real scale when laying out tree spacing and working with the power fractals etc. Easier to keep everything relative to each other for me anyway.
agree with Ryan here :)
Bob had an issue with long population times for the grass *because* of not using real world spacing for a real world size grass clump ;)
But also, Bob, I noticed that your grass population did not sit on the last shader of the surface chain. Your fake stone bed layer is actually *drowning* your grass population in most places. This is why in only a very few instances are showing up in very few places, which you had to find by samling the area with tiny spaciing.
However, once again to Ryan's point, when I need to bring a lot of scene elements into proportion, I find I have to have them all related to one understanding of size. If you make grass clumps that are 10 m tall, and that's the only element you have, that's fine. Now if you add trees, you will have to manually change their sizes to be like 20 times taller than the grasses. Or 22 times? Or 27 times? This is unnecessary work. If you had your grass at default scale (and Walli's vegetation is always scaled correctly, and xfrog's too), You would just have to drop in the default size trees, without any further scale adjustments. Also, any other objects you might integrate, you just have to throw them in. Saves you a lot of test renders to check the relative sizes.
For the camera, the big size scales don't give any benefit. If you want to have your camera sit in between the grass blades, you can position them there regardless of the size of grasses. The render will look the same. It really doesn't matter for the horizon too, unless you make 1000m size grass. ;D
But I realize, everyone has their workflow that works for them, so I reckon all I wrote here was futile anyway ;D
Frank
Very well explained Frank. Depending where the camera sets (for close to the ground), lets say I envision a bush in the foreground in the lower right corner - then, this sets my scale for all the rest of the elements, be they rocks, grasses trees; whatever. I usually do many cropped renders and some final tweaking to get everything to look well in proportion to one another.
As for the existing grass population on the current project here, I've connected a compute terrain to the last shader per Walli's suggestion; however now, it takes damn near an hour to populate - and, I'm still not getting full coverage of grass per the painted shader work I did. I think I will disable the compute terrain and see what happens. Since I followed Ryan's suggestion of correcting the issue of not getting and XYZ numbers in the lower part of the preview window, maybe now I'll get better grass coverage ...we'll see tomorrow. Its getting late and I'm going to hit the hay.
Bob
Quote from: FrankB on September 17, 2009, 02:26:02 AM
The render will look the same.
no it won't :)
if your camera is higher, your light and atmo are different looking.
Here is the final render. Modifications included lowering the sun's altitude; added more redness to the clouds and haze; and, resized some of the bushes. I tried reseeding the cloud pattern; but, I felt the original looked the best. Ryan's suggestion to use the "["or "]" for getting XYZ coordinate number readings worked beautifully. Additionally, through Frank's suggestions, I made some adjustments to the stone bed wherein they appear more prominent. One of the Hero rocks now has a different image texture map. As I said earlier, all bushes are single objects – no populations are used.
My only regret is that I couldn't get one of Walli's wild grass models to appear as a population. When doing so (using the Painted shader), I had to reduce the plant spacing to .013 in order to get 63 of them to appear on the mask. Even then, plants only appeared on 20% of the mask. Also, it took over an hour for the populator to scan the 1000 x 1000 area. I tried doing a render of them at received many error messages – and, the render crashed. I'll be trying Walli's grasses in another scene in my next project.
Thanks to all of you out there who offered their help with suggestions.
Bob
I think it came out very well. It is worth all the work. I have noticed the populater has a few flukes also. I stopped using a surface shader as the blending shader because of this. Now I only use the distribution shader.