Planetside Software Forums

A discussion in another topic made me curious how people work with Terragen 2.  Personally I always work in real world scales as it makes the most sense to me, but I know that others make beautiful pictures without focusing on scale at all.  What works for you?

I'm sort of fuzzy, but the goal is realism in size.

I use re size for the clouds. I start in the Terrain using real values. The Shaders and the objects, I use what looks best.

I almost never use real scale :)
I use fake scale to fool people around make them believe that something is near or far away...
and I don't think it adds more works at all.
it is easier to me to populate stuff, to move around my camera, to have a good light and atmo, to have very detailed ground, etc...
and i don't know why the goal is "realism in size"... do you think my renders are less realistic because i don't use real scales ?
hehe
ask Martin, too ;)

At the beginning I was for real-scale - now I go for the most visual effective PoV and adjust the scale accordingly.

I generally try to keep things to scale, it just seems to make life easier, but ultimately that is a personal preference.
:)
Richard

If I am ever going to render a Terragen 2 scene in Maxwell Render, I will do it with real world scales :)

Regards,
Terje

Quote from: sjefen on September 17, 2009, 01:28:40 PM
If I am ever going to render a Terragen 2 scene in Maxwell Render, I will do it with real world scales :)

How can you do that?
:)
Richard

Quote from: cyphyr on September 17, 2009, 04:11:12 PM

Quote from: sjefen on September 17, 2009, 01:28:40 PM
If I am ever going to render a Terragen 2 scene in Maxwell Render, I will do it with real world scales :)

How can you do that?
:)
Richard

a better question would be "why?"

I tend to agree with Volker, I choose a good POV and adjust everything regardless of scale. :D

I try to keep to real world scales, though working with models can make this confusing (microscopic trees and giant grasses!)....although sometimes, Volker's approach can work equally as well!

The only time I would go to enhanced scales, is when and if I need values in the nodes less than 0.01. But because most of the time I'm jumping between programs, real world units really help.

Quote from: goldfarb on September 17, 2009, 04:42:10 PM

a better question would be "why?"

Because Maxwell renderer is a renderer which more or less emulates lighting rather than simulating it.
Maxwell approaches real world lighting by applying real physics and therefore you should use real world scales otherwise the results will be very different.

Quote from: Seth on September 17, 2009, 10:49:04 AM
I almost never use real scale :)
I use fake scale to fool people around make them believe that something is near or far away...
and I don't think it adds more works at all.
it is easier to me to populate stuff, to move around my camera, to have a good light and atmo, to have very detailed ground, etc...
and i don't know why the goal is "realism in size"... do you think my renders are less realistic because i don't use real scales ?
hehe
ask Martin, too ;)

Ghehe indeed :)

If you work with TG2 alone, no 3rd party 3D apps, and also only make still images then it is not important at all to use real world scales.
It's only time-consuming and doesn't necessarily give better looking results. It just makes TG2 life a lot easier.
Like Franck (and Volker finally changed his mind too I see! ;)) I'm only interested in how it looks, regardless the correctness of the scales.

There's one drawback for example you might run into using a very big diameter for softshadows to get the look you want.
Consequently you would need a lot more sampling and thus way bigger rendertimes.

The biggest scales cheat I've ever made was with this image:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/gallery/f/tg2/TU-A-Brand-New-Day-Full.jpg.html (http://www.planetside.co.uk/gallery/f/tg2/TU-A-Brand-New-Day-Full.jpg.html)

This one is scale-wise ridiculous ;D The foreground trees are 8x bigger than the background. The grasses are about 1/6 of the foreground trees. The lake is 1000m across. The middle trees I can't remember exactly.
Anyhow, no one ever mentioned that it looked off at first sight, nor at second sight etc. ;)

To get back on no 3rd party 3D apps and no still images: yes, of course. If you need to export your TG2 work to other apps then it probably would really pay off to use real world scales. Depending on the scaling options and how easy to do in that app as well.
Also, "wrong" scales in still images often work well, but when the camera starts flying through then it inmediately becomes apparent that they aren't correct.

So far my first cents about scales :)

Martin

I'd like to add to this that as a beginner I'd certainly would not try to focus on scales, but rather on getting to know the functions etc.
It would probably only make things more frustrating.
I'm quite experienced now with TG2 and still I find it quite difficult to build a real world scale scene.
Only my NWDA products use real world scales.

Quote from: Tangled-UniverseAnyhow, no one ever mentioned that it looked off at first sight, nor at second sight etc. Wink

Hmm now you mention it it dose look a little ... nah it looks perfect lol.

Quote from: Tangled-UniverseIf I am ever going to render a Terragen 2 scene in Maxwell Render, I will do it with real world scales Smiley

Quote from: goldfarba better question would be "why?"

I get why, Maxwell can produce some astonishingly good accurate results, I just don't get the "how". How on earth do you render a Terragen scene in Maxwell? I thought Maxwell needed all surfaces and objects exported in its own format via a plugin. Or are talking about rendering scene elements in Maxwell and comping them in to a Terragen rendered scene?
:)
Richard

Most of the time i don't care about 'real world' scale.

Quote from: cyphyr on September 18, 2009, 06:41:24 AM

Quote from: Tangled-UniverseAnyhow, no one ever mentioned that it looked off at first sight, nor at second sight etc. Wink

Hmm now you mention it it dose look a little ... nah it looks perfect lol.

Quote from: Tangled-UniverseIf I am ever going to render a Terragen 2 scene in Maxwell Render, I will do it with real world scales Smiley

Quote from: goldfarba better question would be "why?"

I get why, Maxwell can produce some astonishingly good accurate results, I just don't get the "how". How on earth do you render a Terragen scene in Maxwell? I thought Maxwell needed all surfaces and objects exported in its own format via a plugin. Or are talking about rendering scene elements in Maxwell and comping them in to a Terragen rendered scene?
:)
Richard

Hi again,

When I said that I only meant that I don't go for real world scales cause I don't believe it matters with Terragen 2's renderer. What works best is good enough for me.
Sorry for this confusion.

Regards,
Terje

If its something quick I dont bother but for anything where I have a plan I'll use accurate scale

I like to use real scale especially when using models I've made -- at least as a starting point.  A 10m tree next to a 300m cliff should render to something that "looks" realistic as far as scales are concerned.

Of course there's always the artistic part (wish I had some of that) where some creative scaling enhances the scene.

So I guess a combination of real to adjusting is probably a workflow that would for most.  The really gifted artists can most likely scale an object right away because they "know" what it will look like in the final scene.

Another reason I like to keep things to scale (or at least "a" scale) is incase I need to reuse them in another image ...
:)
Richard

Quote from: jaf on September 19, 2009, 12:07:05 PM
A 10m tree next to a 300m cliff should render to something that "looks" realistic as far as scales are concerned.

and a 100m tree next to a 3000m cliff should look the same, except for the light and atmo ;)

here is my point of view about realistic scale :
as far as you only use TG2 and don't import anything in another app, it is "useless".
for example, try to do a macro pictures or even a close up with real scale... you are limited to 1 mm detail, right ? 0.001 is the ultimate limit (and TG2 hates this value)
but as for my self, for example if my grass is 10 m tall instead of something like 10 cm, the little rocks around it will be something like 3 m tall and that allow me to give them a lot of details because the scale is 3 so i can add a lot of PF or fake stones up to 0.001. Now if you work with 10 cm gras (scale 0.1) i would be very surprise if you can have the same detail because your smallest scale will still be 0.001.
I don't know if i made myself clear, it is hard to explain that in english for me...
i'll try to write it differently if what i said is not understandable

If I model a tree that in nature averages around 10m high when mature and maybe a month later I model a 1.5m high fence, I can reuse both in a scene without messing with scales because I know they both are scaled realistically to each other.  And to TG2 too (need to add a "two" here for a complete cycle  :D)

I could rescale everything when needed, in Lightwave or TG2, but having reusable models without worrying about rescaling works better for me.

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on September 18, 2009, 06:19:36 AM
The biggest scales cheat I've ever made was with this image:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/gallery/f/tg2/TU-A-Brand-New-Day-Full.jpg.html (http://www.planetside.co.uk/gallery/f/tg2/TU-A-Brand-New-Day-Full.jpg.html)

This one is scale-wise ridiculous ;D The foreground trees are 8x bigger than the background. The grasses are about 1/6 of the foreground trees. The lake is 1000m across. The middle trees I can't remember exactly.
Anyhow, no one ever mentioned that it looked off at first sight, nor at second sight etc. ;)

It always looked to me like you were bending scale and distance in this image ;)  Maybe some people don't notice it, but others will. I do like the image however!

Matt

I have noticed that artists who paint landscapes traditionally do not use scale conventionally. They exaggerate some elements.