Hi everyone,
what you see below (and you'll have to see more than the thumbnail), is a relatively advanced version of my new rock wall displacements and texturing. It's still work in progress, but I'd say it's about 85% where I want it to be.
At this stage I would appreciate your reviews and comments. The image rendered in 1:22h on my computer at 2000 x 1143 pixel. A few other render stats are: AA5, GI 1/2 + SSP, and soft lights.
I had to resize it to 1680 px wide, and also significantly jpeg-compress this image to not break the 500kB limit in this forum, but I think the end result is still worth viewing.
For testing, the new rock wall displacements and texturing (all procedural) have been put on the steep side wall of a simple shape shader. I'm planning to test this with a few DEMs, such as the hell hole bend canyon, to see if any modfications are required.
Thanks,
Frank
Wow, man! That's some bloody fantastic surfacing there. I love the green mossy textures in contrast with the red rock. There's only one small portion that I have an issue with, at the far bottom right, looks like a stretch instead of a strata but that's a small cookie in comparison. Very, very nice!
Thank you Martin, glad you like it :)
The bottom right is just a hard cut-off from an altitude constraint, which I used during testing. I thought I had angled the camera away from it :)
Cheers,
Frank
Seems like rock work is in the air, with Martin showing his as well. It looks very good to me. The only thing I'd suggest is perhaps some very small-scale displacements to roughen the surface a bit more. EDIT: I found that Volker's OneforAll is ideal for that sort of thing.
There is a lot of small scale detail, some of which got lost after the resizing of the render. Generally I am shooting for a heat and wind smoothed sand stone base, which is why it cannot be too rough.
But I agree it could be nice to add a couple of bigger, flat and sharp edged fake stone rubble, that lies on the ledges of the outcrops. That could be a nice touch.
Thanks,
Frank
I agree that the color differentiation is awesome looking, Very Nice Work!!!
Thank you :)
good wall ^^
This is excellent but I feel there should be some vertical cracks.
excellent...is that guano?? :)
ok, so this is the same technique applied to a canyon DEM.
As you can see this looks significantly differnt from the first one, and I am not exactly sure as to why.
You should have seen the render before this one. It was way to "wild", until I discovered that the fractal detail added by the heightfiled shader was just too much. So I switched that off.
Still I think the rock surface is rather nice, however as I said, I would like to figure out why it's so different from the first render.
Cheers,
Frank
I like this, its going in a direction that I'm following my self. In both images you there is a very water eroded "flowstone" effect. Great if that's what your after. I'm trying to get a more angular "blocky" effect, I'll post when I get some decent results :)
Richard
I must say, it looks very good applied to the canyon DEM.
got it now, the outcrops have been too large, plus I made a wrong connection somewhere :(
I'm making a new render with this canyon DEM...
I will also try to take some of the previous suggestions into account.
Thanks,
Frank
Nice wall , FrankB :)
Kadri.
This new technique looks very good. I don't have anything to add, or suggest. this is well beyond my skill.
Very nice Frank. Makes me want to get back to working with rock walls... too much stuff and too little time.
Very inspiring, Frank. I really like the second version. If this were in a still moister environment some vertical shiny areas (Y-stretched ridges) would be great, to have water running down the rock. But that's relatively easy to add, I'd say. The rock itself is top notch!
Dune
I prefer the second one - but both are great :)
I've made a third one, still work in progress though.
I kinda like the large outcrops, but I need to make the either fade away with distance, or apply a mask to switch them on an off in places.... (see top right corner, where you can see part of a farther canyon wall, where it doesn't look so good anymore.
Cheers,
Frank
I would be better if the rock wall were a bit farther away from the main face. Like an channeled canyon.
Coloring and displacements are very good. There are a couple very sharp areas, which look odd to me. Nothing else comes to mind for changes.
Awesome work Frank. I really like the rough details and the coloring is really great!
The voronoi based outcrops are very nice, but indeed a big part of the current problem of applying it "DEM-wide"/in the distance.
Though the voronoi 3D gives quite random shapes it often looks repetitive from the distance.
You could reduce the voronoi-displacement effect by say 50% and out further outcrops and details with PF's.
Perhaps this way you will also avoid these small disc-shaped outcrops as seen in the middle on the far left.
I'd like to have a go with this one, see if I can implement my thoughts :)
Cheers,
Martin
Crazy displacements with or without problems ... Great , Frank :)
Kadri.
the third one is really really good !
this is very interesting Frank, the results so far have been excellent!
last one for today...
Oo
damn good Frank !
lovely surfaces and displacements
My first thought was WOW, then it's too bright. After my eyes took it all in and; this is really cool work. It looks quite natural.
There is nothing quite as striking as red rock; and, your work here is very exciting. From northwestern New Mexico throughout many parts of Utah and Arizona, such landforms prevail. Your work here (and Martin's) are very much appreciated.
That last one is wonderful! The third is great too - but the voronoi in the upper-right is a little too obvious for my taste :)
next iteration. Still has some issues but getting closer.
This one is really big, 2400 px wide, so had to upload it there: http://nwda.deviantart.com/art/Rock-Wall-152084092
Here's a small crop:
The full size version is awesome. Funnily enough, the one area where it doesn't quite look right is in your crop, with the odd streaking following the contours of the outcrop. Is this a stretched power fractal at work?
yeah, this is why I picked that crop.
I think it's stretched stones primarily. I'll go figure it out tomorrow, hopefully.
Cheers,
Frank
I wish I had your skill! :'( ;D
This displacement is really breathtaking!
It's interesting to see how certain ways of doing things come out from the individual artists. This looks really good, but it looks so different from what TU and Buzzzzz have done.
Why does it look a little fuzzy?
Thank you!
@calico:
I think I've just followed a very different approach. From the beginning on I wanted big outcrops become the central element of the rock surface. I've also used a different way of coloring the surface, than I or TU have done before, which goes really well with rock surfaces like this one, and even with the stones that happen to be everywhere.
This one looked fuzzy because the stones are streching color wildly into unpredictable directions. I've fixed this now with an additional compute normal, and rendering now.
Maybe one more tweak after that until I call this new product finished.
Regards,
Frank
still a few issues in places, but definitely an improvement. Especially the cracks look really good now, to my taste :)
http://nwda.deviantart.com/art/Rock-Wall-V2-152155425
onto the next iteration....
Frank
Yes it is really better , Frank.
What was the AA and detail setting for this image Frank ?
Kadri.
AA5, GI 1/2+ssp and 0.75
... render time 1h:23min
Thanks Kadri
Thanks , Frank .
Kadri.
Bearing in mind that Frank has a Core i7...puts render time in perspective :)
It's looking great now Frank. For me, the one small fly in the ointment is there seems to be a lot of almost circular, very flat stones scattered here and there. If you could vary their shapes/displacements more, I'd say it's baked.
great observation, because that's the last thing that will be fine-tuned.
For all previous render I just threw stones onto the surface to see how they interact with the scene, but they haven't been fine-tuned in shape and size.
Additionally, some of them seem overly flat, and I will find that little bug as well.
Cheers,
Frank
The displacements are perfect! I think you have it now - would like to see a hi-qual version with slightly more subdued lighting :)
I think I've got it now... stones are looking great now.
likely I'll post 1 or 2 final renders later today....
final render 1. This is a close up.
There's a second version underway, zoomed out further.
The last one really stands out above the rest for my taste, there were things in the previous renders that I liked that were absent in the next iteration and here the things I liked most seem to be combined. This is so cool to see that TG2, although not the youngest any more (compared to the development cycles in raster-technology aka DirectX and the likes) is still able to break new ground through experienced input. :D
Thank you for this comment - I actually feel the same about this last one in comparison to all the others.
I knew the previous version all had issues and/or were not complete, but each version helped in shaping the final version, and I tried to remember which were the strong points of each, with the goal to eventually put them all together (which is not as easy as it sounds).
great !
the last one is far better. very good rock :D
ok so here is the last one of this series (hope the compression is not too bad). Thanks for coming on this little journey with me.
Frank
Just enough supination in this that it is very believable!!! Nice work!!!
Supination??
Great work, Frank.
Frank, consistently on par as always. Excellent work and detail. The one little criticsm I'd have, is the striped colouration continued over your fake stones. I would have like to have dropped them in with their own colouration further down the node chain.
The final displays the best of your work here. I would like to see this terrain structure with low light and higher decay in the atmosphere. I think it would bring out the best of textures, strata and stones.
Bob
Bob's right. I think it's over lit. Bring the sun angle down would make the deformations more apparent. Other than this, it is really awesome.
Quote from: Hetzen on January 29, 2010, 07:18:15 PM
Frank, consistently on par as always. Excellent work and detail. The one little criticsm I'd have, is the striped colouration continued over your fake stones. I would have like to have dropped them in with their own colouration further down the node chain.
hm, that's what I liked in particular: that the rubble is the same color as the rock. As per the clip though, you can seed the stone colors differently. Both the rock and the stones use the same technique for coloring, but are sourced independently, so you could make it different.
Cheers,
Frank
Secretly I wish more of my renders look this good. Please don't tell anyone! :D
Quote from: FrankB on January 30, 2010, 04:28:58 AM
hm, that's what I liked in particular: that the rubble is the same color as the rock
agree :D
Wow, Frank.
Excellent grasp on terrain shaders.
Marc
Really good work Frank. I guess the only way to get different colors of Fallen Rocks would to be haul them in by dump truck and dump them over the rim from the top. ;) I agree that normally for realism fallen rocks are the same color as the surrounding rock structures. I wonder what this would look like from the bottom up with light sprinkled across the front of the structure and not as direct as it is now. Please
Superb!!
Great work - the scale is just superb!