Hi guys,
as I've been working on my new rock wall surface preset, I can't help but to be amazed (again) about the wonders that TG2 does with transforming a simple heightfield (or any other surface for that matter), into a shiny, amazingly detailed world. How it magically becomes a *world* that's photo real, and that bends to your imagination as the creator of that world.
So as i said, I have worked long hours on creating a rock wall surface that I like and find believable. That was done in a "proof of concept" environment with lots of testing, trial and error, educated guesses and stupid mistakes :)
I am creating this little thread to demonstrate to you how powerful TG2 is, particularly with displacement and creation of small scale detail. To begin with, here's the "raw" heightfield that I have used.
So welcome to the horseshoe bend:
(the further updates may take a while, but I will add them)
Cool topic-idea. According to this idea I did/showed something similar in my Yosemite Valley image. The power of TG2 is incredible when it comes to stuff like this. Looking forward to see this evolving :)
Cheers,
Martin
and here is what the rock surface does to it:
and a close up crop when rendered 4000 px wide:
Wow, fantastic work, Frank! That is some of the best rock work that I have ever seen come out of this program.
thanks! :)
I thought as a next step, I will gradually switch on all detail generating elements of the rock surface (in slightly smaller renders), so you all can see what it is capable of, and also to get a glimpse into the thought process of getting there.
Frank
Step 1:
add a few bumps and horizontal ridges (all relatively subtle) to the raw heightfield (that doesn't have "add fractal detail applied).
Step 2:
now we add strata.....
Step 3:
the strata are too even and regular. So we add a wave form to the y extents of the strata. It's a litle bit overdone in this example, to better point out what it does. There's large scale and small scale waves (the latter you hardly see).
Step 4:
Now we subtly add a few outcrops here and there. It's just more interesting with them ;)
Step 5:
now we add a little stratified color
Step 6:
now we add a lot of rocks and rubble. Essential for the realism :)
And done :)
Hope you enjoyed this little tour :)
Very nice evolution. There are little mysteries in there (like "add a wave form to the y extents of the strata") that make me think you could easily extend this into a tutorial, and perhaps even charge something for it on NWDA CS. But then, maybe you don't want to give away *all* your secrets ;).
Also, the second image in particular is deserving of a show of its own - the only thing that is not quite perfect is that the bushes seem too regularly spread.
looks awesome frank, i like/think its better than your first version. 8)
also like seeing the different renders as you develop it :)
Awsome work. I too am intrigued by "add a wave form to the y extents of the strata" as I've played with this idea withouit much success - I'd like to know more
Mick
Dominic and Mick, it's absolutely not secret at all how the strata can be displaced on the y. Actually the setup is really simple.
Check out the attached clip file. Just add them before your compute terrain and zoom in on the "mountain" created by the simple shape shader (you may use anyother terrain, though, of course).
In a real project you would probably also restrict that clip by altitude and or slope, if you want to just apply this to the steeper parts.
Cheers,
Frank
This is amazing Frank! And you make it sound so simple, just add this and that and there you have an awesome setup :P
A fantastic start to finish walk-through Frank! Well done.
Hi Frank
Thanks, I've tried this method with varied success the problem for me is masking the effect of the y power fractal - I'll keep on trying.
BTW I've been trying to work out how to use the simple shape! Thanks the tgc shows me the error of my ways!
Quote from: Mor on February 01, 2010, 12:07:54 PM
This is amazing Frank! And you make it sound so simple, just add this and that and there you have an awesome setup :P
of course it's not so simple under the hood. You should look at this as a summary, the result of a longer development and learning process.
Quote from: mhaze on February 01, 2010, 12:49:17 PM
Hi Frank
Thanks, I've tried this method with varied success the problem for me is masking the effect of the y power fractal - I'll keep on trying.
BTW I've been trying to work out how to use the simple shape! Thanks the tgc shows me the error of my ways!
just plug the redirect shader into a surface layer, or distribution shader. There you would activate a min slope constraint to restrict the effect to the steeper parts, and an altitude constraint if you want to restrict to a certain height range.
Cheers,
Frank
Thanks for the clip Frank - more to ponder!
Now, if only you could erode that terrain as that is the only thing that tells me it is fake. :(
not really, it's a DEM, so it's naturally eroded ;)
DEM, ahh. Well that changes things then. I could not tell it was such because usually i look at the small-scale features however being a DEM that would not show up real well due to limits the the height field resolutions i gather.
Great work Frank, this turned out fantastic.
Thank you for sharing Frank! It's is always helpful and inspiring to look at a step by step like you have shown us here; on top of that little clip file goodies only add to the awesomeness :D
thank you guys
lastly, you may want to have a look at a 4000 px wide render of this. It's slightly lower quality (0.6) but the huge resolution is making up for it.
It rendered for over 6 hours, and I've used Dandelo's water trick to cut it down to this somewhat.
I came close to needing a 64 bit version while rendering. At times the memory consumption grew up to over 3 GB, and I didn't even have vegetation in this one. But well, the image is huge, so what can I expect? ;)
Overall 6 hours is quite ok, considering I needed multiple compute terrain nodes.
By the way, the "raw" heightfield render earlier in this thread rendered for 5 minutes at 1600 px wide :)
so here is the image: http://nwda.deviantart.com/art/Rock-Wall-Surface-Preset-Beta-152635449
It's just amazing to see all that detail. Try to keep the raw render in mind while looking at this ;)
Cheers,
Frank
The blown up one is so damn impressive - thanks for the the tuition, Frank.
Just brilliant - I'm in a rut at the moment, and this might be exactly what I need :)
Very, very impressive job, Frank. And a much appreciated tuition!
---Dune
Thanks for he tip Frank - I'd not thought of restricting slope, does the trick. Thanks again.
Mick
Quote from: mhaze on February 02, 2010, 05:00:22 AM
Thanks for he tip Frank - I'd not thought of restricting slope, does the trick. Thanks again.
Mick
Hi Mick, remember to add a compute normal before the slope restricting shader, otherwise TG2 will assume the normals of a sphere.
Cheers,
Frank
The detail in the foreground of the 4000px image is just astonishing - fantastic work Frank. Will you be posting it over at CG Society?
So, when does this little preset go on sale? ;)
Quote from: domdib on February 02, 2010, 05:35:12 AM
The detail in the foreground of the 4000px image is just astonishing - fantastic work Frank. Will you be posting it over at CG Society?
So, when does this little preset go on sale? ;)
Thank you Dominic.
Actually I was just going to write about that I have discovered a flaw in the setup, in that the outcrops and cracks are not shining through correctly.
I think I have fixed this and will render another big version tonight, also with a couple plants.
I am wondering if I should even add the water or not... any opinions?
Once I am satisfied with how this preset works, and had a little feedback from a few testers, I will write up instructions. That's not the easiest part. When writing instructions, how much do you assume the user can understand? That will require a few days usually.
So if everything works fine and I continue to have time during the evenings, I may have it ready to go on Sunday, at which point I'll also post this on cgtalk - although I don't expect much interest from there, but we'll see.
Cheers,
Frank
This is really good work so far and is going to be a wonderful preset! ;D
About the water in your image. I like it better without.
I certainly would like to test it and in my opinion a couple of little things could be improved. The texturing for example which slightly lacks variation somehow, although you've used a couple of colors.
Maybe some more slope restricted way of texturing gives a better impression of actual real different types of soil/layares/rockstructure. As is now it looks a bit the some throughout the whole terrain.
The trick for coloring stones works very good.
All in all this will be a wonderful learning tool for everyone :)
Generally, when I write instructions for my presets I try to assume that the users vary from inexperienced to very experienced.
I try to go through every relevant node and deal with the why and how of the settings. This is for the more inexperienced users.
After that I try to drop a few suggestions on what is possible as well and that's for the more advanced users.
If you like I can try to help :)
Cheers,
Martin
Thanks Martin! Of course I am happy to call on your help with putting together instruction. All in all the preset will be relatively simple to use, because I managed to set better default values for everything now.
(I figured that a few elements didn't quite work as expected in the previous version, so here's V2).
Only 1680 px wide this time (sorry) ;)
Cheers,
Frank
I'm going to be hyper-critical here, Frank, forgive me - I think I prefer the previous one. But that might be because the greyish surfacing on the flat areas doesn't seem to go with the new, redder rock; and this also accentuates the slightly implausible thinness of some of the strata layers in the foreground. Also, the strata 'waving' isn't so obvious here.
(P.S. many thanks for the clip file - I've integrated it into v.2 of my rock surface :))
it's true, in this test render the slope constraint for the rubble ran a little short...
I thought that may happen, hence the smaller render size. I thought I'd post this anyway.
very nice and I think if the grey will be covered a bit by rubble, then it will look fine!
Very nice work!
It's been said about the rubble, agree with that.
The texturing of the terrain has improved, looks smoother and less noisy.
A next thing which might be interesting to add is some slope restriction and breakup to the strata.
Of course you could go on and on with adding elements etc., but at a certain moment you'd end with a very complex preset.
Yeah I'll leave it at that. There already is a slope restriction and breakup to the strata. So it's easy to strengthen the effect if you so wish :)
Cheers,
Frank
this is looking great Frank, I am reworking my Grande Massif with some strata, it is tricky stuff to get looking right, (did you get my pm?)
Hey Jason, thanks.
yes I got your pm. Can you provide me with your email? I would like to send you something that may help.
Cheers,
Frank
no worries, Frank, I have pmed it to you :)
ok, so here is the final render.
I have accentuated the strata fading and tried a new color scheme (although that can of course be customized to everyone's individual taste), and corrected the slope constraints for the rubble so that the grey remains only here and there.
I have tried to render this at 4000px again, but with water and vegetation, the app needed too much memory and threads started dying (afer 6 hours.... :'( )
It's really painful in cases like these, as you know the computer has another 4 GB free RAM, but the app can't allocate it.
anyway, rendered again at 2500px wide, which also gives quite nice detail. This time, at quality 0.7, GI 2/2 the render finished in under 3 hours (but still scratched near the memory limit).
Enjoy :)
http://nwda.deviantart.com/art/Next-Iteration-Rock-Surface-152776937
Frank
Ah yes, this looks really good :) Great work!
Cheers,
Martin
Superb!
Wow! :o
Maybe you can help me figuring out one small thing; there're small white spots in the image, is this the water you talked about? Doesn't distract, I'm just curious... ;)
no that's a bug. No idea why it happens.
Wonderful work Frank. Really beautiful results. I wonder though how this would interact with a DEM of higher resolution. I'm pretty sure DEM data is available for this area at 10 meter resolution. Yours looks like 30 meter (guessing). Could be an interesting test.
As for the white spots, you can try getting rid of them by increasing Displacement Tolerance (e.g. to 2) in the Planet object, but this will increase render time. Hopefully this won't be necessary as much in the future with heavily displaced stuff like this (lots of Martin's work also has this problem, for the same reasons of heavy displacement).
- Oshyan
This is definitely one of your best renders. Nice work!
thank you all
@Oshyan: the white spots are no big deal for stills, so I don't mind much, as they're easy to clone-stamp away :)
I would rather have liked to be able to render this in 4k px wide, but that will eventually be possible with the 64bit version anyway I suppose.
Cheers,
Frank
Oshyan, thanks, I recently noticed these white spots when I was testing sparkle and intersection rules for some snow setups I was playing with. I found they were mainly appearing in 'displacement intersection' setups with smoothing enabled, right around the intersected areas.
I'm going to dig and see if I have any of these files still saved with these spots. I remember I managed to get rid of them but it wasn't by increasing displacement tolerance. I forget exactly what I done.
I don't suppose your setup is using displacement intersection parameters anywhere, though, Frank? Do you have any stone or dust layers using displacement intersection here?
no, not at all in this case.
Mmm-hmm. :D
Seems they're not that specific then, the dots.
I had around 100 of those white spots in my deep forest image...no intersect underlying either.
I really think the number of displacing powerfractals is related to this. You don't have to do extreme displacements to get it, just many displacements (ok, which you could call extreme as well then, but you get my point).
Too bad about the white spots, otherwise it is absolutely stunning!
Quote from: dandelO on February 04, 2010, 04:56:33 PM
Mmm-hmm. :D
Seems they're not that specific then, the dots.
;D Bloody little dots! ;)
opened a new thread for this....