Planetside Software Forums

Hi guys,

I've started this scene. So far it just has Walli's firs (1 model) and a tree I've made myself (using the textures from a xfrog model). Then it also it has my procedural grass with color variations. And that's it - yet.

I kind of like the "place" and I'm looking for inspiration and ideas of where to go from here.

Regards,
Frank

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Looking quite nice Frank.
Do I see correctly you used the leaftextures from the cracked willow?

yep! They're the nicest on the entire library.

Looking good so far Frank. I see what you mean about the "place". The terrain has a nice shape to it. I'd make it more of a meadow with some nice wild flowers of various sorts mixed through your grass.
Lots of potential.

Hey this looks great! As always!
Is your procedural grass open source? :P
I love it!!

Good one as usual Frank,

I agree with Kevin, this one has lots of potential. Lots of terraces where you could re-arrange the vegetation or add some stones/rocks.

If I could create an image like this, I would use a lot of different settings of light, haze (mist?), camera angles and probably end up with 20 different images  :)

Great job so far Frank.

The terrain has a glacial moraine look to it. A couple large rocks 'dumped' into the more open areas would look good. Add some brush around them, and some taller weeds near them also. Perhaps some sheep or goats.

The 'Frank' tree looks like I envisioned the malyorn(?) trees from Tolkien's books.

good work - I like the fluffiness of the grass in the distance.

Thanks everyone! The procedural grass is almost what I used in this render (which is one of my favourites of my own work from the past year) http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=10752.msg111119#msg111119

I'll definitely add some rocks and other small vegetation. I'm wonder if I may want a treaded path somewhere... Maybe some photoshopped people having a picknick farther away? Not sure about fog... well, maybe.

Cheers,
Frank

A few tweaks further, I've come to this point so far....

I need to do something about the foreground rock and the gras poking through, and I forgot to remove the white reference sphere I placed somewhere :D
I also will add more different flowers and other vegetation.

The flowers are Walli's Crocus Pack by the way.

Cheers
Frank

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Looking really great Frank!

I'd like to share 2 sugestions though:
The tree in the very foreground is obstructing the view, it's too much "in your face". I'd mask that specific instance out with a distance shader for example.
The procedural grasses look very good, however, in the foreground I'd still replace them with models as it is too obvious procedural there.

Else I think it is really good and I'm looking forward to see your own suggestions incorporated (as well).

Cheers,
Martin

agree with Martin, apart from these minor nitpicks, this is fabulous!

Martin nailed what I would have suggested.  That front tree has got to go!  I really like what you've done with the rock clump groups.  It looks really natural to me.

Quote from: RArcher on January 31, 2011, 02:09:45 PM
Martin nailed what I would have suggested.  That front tree has got to go!  I really like what you've done with the rock clump groups.  It looks really natural to me.

ok, ok.... Walli: can you make me a sawed-off tree stump, please? ;-)

I think Marc Gebhart made one, a sawed tree trunk that is.

http://web.me.com/marcgebhart1/Trees/Welcome.html

Very nice, Frank. You reminded me of using the procedural grass (instead of my flax and wheat). I never did, but it is very handy stuff. I think yours is a bit too bleached, especially on the hilltop right. And there's a white blob lurking behind a tree...

Sooo, here's the next version

What do you think?

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the grass is really good looking, the light is sharp and soft at the same time, the pov is really nice too.
the sky is great to me, really simple and realistic.
and the overall looks like a painting, and to be honest really different from your usual renders :)
great great render, dude ! ^^

I like it. This series has inspired me to try similar attempts. Did you use 'Final Normal' for the positioning of the firs on the right?

Quote from: Dune on February 01, 2011, 02:36:01 AM
Very nice, Frank. You reminded me of using the procedural grass (instead of my flax and wheat). I never did, but it is very handy stuff. I think yours is a bit too bleached, especially on the hilltop right. And there's a white blob lurking behind a tree...

Yeah I exaggerated the exposure a bit, so that part of the grassy area turned almost white. It should be better in my latest render above.
My procedural grass isn't really procedural. It's just the built-in grass clump, but with customized settings and procedural coloring, so that I get large scale patches of greener and browner grass.
The white lurking blob was a reference sphere which I forgot to disable... also removed in the latest render.

cheers,
Frank

Quote from: njeneb on February 01, 2011, 02:37:31 PM
I like it. This series has inspired me to try similar attempts. Did you use 'Final Normal' for the positioning of the firs on the right?

Good to hear that something I did inspires someone else :)

Final Normal doesn't have anything to do with the positioning of these populations.
I just defined a density fractal for the distribution of this population, so that this density fractal would create a mask with white patches, so that the trees are populated in clumps rather than evenly.

Regards,
Frank

Ok, I was wondering how the angle away from vertical was done.

I guess that's just the distortion from a slightly too wide FOV.

... although I also usually add a little tilt to the object in the populator. 2-3 degrees.

beautiful Frank!

This looks really balanced and peaceful. Very nice image.

Very nice, with the slightly darker grass (and without the reference blob). Well balanced scene. I'm not sure about the central pillar of rocks, though. It looks out of place. By the way, what is your undergrowth, I like those shrubs, are they XFrog species?

Quote from: Dune on February 02, 2011, 03:24:52 AM
... By the way, what is your undergrowth, I like those shrubs, are they XFrog species?

No, none of them are xfrog library model. They are all NWDA: 2 species of the dry bush bundle pack, one from the crocus pack, and the mouse ear pack, and the fress grass 1 pack. That's all, besides the grass clumps of course.

@Dune: hmm, I think the balanced rocks (the pillar, which are multiple rocks stacked) are actually a strong scene element. An art object located in a nice park, sort of...

I felt the grass looked like mowed grass, so the whole scene seemed to be showing a rather gardened area, in which case it was crying out for an object of human art :)

Then I would choose for a 'real' statue or a bust like in posh gardens, perhaps overgrown with lichen/moss/ivy....

one more variant of the same with late afternoon, evening type lighting.

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Maybe it is a Canadian forest scene  ;)  We stack rocks like that everywhere: Inukshuk (http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=inukshuk&cp=4&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=NZxJTfS9Ior5sgb128mbDw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CE0QsAQwAw&biw=1280&bih=834)

I like the new lighting a lot Frank and all the little details are really nicely done.  The clumping of the individual bits really makes it stand out.

thank you very much, Ryan :)

its a very nice and peaceful scenery!

Very sweet lighting Frank :)

I am wondering: if you look at the striking light on the grasses to the right and compare that with the striking light on the grasses on the left; there's a clear difference in strength and saturation of the lighting colour. It looks like there's more glow on the right section.
Logically, as in TG2 the glow/glow power settings enable you to control the falloff of the atmospheric glow.
So my question is: is this difference I observe due to these glow settings or something else? In my opinion the lighting strength and colour saturation should be the same, hence the scale of the scene (it's not continental scale we're looking at).

My guess is that you can influence this with the atmosphere node, but can't get it as I think it should be. The problem is similar to getting highlights in snow or water to be present throughout a whole image, instead of only near the sun.

I think this is quite an issue with TG2, that you can't control this completely (at all). See this blenderguru tutorial which shows how you can "force" highlights" throughout a scene:
http://www.blenderguru.com/let-it-snow/ (http://www.blenderguru.com/let-it-snow/) This is what TG2 needs IMO.

Cheers,
Martin

Spot on Frank; nothing beats a low sun lighting on vegetation. Your lighting and point of view here is striking.

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on February 03, 2011, 08:15:33 AM
Very sweet lighting Frank :)

I am wondering: if you look at the striking light on the grasses to the right and compare that with the striking light on the grasses on the left; there's a clear difference in strength and saturation of the lighting colour. It looks like there's more glow on the right section.

Thanks Martin, glad you like it too!

The differences is lighting and on these parts of the image are solely due to that the left side is in partial (soft) shadow, and the right part isn't.

@Walli, Bob: thank you as well :)

Regards,
Frank

Great scene Frank... I really really want to know what settings you've used in the grass clumps to get that nice look  ::)

Quote from: mesocyclone on February 06, 2011, 11:46:43 AM
Great scene Frank... I really really want to know what settings you've used in the grass clumps to get that nice look  ::)

Happy to pass that on. I'll isolate it, wrap it up and put it on the Community Store.
It's been a very useful technique for me for more than one image now.
I've made it a longer while ago, so I don't remember the exact details, but it did involve completely changing the default grass clump object settings. I always thought the grass clumps looked more like develish horns coming out the ground, than looking like grass blades. If I recall correctly I have greatly reduced the xz dimensions of the clump, and streched the y instead, then adjusted the number of blades per clump. That was the main trick.
Secondly the color variations were something I had to discover for myself, and that's a useful technique on its own.
But you can see yourself once i've got it uploaded on the Community Store.

Regards,
Frank

I've uploaded it to the Community Store: http://store.nwdanet.com/terragen2store/13-objects/16-grass/85-frankb-better-grass.html

Please leave a rating or review.

DON'T FORGET TO READ THE PRODUCT DESCRIPTION ON THAT PAGE. IT HAS IMPORTANT HINTS ;-)

Have fun
Frank

Thank you Frank for this valuable information. I've never was satisfied with the 'built-in grass clumps'; however, this will extend my list of grass variables; especially for those distant views.

Regarding your latest image, I noted you have used the 'Hero Rock' both in the foreground; and, in the distance where it appears you have stacked the rocks to appear like a cairn. Is that what you did?

Bob

Quote from: choronr on February 06, 2011, 02:27:02 PM
Regarding your latest image, I noted you have used the 'Hero Rock' both in the foreground; and, in the distance where it appears you have stacked the rocks to appear like a cairn. Is that what you did?

Yes Bob, that's correct.

Thanks for sharing that, Frank