I figured this would be a better place for the file. :D
Thanks for sharing this.
Yes. Thanks.
My thanks too.
Helen
wow, just tried a test render and it is really good. thanks a lot!
Thanks for the clouds! :)
Your welcome. :)
Great file I was really headed in the wrong direction with this :-[ this helps alot
thanks a lot dude !
Thanks for the file, this is great. I'm getting errors on loading though, says "ReadImage: Unable to load image" but I cant see anywhere referencing images. Works anyway :D
Richard
That's probably the file trying reference the background starfield. And by the way all, I do have new, and (I think) much improved procedural clouds (I've posted images of it here). This one was the stone age, baby step second try. ;D
Many thanks for sharing this "stone age" cloud setup. I added it to my NZ orbital render to test the cloud scale with some real world data. It works very nicely and is a big help in letting me concentrate on other aspects of this project. Attached a screengrab of a test render showing the placement of 3 additional terrains for some of the larger islands.
Glad that it helps. I hope we can see an HQ version of that some time soon; I would be very interested in seeing it in action. I'm considering posting my latest cloud setup sometime soon and I would also be interested to see how that holds up to real world data. Although be warned, it has 8 cloud layers and long render times (at least on my laptop).
Quote from: nvseal on October 05, 2007, 10:06:32 AM
Glad that it helps. I hope we can see an HQ version of that some time soon; I would be very interested in seeing it in action. I'm considering posting my latest cloud setup sometime soon and I would also be interested to see how that holds up to real world data. Although be warned, it has 8 cloud layers and long render times (at least on my laptop).
Running one now. Not unbearably slow yet ;) detail 1, aa 4. I was going to wait until I did some more surfacing on the terrain but I can't track down my landsat image of NZ so that may have to wait until I'm back at work next week... and I'm equally curious too :)
[edit] Here 'tis. They may be a bit basic but they add a lot to the overall scene. I'll PM you a link to the files I'm using when I get back to work if you want to use them as a reference... otherwise I'm more than happy to render additional tests for you.[/edit]
I like it. The clouds can use some work of course but I do think it looks pretty neat. I'm going to do some work on my newer setup (after this render I have going is over) and try to accomplish some things with the logical disrtibutions and climate zones. After that, I'll send you the tgc if you would like to use it. And yes, I would be quite interested in the files. Thanks.
Quote from: nvseal on October 06, 2007, 12:34:12 AM
I like it. The clouds can use some work of course but I do think it looks pretty neat. I'm going to do some work on my newer setup (after this render I have going is over) and try to accomplish some things with the logical disrtibutions and climate zones. After that, I'll send you the tgc if you would like to use it. And yes, I would be quite interested in the files. Thanks.
You've certainly got the gross shapes and patterns to a quite believable stage without anything that's too obviously "fractal-like". I'll send you a URL on Monday... I'm on dialup at home so even if I started now it would still be Monday before they're online ;)
I'm having a bit of a play with this setup, using the existing clouds as belending shaders for clouds with similar settings but smaller details.
Attached a second image of a single cloud layer (altocumulus) I don't think my extra fractal made too much difference when looking at the preview so I looked at some of the other settings. This cloud layer had a good outline but not much detail within it.
The most significant difference in this image has been dropping the edge sharpness down as well as the density a little. I think that with a bit more tweaking of these two settings you may find that your cloud fractals are a lot better than you think and I suspect that some of your new cloud layers may become redundant .... or you may find even better uses for them.
Did you get the animated version of TG2? It's very handy for running a series of renders with incremental settings to fine tune things.
Fantastic!
Quote from: bigben on October 06, 2007, 07:42:41 AM
Attached a second image of a single cloud layer (altocumulus) I don't think my extra fractal made too much difference when looking at the preview so I looked at some of the other settings. This cloud layer had a good outline but not much detail within it.
The most significant difference in this image has been dropping the edge sharpness down as well as the density a little. I think that with a bit more tweaking of these two settings you may find that your cloud fractals are a lot better than you think and I suspect that some of your new cloud layers may become redundant .... or you may find even better uses for them.
Did you get the animated version of TG2? It's very handy for running a series of renders with incremental settings to fine tune things.
I'm afraid I did not get animation. I'm too cheap (and to poor) to spend the extra $100. ;D
Redundancy has definitely been something I've been watching out for in my newer cloud setups. I think in my newest setup I have basically eliminated it. Everything serves some purpose. However, I have yet to go back see what I could eliminate after a polish. A few tweaks here and there and I might be able to delete one or two cloud layers. Detail is also something which -- I think -- has been greatly improved since I first made this early study. In my current setup, clouds will usually (not always) look decent from as low as 200 and sometimes even 100 km high (which seems to be the strong point right now).
Quote from: nvseal on October 06, 2007, 06:02:44 PM
Detail is also something which -- I think -- has been greatly improved since I first made this early study. In my current setup, clouds will usually (not always) look decent from as low as 200 and sometimes even 100 km high (which seems to be the strong point right now).
Definitely a good sign that you're on the right track, and of course the images you've posted have also backed that up :) I'm running some animations of settings at the moment. I'll post them when they're done as they might provide you with some extra ideas. Clouds are certainly very complex as it's like trying to combine two fractals to get a result. There's no single combination of a cloud's edges sharpness/density that will work well because it will also depend on the cloud fractal's contrast/colour roughness.
@nvseal: PM'ed a link to the terrain set for you
@everyone else: I'll release the files after some more checking of the terrain and adding a few other goodies ;)
Had another play with this file and amde a bit of headway. A couple of suggestions:
The altocumulus layer I was using as a test didn't change much with the different settings I was applying. This turned out to be due to a lower quality setting for the cloud layer. Bumped it up to 1 and things got much better although I ended up turning it into more of a cumuls layer. Dropping the fractals contrast and colour roughness got it back towards it's original frm but with better detail.
Where you have used a surface layer with fractal breakup, I'd tend to stick to settings of coverage 0.5 and fractal breakup 1, using the cloud fractals contrast and coverage adjust as respective substitutes (mainly just to reduce the number of nodes where tweaks are made)
For the cumulus clouds, my experimental duplication of the cloud fractal seems to be getting some ood results. Try duplicating a cloud fractal and set the duplicate as a blending shader for the original fractal, then divide the original cloud fractal's feature and lead-in scales by 100.
I'll post the image when it's done.
@bigben
So, after two years and three months, we're still waiting...
Must be either a piece of s*** computer or an illogically large render. :P
Miss your constant updates and all of your experimenting, BigBen. Thanks for sharing what we have here.
I miss him too. I was a lurker at that times. I remember some topics he made that i read like an ongoing crime investigation .
The rainbow topic for example :)
Kadri.