In the spirit of creating user-specific megathreads related to user-specific projects and pictures, I decided to establish my own "chronicle" in which all of my work and graphical "musings" will be documented from now on. Whenever I have something fun or (at least in my view ;)) beautiful to share with you, I will put it here in this topic. So, with that being said...
Old Pals - get your bearings and stay tuned.
Newcomers - welcome to my workshop!
And to put something in to get the wheel spinning... Here are my first few shots on the new "Wetlands" project. The ones here, are literally third and fourth test renders made for this project and will require a lot of time to reach the intended result (whatever that is...). What I like about it, however, is an irregular, diverse shoreline akin to spacious bayous seen around the world.
Now, as yet one more colorblind person, I can't shake the feeling that the green, grass colors are waaaay off... So if you see some strange colors at, what was essentially supposed to be a healthy, lush foliage, please point it out and let me know the direction in which that should be changed. :P Another challenge that I see, would be a realistic placement of reeds along the shoreline and in the water.
[attach=1] [attach=2]
Good idea of yours, and hopefully it'll be a long, long thread. Good luck with the bayous. Green is very bright indeed but as it happens, Hannes made the swatches you probably already found: https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,26527.0.html (https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,26527.0.html)
Quote from: Dune on May 08, 2019, 01:12:52 AM
Hannes made the swatches you probably already found
Oh... I didn't know it. :) I thank you and I'll thank him.
To be honest, I usually make grass a bit lighter than I plan for to compensate for the darkness cast by eventual clouds. But this coloration still is too bright even with 7/8 coverage. Also, this is just two PF for the moment mixed together.
By the way...
While working on the project, I found an arrangement for a nice leafy (cabbage-like?) fractal arrangement:
[attach=1]
Feature scale is at 0.5 with 1100 lead-in and 0.005 smallest scale.
Another take on my swamp / bayou scene. Getting there... I guess?
Ground cover has been considerably darkened and some clouds have been added for a reflection.
I consider increasing the number of trees on the mounds and am also in the process of creating some cane (reeds?) in XFrog, because no other plant that I have seems to be reasonable enough for in-water use... I am pretty satisfied with surface colors - a diverse mix of 4 - 6 PFs with small scales, underwater, mud and grasses.
[attach=1]
Yes, you're getting there ;) Very nice update.
Fascinating!
Looking good but the water looks too blue for any swamp I've been in although in truth I've never done a fly over so it may well look like that from the air....
Time to bump it up. ;)
I just love making stones. In my humble opinion, the Fake Stone Shader is one of the most versatile shaders in TG and an efficient way to fill an empty landscape.
In fact, I work on stone layers for my new project. I really like the fact that you can produce decent stone coloration with just two mixed power fractals. Of course, the more color and noise types you have, the better. I've got five so far. The only thing I find weird is the strange artifact (circled in yellow), which looks as if it was a part of a pre-render. ::)
I also attach the actual "scaffold" of the project in question. The idea for this render would be to create an image of a wide river, running through a mountainous terrain. Reminiscent of one of many great rivers of North America and high mountain ranges that can be found on this continent.
That 'low poly' area sometimes occurs if you blow up stones. Paint it out (painted shader or simple shape on top, as inverted mask) is the simplest solution, or you'd have to reseed.
Great thread!
Besides I personally prefer Ulcos first idea: painting weird stones out. Reseeding causes just the same problem somewhere else (when I do it) :)
Quote from: DocCharly65 on August 29, 2019, 05:54:40 PMGreat thread!
Besides I personally prefer Ulcos first idea: painting weird stones out. Reseeding causes just the same problem somewhere else (when I do it) :)
Thank you for nice words DocCharly. As you can see in the updated image, the problem is never reproduced in the actual render. Due to "statistical" nature of the artifact let's say.
So yes, an update - here is my "El Rio" with previously presented stone layers applied. If you take a good look, there is a darker hue on stone colors where they meet water - a prelude to the wetness and reflection zone. Setting the mask for this dark hue while keeping it exactly on the right altitude was really tricky though!
Mask slightly different from that of the riverbed and I also had to complement it a bit on the right side.
And to put some perspective to the size of all features - the yellow pylon is 1.8 m / 5.9 ft.
elrio1.png
I really like the stone layers and the fact that they also show underwater. I'd like to make these even more visible but, for a moment, have no idea how I should approach this. I am hesitant to increase the water transparency value (it is already at 0.97 I think...) but I see no other option to make water even more transparent. Reducing reflection helps, but is not quite as effective.
Very nice work on the 'wetness on stones'...adds realism.
The transparency and refraction of light is physically accurate and what you see is the optical effects typically associated when viewing any surface at grazing angles where reflections are dominant.
You can play with the water roughness wave size to see if you can achieve more pleasing results, but the camera height and angle are the main factors driving this effect.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on September 05, 2019, 03:43:12 AMThe transparency and refraction of light is physically accurate and what you see is the optical effects typically associated when viewing any surface at grazing angles where reflections are dominant.
Oh, I think I get it. Like when you try to take a picture of a sky and point a camera upwards, only to see the surrounding terrain / trees go black due to lens being adjusted to deal with large amounts of light?
So it works the same way in TG? Heh...
Quote from: N-drju on September 05, 2019, 07:01:51 AMOh, I think I get it. Like when you try to take a picture of a sky and point a camera upwards, only to see the surrounding terrain / trees go black due to lens being adjusted to deal with large amounts of light?
So it works the same way in TG? Heh...
No, that's auto-exposure. Terragen doesn't have an auto-exposure function currently.
Basically what you're seeing here is just a strong reflection of the surrounding environment making the transparency less visible since the reflection is at the surface, effectively "covering up" the effects of transparency. This happens with any highly reflective surface and bright elements of a scene at appropriate angles to the camera to reflect into the camera's view.
You can try turning down reflectivity or maybe adjust Index of Refraction, both would make the behavior of the water unrealistic in a physical, real-world sense, but may accomplish your goals as far as composition, etc.
- Oshyan
Oh, wait a moment... Only now did I understand what you guys are referring to. It got mixed up a little. ;)
Since me and Martin were discussing path-tracing in this image, I thought at first that you were both referring to the water as being the source of the path-tracing problem. Now I get it that you mean transparency.
In the end, I decided against further increasing it, so it will be changed in the final.
Moving on with the project and I like the results if I may say so myself. Probably just steps away from the final render.
I changed the sun direction juuuust a bit, added clouds and some populations. I will also need to solve my path-tracing woes (counting on Martin's help too), but at least it was better in this version of the image. The forest on the left might be "deforested" a bit to let more light through - that will certainly improve things.
As far as populations are concerned... as soon as I rendered this image I realized how empty and barren the stratified mountain mass on the right is...
Any ideas how I could make it more interesting? My call is to add a cloud layer in the way of sun, to at least cast some nice shadows on it. But I'm open to suggestions. C&C welcome!
elrio3.jpg
I would throw in another few pops of trees and bushes for the hills on the right, in patches (PF), and probably lessen the wave activity, perhaps even by increasing (or reseeding) wave patches, or add an extra (empty) surface shader after the water shader, mask by PF (large smallest area or soft color roughness), and smooth part of the water. You may also consider smooth reflection.
I would also dump a few trees on the left (or add a black simple shape to the masking to make an open corridor), to have some sunlight thrown through the wood onto grasses and beach on the left.
Airplane stripes are a 'nice' touch.
More pops on the hills - check. Done. It looks more lively now without being too "bushy". I also cast some cloud shadows up there, which looks "deli." ;)
I plan to leave the water as it is, because this is supposed to be a fast running, rapid mountain river and these are usually quite rough on the surface, due to the stone and rock debris contents underwater. But now that I think of it, I need to add some "white water" to get it right!
I just wonder how... Some noise, of a very minuscule scale, masked of course, could possibly get it done. In conjunction with a surface layer... perhaps?
Just add a surface shader after the water shader and mask it by some small voronoi ridge and bigger for distribution fractal(s), probably stretched a bit if it's fast flowing.
Christmas Time continues. So I started doodling away. With something that I have never done before in Terragen - a detail.
I try to create a snow globe. ;)
Here is my first draft. Not much happening around here:
snoglo.png
The plot twist? The flakes in the snow globe are... clouds... a circle 4000m across with several elevated ranges. The glass globe is, likewise, a huge crystal ball...
The entirety of the image is very grainy in this sample, but i have already found out that when rendered with defer atmo, HD resolution, high AA and high cloud quality, it can all be averted and look as smooth as it should. Some graininess will persist anyway, but nothing I could not tolerate. After all, natural snow is somewhat grainy!
I approach this project with a lot of modesty... because the amount of variables and challenges that this "little" job entails is staggering. I quickly discovered that I cannot achieve the same cloud visuals on a "micro" scale (clouds are not thick enough, even with a 50 density value...). Lighting is also problematic... Light is being scattered a bit differently at about 3500m height (the height this image was rendered at) and it doesn't look room-like enough.
With all these challenges (and more) I really doubt if I can push the final result into the "impressive" zone. But I'll keep trying anyway.
I'm ready for another "Snow globe" project update and I hope you will like it.
Light is a very important aspect of the render I'm trying to make. After some extensive discussion with Matt regarding the subsurface scattering and the resulting lighting effects, I have finally come to a solution that suits my needs. Hannes' idea for a fake subsurface scattering (FSSS) is one of the features to be found in this picture.
The FSSS still needs adjustments but I believe I'm on the right track. It's good to know that with such a specific lighting AA6 seems to produce a "good enough" result. And I'm really happy with how the clouds got rendered:
snoglo3.png
Next step. Depth-of-field and a background Christmas tree added. The snowman looks to be slightly out of focus already, so I need to check settings.
snoglo2.png