I was just playing around with a DEM of mount Adams and ended up with this.
The frame and some small color corrections are done in Gimp.
Hope you like it :)
This is cool. I especially like the way the cirrus clouds curve and that reflection is dynamite. You couldn't do this at 3360x1050 by any chance? ;D
Little image but beautiful !
I like it !
Yeah... I know the image is a little small, but I don't think my computer can do it much bigger.
I may do a bigger version when I switch to 64 bit.
- Terje
Pretty damned cool. Photo realistic even. I'd be tempted to use a rock population to make the distant trees, so that you could break up the flat green with little processor over head. Maybe put some beige/greys into you nearer shore line to break up the shadow detail. But to be honest, the image is strong enough as is.
It's really good. I have no critique. Maybe more vertical image area.
excellent scene...very natural looking!
Hrmph... I don't want to be the bad guy in this, as in general I think the image is excellent - but am I the only one that's bothered by the white spots in the atmosphere ??? Is it meant to be wind-blown snow? Stars?? Whatever it is, I think the image would be improved by losing it.
I think the white spots are caused by the cirrus cloud layer. It's fixable. I lower the buoyancy of the variation in the tweak noise of the density shader. I avoid this by not making the cirrus clouds so 'tight' looking.
agree with domdib, the overall is nice but the white spots are very annoying ^^
Heh... the with spots are supposed to be stars, but some of it is also a little grain in the atmosphere. It is a lot easyer to see what they really are in a bigger version, but I'll get rid of them if they are annoying.
I want to render a bigger version, but I have no clue of how to work with croping and stitching. Is it difficult? What do I need to think of?
- Terje
If you want to render the bits with detail in camera (I think that's the best one), and, say, 1 padding on the advanced tab I'll stitch them together for you.
For cropping, you may find you don't need to do any fiddling - it's dependent on the GI in your scene. If there's no GI, there shouldn't be a problem. If there is, you may find adjacent crops are lit slightly differently, leading to a visible seam. One partial remedy for this is to increase GI blurring, from its default setting of 8 to anything up to 100. If that doesn't work, another aid is in the Advanced tab of the renderer. You want to choose for Ray detail region, "Detail in crop region", EDIT - PG says "Detail in camera" - I thought that was for stitching whole renders together, not crops, but perhaps someone from PS could confirm? and then directly below that, Ray detail region padding = 1 (at least). Also, you should try to have at least 5% overlap between crops, e.g. 0-0.25, 0.2-0.45 etc. Hope that helps!
Quote from: PG on July 17, 2009, 10:31:31 AM
If you want to render the bits with detail in camera (I think that's the best one), and, say, 1 padding on the advanced tab I'll stitch them together for you.
Hi PG,
How does this work? I don't know anything about any of the methods, but if this is the best way, I want to learn.
- Terje
Ray detail padding basically makes terragen render outside of the cropped region by the value you specify (in pixels). The reason I suggest detail in camera is better than in crop region is because it keeps ray traced detail consistent across all of the crops which are particularly noticable in scenes with water and reflections.
Neus shows this quite well here (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6006.msg63080#msg63080)
As for putting them together, I do it in paint ;D Just cut out the black part, which is the part of the render that is not included in the crop, then paste each piece of the crop into one image.
Edit: I can't stop singing when listening to the Thriller album
Ok... so now all I got to do is figure out the size of the cropings and render on at the time?
I also have GI in the scene set at 2, 2, 4. Will this be a problem?
- Terje
In answer to PG, reading the second page of that thread muddies the water again as to whether it should be detail in camera or in crop. I'm confused myself now. PS, please help!!!
Brilliant picture!! I love it
Quote from: domdib on July 17, 2009, 11:42:35 AM
In answer to PG, reading the second page of that thread muddies the water again as to whether it should be detail in camera or in crop. I'm confused myself now. PS, please help!!!
I'm assuming you mean TU's post. As with everything in Terragen, it depends on the scene. The ray detail options are, if I understand Matt correctly, simply two workaround methods for the GI problems, so one will be more successful than the other in certain situations. I've always used detail in camera because it's given me the best results in the scenes I've created. Detail in crop gives you more detailed ray tracing within the region of the crop and the padding zone, absolute if you like. Whereas detail in camera gives you full detail, calculated as it would be for the full render, view-dependant if you will. That's not to say that it actually calculates the ray intersections for the entire render. It just calculates the cropped region in exactly the same way as if it were going to.
Of course this is just how I've understood it, we would need Matt, Jo or Osh to verify or completely trounce any of this :D
lovely scene! I like the sense of depth and scale.
Beautifu pano! Not sure about cirrus "white spots", but I like this pano.
Thanks guys.
The white spots are stars, but it's not easy to see in this small image. I'm working on a bigger one, but I need some help on how to set up the croping correct ::)
- Terje
"Ray detail region" and "Ray detail region padding" have nothing to do with GI. (Well, that's not entirely true, but doesn't affect GI the way you think it does.) These settings are mostly for ray traced shadows and ray traced reflections.
For crops that need to be stitched together, just set the region to "Detail in Camera", which will make each crop use the same detail region as the whole image (i.e. what the camera sees). If you do this, you don't need to adjust the ray detail region padding. If you used a padding of 0 for your original render, you should use 0 on your crops too. If you needed to use "Detail in Crop" for some reason, e.g. if you were rendering a very, very big image where the "in camera" setting is not possible, then you might want to try some padding of the crop region. Otherwise you should be OK with 0 (or whatever you had for your original image).
Lastly, ray detail region padding is not in pixels, it is a multiplier of whatever the current region is (on each side, in addition to the non-padded region).
Some more info from the changes log:
"Two new render settings on the Advanced tab which control the region in which ray traced polygons are fully subdivided. Outside of this region the ray traced polygons are only coarsely subdivided. Previously this region was the frustum seen by the rendered image or crop region, but now you can also choose to have no detail or to have detail everywhere within the camera frustum regardless of crop settings. "Ray detail region padding" can be used to enlarge (or shrink) the region. A value of 0 means no padding. A value of 1 adds a border to each side of the frustum which is equivalent to the width or height of the image or crop region, which makes the frustum 3 times as wide and 3 times as tall."
Matt
To reduce GI mismatches you can render with a higher GI sample quality. A small overlap of your crops (50-100 pixels) will enable you to correct any remaining problems if necessary.
I would test a few parts of the image to make sure before you render all of the final pieces.
Matt
Ghehe well, it seems I've was mostly wrong about the RDR feature ;D
Pity though that after months the "truth" came out...
Anyhow, I still find the following piece of explanation difficult to grasp:
Quote from: Matt on July 17, 2009, 08:02:33 PM
...
If you needed to use "Detail in Crop" for some reason, e.g. if you were rendering a very, very big image where the "in camera" setting is not possible, then you might want to try some padding of the crop region. Otherwise you should be OK with 0 (or whatever you had for your original image).
...
Matt
Ok, so we need detail in camera with region padding at 0 when rendering a large image in crops.
Only change the padding to something else if the uncropped image used it as well. Clear.
But what about the in crop?
I find these 3 lines so confusing, why might that setting not be possible?
When rendering very very big images I start rendering crops and then I'd have to use detail in camera, but now you say I might perhaps use the detail in crop setting.
When is what necessary?
Cheers,
Martin
I think it's as I said before, detail in camera uses the ray tracing calculations in exactly the same way as if you were doing the full image. If you're doing a humungous billboard advertisment, for example, then those calculations will be so vast that it will still be too slow for economical use. Detail in crop only utilises ray tracing as presented in that area, everything else is occluded. You need padding in Detail in crop so that you get a little overspill into the next cropped area, so the ray traced effects are smooth. Detail in Camera uses the same level of calculations for the entire render so every crop will have the same detail of ray traced effects.
This is annoyingly tricky to grasp though.
Quote from: PG on July 18, 2009, 07:27:14 AM
I think it's as I said before, detail in camera uses the ray tracing calculations in exactly the same way as if you were doing the full image. If you're doing a humungous billboard advertisment, for example, then those calculations will be so vast that it will still be too slow for economical use. Detail in crop only utilises ray tracing as presented in that area, everything else is occluded. You need padding in Detail in crop so that you get a little overspill into the next cropped area, so the ray traced effects are smooth. Detail in Camera uses the same level of calculations for the entire render so every crop will have the same detail of ray traced effects.
This is annoyingly tricky to grasp though.
Thanks PG, the way you explain this makes much more sense to me. Sounds logical too.
Sometimes I wonder why the release notes are not a bit more detailled.
Five more minutes of work on a bit more explanation would save a lot of debate and misunderstanding, perhaps.
Quote from: Matt on July 17, 2009, 08:15:02 PM
To reduce GI mismatches you can render with a higher GI sample quality. A small overlap of your crops (50-100 pixels) will enable you to correct any remaining problems if necessary.
I would test a few parts of the image to make sure before you render all of the final pieces.
Matt
So if I want to use 4 crops for the image it wouldn't be a good idea to just split everything in half? I need to render just a little bit extra pixels in every crops?
- Terje
Quote from: PG on July 18, 2009, 07:27:14 AM
I think it's as I said before, detail in camera uses the ray tracing calculations in exactly the same way as if you were doing the full image. If you're doing a humungous billboard advertisment, for example, then those calculations will be so vast that it will still be too slow for economical use. Detail in crop only utilises ray tracing as presented in that area, everything else is occluded. You need padding in Detail in crop so that you get a little overspill into the next cropped area, so the ray traced effects are smooth. Detail in Camera uses the same level of calculations for the entire render so every crop will have the same detail of ray traced effects.
Exactly correct.
Quote
This is annoyingly tricky to grasp though.
I'd like to make it easier to understand, and I'm open to any suggestions on how to do that.
Matt
Quote from: sjefen on July 18, 2009, 09:47:08 AM
So if I want to use 4 crops for the image it wouldn't be a good idea to just split everything in half? I need to render just a little bit extra pixels in every crops?
Unfortunately yes. There's no way to guarantee that there won't be slight differences in the GI, so some overlap is a useful security measure.
Matt
Could doing a light pass on one machine for the whole image, then cached to disk for other machines to read, to then render their allocated regions, solve this problem?
Yes, and we'll implement that feature at some point, but for very high res renders you'd probably need to render the GI pre pass at lower resolution if you do that.
Sorry, don't mean to ply another user request on the pile, but if you do look into this approach, would you also look at an efficient way of updating camera movement difference into that calculation over frames? Like Vray. Flicker free would be really important to me.
just chiming in to the original topic, to say this is a really lovely render!
cheers,
Frank
Quote from: PG on July 16, 2009, 01:33:25 PM
...You couldn't do this at 3360x1050 by any chance? ;D
I fired up Terragen 2 in Windows XP 64 bit and started the rendering at 4000x1250. It did it with no problems :).
I aslo added some other small changes and it's a lot easyer to see that the "white spots" are actually stars in the big version ;)
The problem is I can't upload it. It's to big :-\
- Terje
Can you send it to me by email (on my profile) and I'll upload it onto my server?
Sure thing PG, but I'm working on some small adjustments right now. I'll send it as soon as I'm finished.
- Terje
Hi
Wonderful Panorama!
ciao
Naoo
Oh right, yeah I couldn't upload it onto my server, it's a picky little bastard. I'm gonna try setting up my Terragen fansite and upload it on there if that's ok.
Thanks Naoo.
Thats ok PG.
I am working on a even bigger version and choosed to get rid of the stars, but when i turned them off, they where still there, only not so bright. After a while and some adjustments on other things they went away. Is this some bug or something?
Now lets see if my computer can handle a 7000x2188 render :)
- Terje
oooh. Actually that's a good point. When you render very large scenes, your resolution is tied down by only being able to fit it into 4GB, isn't it? For instance, TG2 crashes if I try to render more than 8000 pixels in width. So until we get 64bit we have to crop. I can render to about 7750 without it crashing. Even if it's just the default scene pointed at the floor.