Inspired by the wonderful "deep" snow created by Olivier Cousinou I tried to work on something similar on my own, attempting to create a detailed snow layer with a little shiny and somewhat icy crust. The result is a bit complicated surface shader node, and now I'll try to explain with my sloppy english the path I followed. I've also attached a clip file with the entire node.
Here's a capture of the shaders complex (don't mind about the lines on top left, I have some strange issue with my video card)
(http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/7118/snapet6.jpg)
and a very poor schematic view of how they works
(http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/3746/schematic1xn9.jpg)
First of all here's Snow_base. It's a simple surface layer with a max slope constraint, intersect underlying activated (with intersection zone and intersection shift values set to 0) and the "terrain normal" option set as slope key, to render the snow correctly.
The first child surface is Snow_vertical emboss: this is the surface layer that gives vertical displacement. You can change his "thickness" by playing with displacement offset value; I've set it to 0.1
It has the same slope constraint of Snow_base, but a bit higher fuzzy zone: playing with this value permits you to change the shape of snow edges, following this scheme
(http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/3493/schematic2rn2.jpg)
The second child surface is Snow_lateral emboss: this is a power fractal shader with displacement set on "lateral only", to give a somewhat "bumpy" appearance to the snow borders.
Then we have another child surface, named Snow_grainy surface: this is another surface layer with max slope constraint set on a bit lower value than the others, to limit his action on top of the snow. It creates a fuzzy and grainy surface using a power fractal shader as displacement function, with very small values.
Finally here's a default shader named Snow_shader, used to give some shininess, reflectivity and translucency to the resulting surface.
Here are two test renders
(http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/4183/snow1zz9.jpg)
(http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/4769/snow2bin8.jpg)
note on the second image some beautiful feature like "dusty" and icy fragments, as you can see sometime in natural snow
Depending on the slope and the type of image you want to achieve you'll have to play very much with fuzzy zone and displacement offset on the Snow_vertical emboss layer, to define a good shape for the snow edges.
Hope you've understood my explanation :-\ If anyone wants to work on the .tgc file to improve it or to give some hint is very welcome!
Regards,
Lucio
Lucio!
You are amazing!
Thank you very much!
Volker Harun
excellent, thanks :)
Regards,
Will
Crunchy!
Andrew Randle
The Geostation
thanx lucio, this is great !!!
thanks :)
I'll try some winter ambientation with that. I recommend you to work and experiment over the node, any improvement would be great
Thanks Lucio. May the sunshine kiss you. :-*
cool thanks for sharing... and i have a glacial render with moraines under way so i might try pluggin this in:D.. see what i end up with
Maybe you can take it as an understatement, but I have to say that it's very impressive to discover that the deeper you go in the details of the node network, the greatest is the potential unleaded by the software, truly enormous. And it's all extremely logical and pretty simple to manage
That's incredible! I'm really impressed by the realism you've got there! Fantastic job!
Wowwww....really really amazing :) Thanks a lot for sharing one of the first "holy grails" of TG2 ;D
Nice work! It already has that sub-surface scattering look!
Lucio you're an iced diamond. ;D
Lucio,
Excellent! Your explaination is very clear and your example is wonderful.
Thanks for sharing!
Quote from: Lucio on February 09, 2007, 01:48:55 PM
Inspired by the wonderful "deep" snow created by Olivier Cousinou I tried to work on something similar on my own, attempting to create a detailed snow layer with a little shiny and somewhat icy crust. The result is a bit complicated surface shader node, and now I'll try to explain with my sloppy english the path I followed. I've also attached a clip file with the entire node.
Regards,
Lucio
you should make a tutorial on this... it would be good to add to the tutorial base on these forums..
That looks great, all that is missing is some highlights for the frozen tiny ice crystals in the snow and some melted parts on the dry land and walla. :)
Wow! Cool work, well thought and very usefull.
Nice job!
monks
Thanks for all your kind comments
king_tiger: I don't know isf you can consider this as a tutorial, in fact is a job already done with a little (and not so clear) explanation
I'll post soon other experiments :)
Regards,
Lucio
Lucio... Thanks for sharing, this is amazing. I agree.. one of the holy grails.
Excellent work! I'm having some fun with your clip file now, I'll let you know how it goes.
Quote from: MeltingIce on February 11, 2007, 07:51:50 PM
Excellent work! I'm having some fun with your clip file now, I'll let you know how it goes.
Thank you
I've tried some different solution on these days, I'm going to post something new about the node. Well, having subsurface scattering implemented would be great!
Definitely one for my collection, many thanks. Too bad it doesn't snow much in Australia ;D
excellent explanation, thanks for sharing :)
bigben:P the Aussies traded the snow for fires:P so us kiwi's can come rescue you lot:P... though a blue mountians render would be nice...
first attempt at using Lucio node clip file to make a glacier on a dem I have.. Though I realised it has a shader that should have more fuzzyness but its been rendering for over 10hrs so I didn't bother restarting it..
heres a download to the file
http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~rawjdmbj/downloads/glacierexperiment.zip (5Kb)
(http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~rawjdmbj/gallery/images/terragen2/big/photo_022.jpg)
Wow! Nice glacier thing...
here is the ter file... 1.6mb to go with my glaciers so terragen opens it corrently
http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~rawjdmbj/downloads/GlacierPk1025.zip (http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~rawjdmbj/downloads/GlacierPk1025.zip)
Quote from: king_tiger_666 on February 13, 2007, 03:34:15 AM
first attempt at using Lucio node clip file to make a glacier on a dem I have.. Though I realised it has a shader that should have more fuzzyness but its been rendering for over 10hrs so I didn't bother restarting it..
heres a download to the file
http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~rawjdmbj/downloads/glacierexperiment.zip (5Kb)
(http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~rawjdmbj/gallery/images/terragen2/big/photo_022.jpg)
Yes king, you absolutely need to set much more softness for the edges, they are too sharp and "cubic". Have you raised the vertical emboss?
Beautiful atmosphere and overall view though
Keep it up with experiments you all, I'm curious ;)
there is a snow surface shader for everything but the glacier I had increased the displacement but I didn't see the lack of softness in the test renders/preview...
I might revisit this as its not completely what I wanted.. to fix the softness, add some fakestone somewhere, and also make the glacier no so curved where it meets the water..
I have tried the tgc associated with this and it's really great to know someone has gone to the trouble of making this happen. My problem is that when I use the tgc it covers everything. I'm obviously hooking it up wrong. Any help?
covers the entire terrain?... you have to set the max slope.. in the tgc its set to 16degrees slope i think...
A new test with some fake stones layer
I've created a messy environment to see how snow intersects with other elements. I've also plugged a reduced version (with very low displacement) of the node to the stone layers, plus a lambert shader to give blueish translucency
(http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/8053/fkstonesmw1.jpg)
Here is some nice feature, especially on low right and center of the image: you can see how the translucency color gives a somewhat icy appearance to many zones
However you have to pay attention to the edge softness, sometimes the intersection of snow with stones or terrain can produce strange rendering artifacts on some point. I'm trying to explain why
Very cool. It does look strange in a couple of areas but overall it looks amazing.
I'm most impressed by the way the large snow overlaps and interacts with the stones. Great job!
great job!!..
Quote from: old_blaggard on February 13, 2007, 03:26:59 PM
I'm most impressed by the way the large snow overlaps and interacts with the stones. Great job!
I agree it that really really cool how you pulled that off. I'm still playing around with thge clip file myself.
Regards,
Will
could you share a screen shot of your node setup?... thanks!!,
Amazing Lucio, great work!
Care to share the tgd or node setup, since we're in the sharing area? ;D
Keep it up (to date), fantastic!
Martin
Well,
I used it somehow different - but the main part is due to the embossed-snow-idea (though I just went through the written text)
Just have a look. Thanks again to you, Lucio!
Volker Harun
wow, neat. yuor ground texture is really cool.
Regards,
Will
Impressive work Volker, looks really great :)
Seems you're learning pretty quick. The image looks pretty "complete", all elements are present.
Martin
Hi Martin,
thanks for the flowers. The image shows yesterday's state of art ,-)
Today, I remodified almost anything. Changed terrain-appearance, colours of the shaders, added fog (for foreground depth), refined the displacements and so on ,-)
The same procedure as the last days. When almost finished I am getting unsatisfied :-)
The image is just a hint that the 'embossed feature' can be used not only for snow ;D ;D ;D
Regards,
Volker
I understand, and I don't want to sound arrogant but I already thought about using it for sand etc. as well... And like I said you worked that out pretty well :)
However it's one of the best, may be even the best, way(s) to create realistic convincing snow.
I'm curious about your "update" on this one.
Funny to hear you're getting unsatisfied when being almost finished with your image :) Sounds very recognizable! ;D
Martin
Nice job, Voulge.
This is the first image that I have tried using Lucio's "Embossed" Snow shader and I am impressed. It is a little rougher than I wanted but that may be because of the treatment of power fractal and fake stones applied to the surface below. This image is still a work in progress, I will try to keep posting updates. Thanks Lucio for your contribution :)
[attachimg=#]
NIce, it seems everyones getting good use out of this clip file
Quote from: Will on February 14, 2007, 02:00:07 PM
NIce, it seems everyones getting good use out of this clip file
When you have a winner it's hard not to use it. The thing I like is it allows for tweaking and thus is malleable to one's needs, as we have seen in other examples on this thread.
Very very nice image. Like the low clouds, the little lake and the atmo, gives it a great mood!
Snow surfaces look really nice. One little thing maybe is the glow amount and power of the sun, I'd lower it a little.
Martin
Lucio,
Thanks for more than just the clip file.
I have been wrestling with this issue for a while and you not only gave me a way to create a great glacier but second you reinforced for all TG2 users the power of the node network and third, you opened a door, you gave us a way to think about the the solution of problems like snow creation.
Your clear explanation along with the diagrams is a job well done!
-Steve Horstmeyer
Quote from: Voulge on February 14, 2007, 06:26:46 AM
Well,
I used it somehow different - but the main part is due to the embossed-snow-idea (though I just went through the written text)
Just have a look. Thanks again to you, Lucio!
Volker Harun
Would you mind explaining how did you get that effect on terrain....
thats a great render. taking the concept to a final render like that:D!
Hi dhavalmistry,
first I made a twist and shear (0.5) then a negative displacement on slopes (min slope ~40°) for making those larger and tinier overhangs.
On terrain with slopes < 20° I created the base layer like in the embossed snow and a child with displacement-offset:
Baselayer was coverage of 1, child layer has a coverage of 0.75 and fractal breakup of 1.
Second minor displacements on the base layer (stretched for a dune-like appearance) and a very very tiny displacement on its child for the grainy structure.
The main point may be: The displacement offset is ~10. This looks very weird on closeups. The camera is high above the surface and the offset appears very even.
Regards,
Volker Harun
and.....yet another one. I would like to thank Lucio for saving my sanity, 'cause for the past week or more what ever I've done has resulted in my system crashing some as short as 5.5 mins into the render. Hell even the preview was crashing. Soooooooooo... to cut a long story short of course it turned out to be me! Feeding in the snow group and just rendering showed that there was nothing wrong with my system. This is still a WIP.
Cheers and thanks Lucio.
neat, I wonder if terragenw ill ever be able to do ice rings.
regards,
Will
This is definitely a great technique. I'm really impressed with the work already done with it and I'm also looking forward to seeing what others do with it in the future.
Some future version of Terragen should be able to do ice rings and related phenomena in the future since it already has ray tracing all you would have to do is extend the ray tracing system to the replication of such phenomena but I am not sure of how hard that this will be. Having said that since we are dealing with a modular system now maybe there will be a module developed to do these kinds of phenomena.
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel
hmm so you mean like how there is the animation plug-in too so have an post-effect plug-in?
regards,
Will
what do you mean by ice ring?...
Its like a halo, its commly found in the artic and other areas where is is either snow or ice cystals in the atmosphere, VUE does it but not very well. It could be done I think.
regards,
Will
ok i found a picture from google... can't that be done by using a crater shader in conjunction with a water shader?.. all that is missing is transparency in water...
might not look too good close up but from a distance i think it might look alright...
hmm not sure what your talking about, I think you found an image that shows like a crater with a layer of ice over it or somthinglooking like that right? I'm talking about a halo that is around al ight source, it just does not refract so many colors as water vapor does.
regards,
Will
Will,
do you mean this (http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~avery/course/3400/atmosphere/sun_dog_color.jpg)
or that (http://www.allthesky.com/atmosphere/preview/sundog-p.jpg)
Volker
I was thinking the first one personally but both could be done I guess.
regards,
Will
I was thinking of something completely different obviously... would be nice to render something like that. never seen that in a image before too
Well think of a HaloSim like addional plug-in for Terragen two, some extra package like the Deep+animation thing.
regards,
Will
Those are really cool photos, Volker. I've never thought of doing something like that before, but now that you guys mention it... it would be pretty cool.
Quote from: Volker Harun on February 14, 2007, 03:51:57 PM
Hi dhavalmistry,
first I made a twist and shear (0.5) then a negative displacement on slopes (min slope ~40°) for making those larger and tinier overhangs.
On terrain with slopes < 20° I created the base layer like in the embossed snow and a child with displacement-offset:
Baselayer was coverage of 1, child layer has a coverage of 0.75 and fractal breakup of 1.
Second minor displacements on the base layer (stretched for a dune-like appearance) and a very very tiny displacement on its child for the grainy structure.
The main point may be: The displacement offset is ~10. This looks very weird on closeups. The camera is high above the surface and the offset appears very even.
Regards,
Volker Harun
ok I am lost....I dont get it....I am still a noob and best of all...I hate nodes and node network...I get confused really quick. I know they are very important and powerfull and I have already seen what TG2 can do so I am kinda forcing myself to learn nodes...ahh this is going off topic...anyways I will try to figure this out....thanx for your help tho...
Sorry man, what do you need help with?
regards,
Will
I insert the clip file and I connected snow base to planet and base colour to Snow_vertical emboss and I also added fractal terrain
and I am getting this
now what do I do....
If you generate a terrain . you can set the slope restriction on the snow . eg snow will only be on slope less than 20 degrees etc. bu setting a maximum slope on the snow surface shader "snow base"
also "snow emboss" is another surface shader you also set the maximum slope to.. or alternatively you could set a maximum slope or restrict the snow using height. though it willn't give as much control over snow placement...
isnt it all applied...I see snow_base has max slope set to 16.5
it should work then if you generate a terrain
Quote from: Volker Harun on February 14, 2007, 06:26:46 AM
Well,
I used it somehow different - but the main part is due to the embossed-snow-idea (though I just went through the written text)
Just have a look. Thanks again to you, Lucio!
Volker Harun
Beautiful Volker! Great work :)
Quote from: sonshine777 on February 14, 2007, 01:59:16 PM
This is the first image that I have tried using Lucio's "Embossed" Snow shader and I am impressed. It is a little rougher than I wanted but that may be because of the treatment of power fractal and fake stones applied to the surface below. This image is still a work in progress, I will try to keep posting updates. Thanks Lucio for your contribution :)
[attachimg=#]
Another very good result, keep it up !
Thank you very much all for your experiments, I'm happy to see all those beautiful results and contributions
Now I'll post an image assembly of my node network to explain how I plugged the embossed snow on fake stones, on the image I posted some day ago
(http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/3943/schemezk1.jpg)
You can see that the snow shader is used as a reduced version: I've removed the vertical and lateral emboss, and added a lambert shader with a light blue translucency color. The coverage over the stones is controlled with the max slope constraint set on Snow_base, as for the terrain, but I've set the slope key on "Final normal" to render it correctly. I repeated this scheme on all the fake stones layers I used over the scene.
Quote from: stevehmeyer on February 14, 2007, 02:55:08 PM
Lucio,
Thanks for more than just the clip file.
I have been wrestling with this issue for a while and you not only gave me a way to create a great glacier but second you reinforced for all TG2 users the power of the node network and third, you opened a door, you gave us a way to think about the the solution of problems like snow creation.
Your clear explanation along with the diagrams is a job well done!
-Steve Horstmeyer
Steve, thank you very much, I'm honored to read this
I guessed using a graphic diagrams approach can be a good and powerful way for creating complex surfaces, because the node architecture permits to manage all the aspects of the scene logically and with great precision
wow, that looks so beautiful , specially the second image is showing the snow extremly impressive
Thanks for all of your detailed explanations, Lucio! They've been a big help :).
Here is a link to a render I just finished and posted over at Terranuts
http://www.terranuts.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=25358&limit=recent
I didn't realize that the monitor was in the ultra bright mode and was adjusting my snow color accordingly, after 34 hours of rendering I figured it out (hence the grey snow). I guess that it could be assumed that St Helens just had one of its many small steam eruptions and coated the snow with a light bit of ash.
I think the surface was affected by the fake rock surface I put below the snow and had not read up on the thread about using snow and rocks together.
When I'm happy with the scene I will post the tgd. And the location of the terrain at Terranuts.
nice render. good use of clouds/trees and POV
Nice job. You manage to incorporate a variety of techinques into an aesthetically pleasing image.
I must be stupid or something because I can't even open it. TG2 doesn't open .tgc's so what do I do?
terragen 2 can open tgc files. go file/insert clip file
Okay now I know I'm stupid because now that I've imported it I don't see anything change.
have you connected the base shader, or compute terrain to the input of the snow_base and the output of the snow_base to the input of the planet node?... or else you willn't see anything except a blank terrain..
Quote from: king_tiger_666 on February 18, 2007, 10:03:06 PM
have you connected the base shader, or compute terrain to the input of the snow_base and the output of the snow_base to the input of the planet node?... or else you willn't see anything except a blank terrain..
Ah that helps. ;D
The tgc file will show up in the node network portion of TG2 and as king_tiger_666 said it is not plugged into any thing. You need to plug the output of bottom node called Snow Base into the planet01 and the Base Color node onto the input of the Snow base node.
[attachthumb=#]
no problem... will be interested with what you render after experimenting
Hey guys,
Sorry to just but in but I'm having trouble with this :/..
I haven't had much time to play around with TG2TP due to personal stuff but I need help with this insanely awesome clip file :P.
I've got it working to an extent but not to it's full emboss look.
I haven't done a lot to fix the problem as I really don't know what to do!
All I've done is:
-Inserted the clip file
-Generated a Power Fractal terrain
-Linked the Base Colours Output node to the Input node of the Snow_base function
-Then linked the Output node of the Snow_base function to the Surface shader node of the Planet_01 function as illustrated here (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=753.0;attach=1983;image).
And I'm not getting anything of the embossed look - would someone be able to save my life and show me what I'm doing wrong?
The embossed look should be there. It might be that you are too far away with the camera. Go close and check again.
Volker Harun ;) ;) ;)
Incredible. BTW - I'm looking for a tutorial on the crater shader but can't find it anymore. You guys remember where it is???
Ryan Thompson
www.giantsteps.us
thanks to you i did this render :D
i only played with values but i kept almost the all tgc !
(http://i20.servimg.com/u/f20/10/05/42/42/neige_11.jpg)
Fantastic!
Great image seth. I'm glad that you used my tgc to do such a beautiful work :)
Good job, Seth.
thanks :)