Perthshire

[dandelO]

Massive cheater I am, but it's just a fun render.

Just some colour and displacement image mapping on the planet with a mildly rolling fractal terrain, of the journey that I take to work(along the road, centre bottom).
Today, I commute by Ladana's Balloon Limousines. It's no wonder I'm always late! It's OK, my boss is in the Kreuger's Kabs balloon, as long as I make it there before her, she can't say a damn word! And I have the thermals on my side now! Ladana's flying high, drop the sandbags, get the pellet-gun!

[attachimg=#]

Cheers!

[schmeerlap]

It doesn't have to be procedural to be good, or valid, at that. And this is excellent use of the Image Map Shader, a legitimate TG2 tool in my book. Great end product.

John

[dandelO]

Cheers.

The 'legitimate' part's a bit hazy , but I figure, if Google can take a picture of me, then I can just as easy take one of them. It's only to make a pretty picture with, not to supply to Bomb Makers and Planters 'R' Us, or anything.

[domdib]

Cool use of the image map shader.

[inkydigit]

very nice implementation and a great result/story!

[Henry Blewer]

Don't call this a cheat. You have used a legitimate tool very well. Hollywood studios use this technique often.

[dandelO]

Cheers, folks!

Here's a wee, 1 second tester of some movement. The lower balloons are moving upwards a bit fast!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiU3LtdiUFs

[MGebhart]

Pretty cool Martin.

I'm of the opinion that if it works it's legitimate.

And yes, Google is watching.

[microwar]

Nice work. Ground looks very nice, and not like a photo on the floor.
Not shure who got it in the comment, but i like the expression,

If you cant make it, fake it!

Realy like you'r work, and use some of you'r shared stuff.
Always use the planetary grass shader to quickly reveal mountains.

Still cant get my head around the fake tree shader. Keep getting green ground, and grey "trees"

[ra]

Spectacular work! Would like to see more of this.

[Hannes]

I also don't think, that this is cheating. Great image! I like the displacement. Is this a separate texture?
Some minor crits: I think there should be some more blueish haze. The lighting is crystal clear, which looks a little bit unnatural. Additionally for my taste there could be a little bit more detail in the clouds.

Once again, what is cheating? Using a shader that is implemented in TG cannot be cheating.

[dandelO]

Thank you, everyone.

Microwar: Yes, it's my TG moto. And, really, even an entirely procedural scene is essentially 'fake', I mean, it's hardly 'real'.

Ra: That might be possible if I carry on with the animating, I've reworked the above flight and I'm over 5 hours rendering per 60 frames, at this size. I might just do a longer, 480px animation.

Hannes: Yup, two separate 2048px image maps. A  greyscale displacement, followed by the colour map directly after, both are just set in sequence, as child to a single surface layer.

[dandelO]

Still cant get my head around the fake tree shader. Keep getting green ground, and grey "trees"

You may have the wrong slope key set in some distribution, make sure all your distribution shaders for that layer use 'terrain normal' as the 'slope key', if they are restricted, also make sure both high and low colours are checked in the 'tree' colour shader fractals.

I used a single power fractal for this recent 'fake' forest: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=10172.msg105547#msg105547
I'll tidy up the network and post the surface in a bit...

[Kadri]

It is a nice image , DandelO  
But i think the displacement looks a little to much like a artifical bump map.
I would lower the displacement by a half or so .

[FrankB]

cool.