Kailash Heights

[schmeerlap]

I like the way this one came out. In my mind's eye I'm seeing influences from Hindu temples and gods. Sculpting with image map shaders is a lot easier than using complex functions, and I'm finding it a lot more fun. This scene took an hour to render @ 0.9 detail, with 9 AA, and 2 GI relative detail, 3 sample quality.

John

[Henry Blewer]

To me this has an Egyptian influence; the pyramid in the foreground.

[Oshyan]

Cool terrain shapes. Lord I don't know why you need AA of 9 though with no objects. Terrain and clouds are both pretty easy to AA.

- Oshyan

[domdib]

Intriguing, moody piece. Very nice haze.

[schmeerlap]

AA advice noted, and will be implemented in future renders, thanks Oshyan.
A wee note on the name: I've just checked Wickipedia and found there's a Mount Kailash in the Himalayas that looks nothing like what I've rendered. The mid-distance towering stack on the right of the scene is loosely inspired by the Hindu Kailash temple in Ellora, India ("loosely" being the operative word in this statement).
The attached pic is "borrowed" from Wickipedia.

John

[j meyer]

Another nice one.
How did you achieve the temple like structure,planar projection
from above or below or is it again your cylindrical method?
I did some building like structures (long ago in TG0.9) with
projection and terrain blending,so i'd like to know more about
your methods,if you'd like to elaborate a little,that is.

[schmeerlap]

so i'd like to know more about
your methods,if you'd like to elaborate a little,that is.

The small configuration of shaders I used in my tgd (which I've attached for your perusal) doesn't really warrant a full blown tutorial. But, yes, I did use cylindrical projection of image maps for both displacement and texture, it's just a matter of getting the scale right, and don't forget to flip and repeat to get global coverage. Now, the images I use for the mapping I create in Photoshop, and as you can see by the one I've attached it's just the application of a few Photoshop filter effects. You'll also notice that I apply this cylindrical projection displacement in the Shaders section, i.e. after the Compute Terrain at the bottom of the Terrain section (that's important). You'll also notice that I have blended two of my terrain shaders (big and mid scale) with power fractals. I do this to get space between my mountains so they become more isolated. Create your own noise pattern images and load them into the image maps in the tgd (you're going to get errors messages until you load them up); play with the seed buttons, and try different noise flavours on the terrain shaders, and try different scaling of the image map cylindrical projections to see what forms you can create. It can be fun. Oh, and I've connected the image map shaders to Surface Layers to give me control over coverage and distribution of each.

John

John

[j meyer]

Thanks John,much appreciated!
Your method seems to be very similar to what i've tried before except the
cylindrical projection,for some reason it never occurred to me to try that.
Regards,J.