Moon Valley

[Markal]

My 2049 World Machine 2 terrain "Detroit". Moodflows starfield background re-colored. Struggled with this one and I'm still not 100% satisfied....eight full renders with different colors, settings, views, heights...ect....sometimes its just....well you have to pick up your marbles and go home...I gave up on this one. Comments, critiques and oppinions are needed and welcome....especially how to make the fake stone shader and stones look less angular and rough edged. I also use image map shaders alot and would love to get away from it but, the surfaces and my poor use of surface shaders just look terrible. Clouds are still a guessing game for me...I get lucky sometimes but other times...I just click and re-seed and adjust the height and depth....whew. I don't get it. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Mark

[Oshyan]

I rather like this, but it does look like it needs some more time, if you have it in you. I agree that the image maps can be problematic. In this case being applied to the stones, the low resolution becomes apparent with stones that are close to the camera. You could try layering on top a procedural texture to break this up a bit and add some detail. Adding some additional small-scale displacement would help with that and the sharpness of the stones.

I think the clouds also seem a bit low in "detail" (not quality, but actual details). Perhaps too few octaves in the noise shader?

Overall it's a nice mood though, cool lighting and composition I think.

- Oshyan

[Markal]

Thanks Oshyan,
I'm still learning and struggling. Understanding this program and what everything does takes some time and practice. What do you mean by a "procedural texture"? Is that just a shader with displacement and distortion...and how small is small-scale displacement....are we talking decimals like .25 or less? My next big learning exercise is to learn about TG2 clouds...I know they are great I have seen some awesome cloud work in numerous images....my clouds on the other hand....look like crap...pardon my French....or is that crape'...
Thanks again for your help its much appreciated!
Mark

[Oshyan]

Yes, sorry, I should have said "procedural shader", specifically a Power Fractal as one example. Displacement is measured in meters (like most things in TG2). If you can determine the size of your existing Fake Stones, then that should give you some idea of the scales needed to break them up a bit. You want something a good deal smaller than your average stone size. 10cm (.10) might be good to start with if you have 1-2 meter rocks, for example.

- Oshyan