Continuous landscape

[Dune]

As I will post some renders now and again, here's where I'll start. I'll be making a mural display of 45 x 3 meters, depicting (slightly hilly, luckily) Dutch landscapes from 250.000 years ago until medieval times.  But... as a continuous landscape, where people can walk by and see the terrain change.
Several problems (challenges) emerge; as it will be a huge file, making it in one go isn't feasible. So, 5-10 or so different landscapes? How to merge them? By making a long panorama, turning the camera, was my first idea, changing the terrain and growth from left to right (ice ages coming and going, veggies emerging and being cut down again when people start to populate the land....). The foreground is the most difficult to merge, as it's full of detail. Shooting images in TG in longish images but not the total panorama. Not crops but different files, or the file would be enormous, I'm afraid.

So, as a starting point; if anyone has any ideas or experience in this kind of venture, I'd welcome any advice!

[Tangled-Universe]

So you got this crazy commission eventually, congrats Ulco

At first I am thinking of making one base terrain, which you will use for the entire panorama.
Then, depending on the number of "time-zones" or "eras" you need to depict, set-up cameras which will split the panorama in appropriate pieces.

Use software like PT stitcher. BigBen had some interesting posts recently regarding stitching and fixing lens distortions:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=15047.msg146633#msg146633
This would allow you to calculate how much overlap you would need for each piece.

As example: if one of your tile has a forest and in the next tile you want to depict the start of wood-cutting then make sure the forest is in the seam.
Wood cutting would be depicted at the left in your next tile, using the transition from the previous tile. If you see what I mean.

As long as you can keep those elements flowing you may be able to get away with splitting this project in X number of pieces.

Good luck and let me know if you need any ideas and/or advice!

Cheers,
Martin

[Dune]

Thanks Martin. One terrain is for sure. The most important problem is the camera placement. I think it should be a circular panorama, basically shot from one point. If you set up parallel camera's the foreground will never match (take 2 trees/stones behind each other, they will be viewed from different angles and can't be stitched). But if you shoot from one point it is hard to get differences in the foreground  (ice age, no ice age). The guy who wants this is aiming at eye level POV's, no birdseye shots.
I think I must advise him to raise the camera at least as high as tree level, to be able to more easily stitch/blend foregrounds. With a bit (much) fiddling in Photoshop that is probably the most effective way.
Experimenting is paramount, so I'll get to it.

Anyone else?

[Oshyan]

There are certainly a number of ways this can be handled. Do you have a sense of how they want the end result to look in terms of the blending? Is it intended to look like one continuous view with "natural" blending between eras, i.e. no image blends/fades? The latter would certainly be much easier, just setup different versions of the same scene, render out the same view of each in a wide format, and blend each time period in as desired. Of course there would be a lot of render overlap, and the look of it would be more simplistic than if you tried to somehow integrate the time periods into the actual construction of a single scene. For that I might suggest using camera-projected masks to control blending of each time period, just as a base concept. Perhaps better yet, use 1 camera as a base mask for each time period, but have a wide aspect ratio render camera that *does* actually render the whole scene in one go (rendered in tiles on a render farm, of course). Then you potentially avoid some of the distortion issues of stitching and rotation-based panoramas.

Out of curiosity, what resolution do you need to deliver the final image file(s) at? Or, put another way, what resolution do you anticipate the final overall image(s) for printing to be?

- Oshyan

[Dune]

It should be one continuous landscape. I think I get what you mean; shoot the same terrain (but different details/eras) in one very wide angle (say 3000 high by 45000 wide), but use crops for each era and blend these together. Ah! Good thinking.
Also the camera mask is a good idea, you got my brain working again. Thanks!

Resolution... for a wall of 3m high @ 20-40 dpi (billboard resolution) it should be 2400-4800 px high, and very(!) wide. So it's going to be a farm, point.

Added 2 tests

[Oshyan]

Yes, you've got the basic idea I was talking about.

These early tests already look quite promising. The sense of "heather" or small ground cover in the 2nd image just from the terrain shapes/displacement and coloration is quite good actually.

- Oshyan

[Tangled-Universe]

Thanks Martin. One terrain is for sure. The most important problem is the camera placement. I think it should be a circular panorama, basically shot from one point. If you set up parallel camera's the foreground will never match (take 2 trees/stones behind each other, they will be viewed from different angles and can't be stitched). But if you shoot from one point it is hard to get differences in the foreground  (ice age, no ice age). The guy who wants this is aiming at eye level POV's, no birdseye shots.
I think I must advise him to raise the camera at least as high as tree level, to be able to more easily stitch/blend foregrounds. With a bit (much) fiddling in Photoshop that is probably the most effective way.
Experimenting is paramount, so I'll get to it.

Anyone else?

My idea is almost exactly the same as Oshyan's only, as usual, he's better in explaining it. Perhaps I should PM or reply you in Dutch here.
The use of 1 render camera and crops for every timezone/era might work better or more easy.
It would avoid lens issues you mentioned, although those can be overcome using the tools I referred and linked to, plus that you can't get a circular like image if you use 1 single camera.
You'd need multiple cameras for that and additional overlap.
Like I said the seam-issues can be fixed using the proper tools.

For every crop you would need to make a separate tgd anyway, because likely you'll use quite some models and props and memory consumption would go through the roof. Your medieval city already took quite some RAM only for loading the project, let alone rendering it

[Dune]

Indeed, I didn't extract the idea from your explanation, Martin. Sorry about that.
I will save all different 'crops' as different tgd's, and use the camera mask for populating, pointing it differently in  every tgd. That should keep the populations small enough. The positive from a low POV is that I don't need huge populations. A medieval village won't be visible much either, distant houses being obscured by the front line. Much easier than a high POV.

The starting point will now be a 45000x3000 terrain view. If I get the hills alright, then it's a matter of ground cover.....

[Mahnmut]

Sounds like a great project in more than one sense!

If you do it by turning your camera instead of moving it in a linear way, and if the result is supposed to be 15 times wider than it is high, I think you will need more than 360°?
I didn´t calculate any camera settings, thats just my rough estimate.
That would mean that your oldest szene and your newest one could occupy the same space, which would be cool in my opinion. As if you turned around veeeery slowly while ice ages passed, looking at the same but changed spot again in the end.
Of course I don´t know if that´s the intended effect, because the people will in fact be walking by instead of turning on the spot.
I am courious to see where this goes!
Best Regards,
J

[j meyer]

Interesting project,indeed.
Will the mural be on a straight wall or on a curved one (like some pano-paintings)?
Thinking of vanishing point(s) problems here when you actually walk by.
If your client wants a close up foreground there could easily be some serious
distortions and you would have to use some optical trickery like depth levels or so.
Just thinking,anyway,
good luck,J.

[Dune]

I don't know yet what kind of wall it'll be. With one large file there's no problem with vanishing points or 360 degrees or more.... Just came home and made a quick setup with 3 cams. Only the left part (displacement intersection, blended by a camera mask) doesn't work properly yet.
The main problem now is that it's hard to work in a window that is so restricted. I suppose there's no way to zoom in on the 3D preview to fill one part from top to bottom?

[N810]

Hmmmmm... seems to be a lot of stretching on the left side of the image,
perhaps try a setups with Orthoginal cameras ?

[Dune]

The stretching is something else, probably a camera (mask) where I forgot to change the position to the new render cam position. In this previous test it isn't stretched. Orthogonal cams came up, indeed, but I haven't tried it yet. It would be so much easier if I had a nicer ratio in the 3D preview to work in. Perhaps some temporary camera and then another temporary render ratio?

[Oshyan]

I would suggest having 1 camera for the "full scene view", 1 for each "era", and then one with the same base position that you can pan left and right (keep the same vertical FoV as the final render), using the camera pan tools. This way you can view any part of the scene and render tests while maintaining at least *some* sense of the bounds of your scene (vertically if not horizontally - you could place reference objects at the extreme left and right of your view for the horizontal).

- Oshyan

[TheBadger]

Hi Ulco. congratulations on getting a new commission, especially since its in a subject that interests you! Its good to get paid to do what you like. 

I agree with lots of whats already been written, but I wantted to chime in in my own words:)

Lets assume you have all the resources you could ever need. HA HA, I know, there are always restraints, but just as a starting point...

For me, the *ideal* way to go about this for highest quality results would be to do A full panorama at full size and resolution for each period in time of the landscape. So each historical age, from first to last, of the same landscape as it changes over time.
After getting (4-6-8?) panoramas, then I would take them into photoshop as layers and paint a transparency mask so that the oldest landscape started on the right and ended with the oldest on the left. (I think this is what you were saying) This would give you the best control over where and when one age transitions into another.
I asume erosion and geological transformation will be extreme, i.e. Ice age, continental displacement, (volcanic activity?) Forest growth.

In my photography I always shoot vertical when doing a pano. with a photo camera its very important to remember to make sure the cameras pivot point never moves despite changing views between frames. The same should hold true for a virtual camera in terragen2. Shouldn't it?Anyway, doing so will make stitching much cleaner. I also usually overlap my frames by 1/3rd to 1/2. Its not usually but ensures good coverage. I doubt you'll want need to do that with a render. But Ideally, it would be nice to have that much material to work with when stitching and painting, masking.

I usually shoot HDR panos, so my workflow may be totally different than what your looking for.

For panoramas I use autopano pro http://www.kolor.com/ I have tested it on a TG pano. I did not run into anything unusual compared to working with photos, that I can recall. It was a while ago.

Just what came to my mind. Its a very interesting and complex technical project. I hope their giving you what you need to do what they want