Ridgeline - Large

[Gannaingh]

I have a confession to make. I think I'm in love with this DEM of the Columbia River gorge in Washington State. It's found its way into my last 2 pictures and it'll probably make it in to the 3rd on since I've already found a nice POV. I feel better now that that's off my chest 

I've been trying to make a generic scene setup to recreate the pacific northwest sort of look that I love so much. Essentially I just want to be able to pull a DEM off of the usgs site, stick it in a scene, make a few adjustments, and hit the render button. How very lazy of me.

I'm not happy with the rock surfacing yet. I want more color variation both on small and large scales. I also want to work on the tree distribution. Usually the deciduous trees are clumped together in more grove-like structures and not as evenly distributed.

[Kadri]

Looks good!

[mhaze]

Great start.

[choronr]

Impressive terrain. Looking forward to your progress.

[jo]

Nice image and terrain. Are you using the Geog heightfield load node?

Regards,

Jo

[yossam]

Which DEM is it...............I kinda like it myself. 

[Gannaingh]

Thanks everybody. I'm making progress on creating a nice looking granite surface. I'm building it from individual grains all the way up to 100 meter color variations so it looks good on all scales.

Jo, I am using a regular heightfield load node since the terrain is just a ter. file.

Yossam, I got it from the usgs seamless website a couple years ago. The file is in south east Washington State along the Columbia River.

[Jo Kariboo]

Very nice and promising. I love the colors and light. The image exudes a impresseion of cold weather. I very like this one !!!

[Gannaingh]

Here is my progress on the rock surfacing. Although you can't tell from this distance, the grey is made up of centimeter scale blobs of color trying to replicate the grain structure in granite. On top of the grains I've layered several color adjust shaders to give color variation within the rock without the need for long chains of other shaders.

On another note, I've somehow killed the color variation within the evergreen trees without even touching them. I might be a wizard.

I like the progress so far, but I'm not satisfied yet so I'll keep working.

[choronr]

Looking very good. Like your treatment of the upper rock. Maybe try the color variance of the tree pop?

[inkydigit]

This is looking awesome already... Looking forward to the next one!

J

[mhaze]

Superb rock

[ndeewolfwood]

really good surface here !

[TheBadger]

great

[Gannaingh]

Thank you everybody for your kind words.

This is the same crop as last time. I think I'm finished messing with the tree populations. I added some more color variety but it takes A LOT to get it noticeable so I'm going to leave it subtle. I thinned out the pine trees and made them less bushy to give more of an alpine feel. I want to add some ground cover along the near shoreline to give some more depth to the forest.

After that I just want to work on the atmosphere to make the scene feel bigger and bolder.