Crossroads (WIP)

[otakar]

I've been working on this for a few weeks now. I thought maybe if I publish a WIP shot it will give me some motivation to finish it.

This is only a crop render. I have not yet touched the atmosphere, I'd like to tinker with the hills and mountains some more and possibly add some details, especially in the foreground which has not been rendered here.

Credits for the plants go to Walli, dandelO, Mr_Lamppost and Mark Gebhart.

Would appreciate some feedback.

[Dune]

I like the terrain and layout, so it's well worth pursuing this, Otakar. But there are some things to pay attention to, if you permit me saying so. The left angle of the road seems a bit too warped (how did you do the roads, warped SSS's?), and the grass ends too abruptly. I would extend the coverage of grass objects, make them smaller, and end them in distance by soft distance shader or soft simple shape, so they can grow gradually into fake grass. Which needs to be darker to correspond to the front grasses. And maybe change the layout of the road or POV so you see slightly more of the roads. Good luck!

[Antoine]

Looks nice! Perhaps just give some more brightness to the far trees also.

[kaedorg]

Nice one here
I would change the POV. A little bit up to view the road.
I agree with Ulco about the grass object. Fake grass need to be darker in the background and trees lighter.

[otakar]

Thank you for all the comments. Now I see all the problems you have pointed out. I guess I also need to articulate a bit more what I intended here. Maybe a reference image would help:

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/3619167.jpg

This is not my template, but something I just found by looking for a example what I wanted to achieve, does not fully represent it, but close enough. I first had a uniform grass cover, which quickly gets boring and looks unnatural. By adding the foreground grass population I was hoping I can make a believable patch of tall grass which ends at the road side. At that point it is also far enough that I can get away with procedural texturing beyond that. I guess it is going to take more to make that look believable. Yes the trees do look too dark.

The roads are warped SSS shaders, indeed.

I'll get back to work on this.

[choronr]

A very nice start here. Looking forward to your next update.

[Dune]

That's a nice image to make. Not too hard in fact, so I'll give you another hint. If you make a procedural soft perlin terrain with a little stretch perpendicular to the road layout, you hardly have to worry about sideways slant of the road surface. Now make a wide soft warped SSS for the wider road area, and use that (if needed through a color adjust) to mask out the road area. Outside it you can add extra rougher displacement to perfect the terrain. Using the color adjust gives you perfect control of how near the rough displacements are allowed to close in on the road, if you start out with a soft wide coverage (50m or so, with smooth step 22).

[otakar]

Not sure I quite follow you on the last post, Dune. Is this meant to improve the terrain displacement? I am already working with wide masks for the roads, there is always a need for masks for areas bordering the roads, so I've been using it as part of standard setup. And yes, I love the color adjust shader, too. The challenge is always to keep the network halfway organized, though. After 10 color adjust shaders and 15 Add Color shaders you start to lose it

Anyway, here's the latest. I tried to add a bit more irregularity and lightened up those evergreens. Some of the road is more visible now, while other parts are more obscured. I don't really mind that all that much, since it is enough for me to see that the roads are there, they should not be the focus, rather the landscape should.

[Dune]

It's just a way how I could set up something like the ref photo you posted. Roads are much better now, butI still think there's too much distinction between grass objects and fake grass. Maybe you should extend the pop and gradually fade it into the fake grass by distance shader, and darken the fake grass.
And there's a strange row of grey spikes in the distance, is that a road as well?

[otakar]

LOL, the strange spikes are meant to be a wall/fence, I guess I need to improve that or go back to my old wall setup, I thought I can get away with a simple one this far away from the camera, but I guess not

I will see if I can do as you suggest and bring the grass pop further out. I will just need to be patient with the populator....

Thanks, I will be back with an update!