Pacific Gold

[Marty]

Trying to increase my population skills in Terragen while working on this Hawaii DEM

[Oshyan]

Wow, really nice, subtle lighting! I am a sucker for backlighting though. I think overall exposure may be a little low, and the sun needs a bigger reflection on the water (adjust Min Highlight Spread on the Reflections tab). But otherwise it's quite a good start. There's a lovely feel of soft atmosphere, warm glow, haze. You can kind of feel the humidity, in a way.

- Oshyan

[archonforest]

Wanna swim there

[Marty]

Thanks Oshyan and archonforest. And thanks for the tip on the sunlight reflection in the water: Didnt even think about that one :S But now I of course see that a wider sun reflection is needed

[TheBadger]

Trying to increase my population skills in Terragen while working on this Hawaii DEM

HA! I looked at the image before I read your post, and I thought hey that looks like Hawaii. Nice work

[choronr]

Agree, this is a pleasant scene delivering a relaxing mood. Also agree for maybe some subtle back lighting (GISD and/or a second sun at 180 degrees and low altitude). You have an excellent project going here.

[mhaze]

Very Good start looking forward to seeing an update.

[Oshyan]

Don't do the second sun if you ask me. It's a hack, and a mostly unnecessary one. The backlighting here is great as-is, just need to up exposure to bring it all out IMHO.

- Oshyan

[Hannes]

Totally agree with Oshyan! I haven't seen very much images where a second sun looked really good unless it's a scifi scene taking place in a two sun solar system.
You could carefully increase the environment light's strength on surfaces and maybe the translucency of the plant's leaves.

[Marty]

Thanks everybody. I made some new ones with double the backlight. Tried with even more backlight but felt that I lost some of the mood I was out for (in the light strength I use on my computer screen at least). When it comes to the sea on the one I call "Pacific Gold Close Up" I most underline that I have not yet gone into dept on the water nodes and possibilities in them, but if you have a great tip on what reflection to use when etc I'll be glad to know. At the moment and for this scene I just use it as it is.

[Oshyan]

Hmm, I liked that the original sky had a lot less gold/yellow in it. It gave it a nice tropical-but-cooling feel, somehow exotic, and quite beautiful. The new lighting is fine other than the color shift, but overall I prefer the original personally. The new PoV is very cool though, again I like the backlighting.

- Oshyan

[Marty]

Yes, I can agree to that. Just testing out and learning. New color gave it some warmt that a sunset would give, but I too felt that some of the quality of the first one was lost in the new color. But now I know a little more, and thats my goal

[Marty]

Even if I'm a bit over this scene now I just had to render the two images without the color change (simply could not leave it hanging with that color):

[Dune]

You now get the problem that the translucency (in the default shader) of some shrub is too high, better set that at maybe 0.2 or so.

[Marty]

Hmm Yes, not been going to soft on that tranclucency. Probably why I ended up not liking the color (difference) on the closest population on PGv3.