Valley WIP

[KlausK]

Hello

I thought I'd show this work in progress even though I am not really very far with this scene.
Trying to find my way around the nodes and all the functions.
(Aside - I hope that for version 4 the help files will be more complete and up to date.)

The video file is comprised of the files in the testrender folders which are created during a session.
Quite nice for later times to recall how it all came about, I think.

C&C welcome, of course.

cheers, Klaus

[KlausK]

Another try to upload the video...

[Kadri]

Nice and different video. Haven't much seen a WIP video for Terragen.

[Dune]

Different indeed, and very fast  So where do you want to take this? For a full hillside environment, I'd add more species of grass (etc), more displacement in the rocks, and some gravel/sand or bare rock between the loose rocks. The light, POV and focal blur are already very nice.
One hint for the rocks, add a small scale fractal warp shader between the power fractal (for color and displacement) and the texture input of the fake stones, and play with the settings.

[KlausK]

Thank you for the comments.

It was kind of a jump start scenery for populations. Not sure "where in the world " I am with this.
I have to look at some reference and pay a little more attention to real life when I am in the
mountains tomorrow.
But what you suggested @Ulco are the things I am fiddling with right now.
The grass is really more of a placeholder. Looking at translucency and colour mood in the scene
in general. So vegetation will change.
Main thing to figure out is loose gravel and sand and dust and layers of smaller stones for now.
The place looks way to clean as it is right now.
I am using the Simple Shader and altitude and slope constraints in a distribution shader
to restrict where the populations are placed. More masks and layers to have better about placement
are needed. There are areas which are being populated I can't reach with my setup. At least, I could
not figure out the right settings for that. Have to check the wiki what is possible here and how to do that.

By the way, I think I have read about that in the help but donot remember atm. :
does the renderer calculate everything in the or only what is in the field of view of the camera?

I attached a pic which shows more of a birdseye view of the scenery.
The camera of the "beauty shot" is located right in the center of the
birdseye view where the shadow is.

cheers, Klaus

[bobbystahr]

Good start and cool WIP video if as mentioned a bit fast. I'd like to recommend browsing the File Sharing section as there's a ton of handy stuff in there for messing up the ground, and there's also a whole bunch of free grasses there in response to a thread that got started here. For placement I find the Painted shader very handy as well for making masks.
In the populator you can restrict the population to the camera view pre popping with the Clip to camera button.

[KlausK]

Thank you, bobbystahr.

So, now the valley changed quite a bit.
Getting to know populations, placement and texturing a little bit better.
Let me know what you think. Suggestions always welcome.
cheers, Klaus

[bobbystahr]

A bit dark on my monitor but nice work on the veg areas; the FSs on the slopes look wrong some how to my eye.

[DannyG]

NICE

[Dune]

Yes, quite a difference. Looks good.

[bobbystahr]

Better for my monitor now...I like the view with the stones in the bottom right corner...gives a better feel of depth in the image.

[KlausK]

Thank you.

@bobbystahr: true!
Having a dedicated foreground object, some kind of middleground in focus and
a blurry background in the frame helps to create the illusion.
Especially, when the camera is so close to the groundplane.

I changed the scenery once more working only with rock objects and the FS shader.
Overall settings for the layers of FS and Procedural Displacements look ok to me.
A little bit like loose earth or dirt I think.
The warped rocks in the forground at the bottom of the frame would have to be covered somehow.
Couldn`t get rid of them in the shaders.

cheers, Klaus

[Dune]

You can paint them out; painted shader, paint over the ugly rocks, and use as negative mask for those stones.

[KlausK]

And introducing the grass again.
I changed the FS a bit and went in and deleted lots of the grass population elements one by one.
Some of them where producing strange silhouettes on mountain ridges and went up a little bit to
high on the slopes. Also trying different settings in the lighting.
Now I`ll try to find one or two interesting eyecatcher objects for the foreground and play with DoF.
Hope I am not boring you to death while spamming the forum with my WiPs.

Cheers, Klaus

[KlausK]

Thank`s Dune.
I have not really got the painted shader to work how I wanted to. Have to try some more.
How do I add up masks when there is already one present in the Mask slot of the node?

Cheers, Klaus