My worlds and ideas

Started by N-drju, May 07, 2019, 04:24:07 PM

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Oshyan

Quote from: N-drju on September 05, 2019, 07:01:51 AMOh, I think I get it. Like when you try to take a picture of a sky and point a camera upwards, only to see the surrounding terrain / trees go black due to lens being adjusted to deal with large amounts of light?

So it works the same way in TG? Heh...
No, that's auto-exposure. Terragen doesn't have an auto-exposure function currently.

Basically what you're seeing here is just a strong reflection of the surrounding environment making the transparency less visible since the reflection is at the surface, effectively "covering up" the effects of transparency. This happens with any highly reflective surface and bright elements of a scene at appropriate angles to the camera to reflect into the camera's view.

You can try turning down reflectivity or maybe adjust Index of Refraction, both would make the behavior of the water unrealistic in a physical, real-world sense, but may accomplish your goals as far as composition, etc.

- Oshyan

N-drju

Oh, wait a moment... Only now did I understand what you guys are referring to. It got mixed up a little. ;)

Since me and Martin were discussing path-tracing in this image, I thought at first that you were both referring to the water as being the source of the path-tracing problem. Now I get it that you mean transparency.

In the end, I decided against further increasing it, so it will be changed in the final.
"This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!"

N-drju

Moving on with the project and I like the results if I may say so myself. Probably just steps away from the final render.

I changed the sun direction juuuust a bit, added clouds and some populations. I will also need to solve my path-tracing woes (counting on Martin's help too), but at least it was better in this version of the image. The forest on the left might be "deforested" a bit to let more light through - that will certainly improve things.

As far as populations are concerned... as soon as I rendered this image I realized how empty and barren the stratified mountain mass on the right is...

Any ideas how I could make it more interesting? My call is to add a cloud layer in the way of sun, to at least cast some nice shadows on it. But I'm open to suggestions. C&C welcome!


elrio3.jpg
"This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!"

Dune

I would throw in another few pops of trees and bushes for the hills on the right, in patches (PF), and probably lessen the wave activity, perhaps even by increasing (or reseeding) wave patches, or add an extra (empty) surface shader after the water shader, mask by PF (large smallest area or soft color roughness), and smooth part of the water. You may also consider smooth reflection.
I would also dump a few trees on the left (or add a black simple shape to the masking to make an open corridor), to have some sunlight thrown through the wood onto grasses and beach on the left.
Airplane stripes are a 'nice' touch.

N-drju

More pops on the hills - check. Done. It looks more lively now without being too "bushy". I also cast some cloud shadows up there, which looks "deli." ;)

I plan to leave the water as it is, because this is supposed to be a fast running, rapid mountain river and these are usually quite rough on the surface, due to the stone and rock debris contents underwater. But now that I think of it, I need to add some "white water" to get it right!

I just wonder how... Some noise, of a very minuscule scale, masked of course, could possibly get it done. In conjunction with a surface layer... perhaps?
"This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!"

Dune

Just add a surface shader after the water shader and mask it by some small voronoi ridge and bigger for distribution fractal(s), probably stretched a bit if it's fast flowing.

N-drju

Christmas Time continues. So I started doodling away. With something that I have never done before in Terragen - a detail.

I try to create a snow globe. ;)

Here is my first draft. Not much happening around here:

snoglo.png

The plot twist? The flakes in the snow globe are... clouds... a circle 4000m across with several elevated ranges. The glass globe is, likewise, a huge crystal ball...

The entirety of the image is very grainy in this sample, but i have already found out that when rendered with defer atmo, HD resolution, high AA and high cloud quality, it can all be averted and look as smooth as it should. Some graininess will persist anyway, but nothing I could not tolerate. After all, natural snow is somewhat grainy!

I approach this project with a lot of modesty... because the amount of variables and challenges that this "little" job entails is staggering. I quickly discovered that I cannot achieve the same cloud visuals on a "micro" scale (clouds are not thick enough, even with a 50 density value...). Lighting is also problematic... Light is being scattered a bit differently at about 3500m height (the height this image was rendered at) and it doesn't look room-like enough.

With all these challenges (and more) I really doubt if I can push the final result into the "impressive" zone. But I'll keep trying anyway.
"This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!"

N-drju

I'm ready for another "Snow globe" project update and I hope you will like it.

Light is a very important aspect of the render I'm trying to make. After some extensive discussion with Matt regarding the subsurface scattering and the resulting lighting effects, I have finally come to a solution that suits my needs. Hannes' idea for a fake subsurface scattering (FSSS) is one of the features to be found in this picture.

The FSSS still needs adjustments but I believe I'm on the right track. It's good to know that with such a specific lighting AA6 seems to produce a "good enough" result. And I'm really happy with how the clouds got rendered:

snoglo3.png
"This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!"

N-drju

Next step. Depth-of-field and a background Christmas tree added. The snowman looks to be slightly out of focus already, so I need to check settings.

snoglo2.png
"This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!"