Roman ruins

[Dune]

I'm working on a new commission and this is a very small crop. Nothing fancy, I just liked it. It's around 800 AD, and I'd love to wander around through those Roman ruins.

[BroBpony]

very nice

[Hannes]

Great!! I'd love to be there as well.
Did you make these ruins or are these downloads?

[Dune]

I made them in Lightwave with fracturing (which is cool), but also 'worn' them in Zbrush, because the breaking of walls and towers from LW didn't really look well enough like time has worn them, but rather like a bomb has hit them. Turned out to be a pretty time-consuming effort. I wish there were a procedural 'erosion' way Luckily it's all far away.

[Hannes]

Anyway... looks really convincing!

[WAS]

I made them in Lightwave with fracturing (which is cool), but also 'worn' them in Zbrush, because the breaking of walls and towers from LW didn't really look well enough like time has worn them, but rather like a bomb has hit them. Turned out to be a pretty time-consuming effort. I wish there were a procedural 'erosion' way Luckily it's all far away.

Blender Mesh Damage would probably be a cool tool.

[zaxxon]

That's some really nice landscape work around those ruins. A beauty!

[pixelpusher636]

Very nice render. It makes me want to wander around and explore as well. 

[dorianvan]

I love it. Great start or finish. Don't forget to have some smoke sailing up, travelers on the road, and maybe some herds of animals somewhere. Really cool to see the proximity of villages.

[Dune]

Thanks guys. This is only 1/20 upper-left crop of a larger landscape, so there will be people, a medieval village and stuff, but more to the front. The ruins have been there for hundreds of years already. It's around 800 AD here, and the Roman buildings were abandoned around 200 AD, when the country's population was dwindling. So the smoke has already gone
I was imagining more shrub and vines overgrowing the remnants, but the client likes to see the stones and structure for educational purposes.
If the ruins were good enough for a close render, I'd love to do something more with them though.

[pixelpusher636]

Thanks guys. This is only 1/20 upper-left crop of a larger landscape, so there will be people, a medieval village and stuff, but more to the front. The ruins have been there for hundreds of years already. It's around 800 AD here, and the Roman buildings were abandoned around 200 AD, when the country's population was dwindling. So the smoke has already gone
I was imagining more shrub and vines overgrowing the remnants, but the client likes to see the stones and structure for educational purposes.
If the ruins were good enough for a close render, I'd love to do something more with them though.

I realize the answer to this question will vary but on average how many tree species do you generally use in a scene like this? I ask because I've been working on and off on some image maps for an aerial type view. While drawing out tree lines I starting thinking how many various species I was going to need to be plausible. 

[Dune]

It very much depends on the habitat or ecosystem. For a scene like this, from my head, it's oak (3 types), birch (3 types), hazel, hawthorn and linden for the higher areas, and a 2-3 species of willows and 2 or so black alder (I often use a patch of 5 alder trees as one object if they are to be in a wider area, and also have some patches of fallen alders) for the lower areas. Then I have some indistinct shrub (either single or as a small group as one object), 3 types of grasses or so, some herbs for the front, some reeds and swamplike vegetation for the wetter areas. But what you see here is only a top small higher area.
On average I'd say 10-20 objects.
Some 4K RGB (in TG to be split up) image maps as masks, but also in combination with altitudes, and occasionally an extra simple shape or painted area in a later stadium when something doesn't quite work with existing masks. I use a lot of multiply, add, etc. blue nodes for these combinations.

[pixelpusher636]

Thanks for your reply/expertise. It's about what I had in my head (so far as populations) but your masking techniques I'm sort of familiar with from a few full scenes you've shared. I hold those close to my chest like a preacher and his bible. I study them and soak in the information. I have adapted your distribution shader to PF & PF to painted shader etc. very helpful. Thanks again for sharing Ulco! I really was hoping you would surprise me with a cheat of sorts with the amount of species, but atlas, I'm out of luck. No cheating nature. 😊

[Dune]

  I wouldn't know how to cheat with the number of species. Maybe, one day there will be a 'biome import' thing, where you can load several species at once, otherwise the only cheat I can offer is to put a few species in one object. You may get away with that in vast, flattish areas.
One other trick I very occasionally use is to sink parts of a population by PF/mask, so you can use tree canopies as bush. Just add a PF or other masked displacement after the final computed area and have the pop sit on that. You have to take care to set offset as well, or instances will float.

[pixelpusher636]

Naw, I didn't think you did know of a way to literally cheat it but thought perhaps you had some tricks in filling in an area. Turns out ya did.  I try and glean as much info as possible without the line of questioning coming across as an interrogating, that part takes some restraint.

As always Dune I appreciate your vast knowledge of TG and the wisdom you share with me and the forum.

The idea of populating with a PF/mask from displacement is interesting and I think I've seen this. If this screenshot is indeed what's going on then another mystery solved and technique learned!