Strata --> FINISHED

Started by Tangled-Universe, December 06, 2007, 04:35:21 PM

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old_blaggard

Where does he usually hang out?  On planete-terragen.org or some other site?
http://www.terragen.org - A great Terragen resource with models, contests, galleries, and forums.

Seth


reck

That would be great if Phylloxera came onto this forum. Like a lot of you guys I always check out his images at renderosity, in fact i've subscribed to his gallery. His terrains always look tops.

moodflow

I also watch his work and would love to see him on this board.
http://www.moodflow.com
mood-inspiring images and music

Tangled-Universe

Shall we open a seperate topic for this discussion and get back to the WIP? ;-)  ;D

dhavalmistry

there is nothing to get back to unless you post an update ;)
"His blood-terragen level is 99.99%...he is definitely drunk on Terragen!"

Tangled-Universe

Ghehe, I'm running a new render @ 1440 x 880 detail 0.9 AA 10 and GI 2/2...
I'll probably show some node-screenshots as well, if anybody's interested of course.

Tangled-Universe

#22
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 07, 2007, 04:21:36 AM
Ghehe, I'm running a new render @ 1440 x 880 detail 0.9 AA 10 and GI 2/2...
I'll probably show some node-screenshots as well, if anybody's interested of course.

Well, this was an insane attempt to render it at higher res and quality and thus I've made quite some adjustments to the settings and rendered it again.

I've added a layer of small scale fake stones and also added very subtle (maybe too subtle) specularity on the rock surfaces. You'll probably only be able to see them on the right side of the image. I also changed the colors of the sand because some people said "the snow looks pretty etc."....*lol* so those colors were obviously a little off or at least not the way they were meant to be, so I adjusted them :)

Rendered at detail 0.8, AA 8, and detail blending 0,7.
The lighting setup is GI at 1/1 + 3 soft fill lights (strength 0,125) + 1 additional fill light (strenght 0,75) which doesn't cast shadows but is meant to fill the shadow on the left side of the image.
In the last image the fill lights didn't cast soft shadows which resulted in strange sharp shadows between the trenches/ditches.
Raytraced shadows was on otherwise the mountain didn't cast its own shadow. Strange, because I thought raytraced shadows was only necessary when using populations. Shadows on displaced features should be cast correctly without raytraced shadows switched on. Hence Oshyan's message here:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=150.msg781#msg781
It's an old message so maybe this feature has been altered or my image is an exception?

Please let me know what you guys think of it and as you probably know I'm open for suggestions and critics. I'm that way myself too :)
If anybody is interested in node-screenshots or have any other questions, feel free to ask ;D

Martin

dhavalmistry

can I please see the node network??

awesome work here....how long did it took to render??
"His blood-terragen level is 99.99%...he is definitely drunk on Terragen!"

Tangled-Universe

#24
Thank you for your positive comment dhaval :)
Yes of course you can, I'll make one and post it right away.

I have an Athlon 3500+ (2,2 GHz) with 2GB RAM. It took 9h16m14s to render  :-\
BUT... ;D This week I'm going to order a quad-core 2,4 GHz with at least 4GB of RAM, my so longing for render monster ;D

rcallicotte

This is absolutely as close to perfect and realistic and cool I've seen.  Great job.
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

dhavalmistry

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 09, 2007, 09:00:43 AM
I have an Athlon 3500+ (2,2 GHz) with 2GB RAM. It took 9h16m14s to render  :-\
BUT... ;D This week I'm going to order a quad-core 2,4 GHz with at least 4GB of RAM, my so longing for render monster ;D

I suggest you wait for quad core till TG2 is released and also buying after Christmas might save you some money!.....
"His blood-terragen level is 99.99%...he is definitely drunk on Terragen!"

Tangled-Universe

Ok, the node-screenshot :)

As you can see I've numbered a few (important) nodes.
So I'll write a mini-tut of it right away this way.

1) = the blend shader (scales 80, 120, 40m) which gives variation to the appearance of the stratas. As you can see the stratas aren't applied all over the terrain but just here and there, to say so.

2) = It's also the mix controller of the stratas. The color information of the blend shader controls the way the 2 stratas are mixed together. The merge shader has default settings. This way the trenches/ditches were created, but honestly I can't reason why they appear. It might have to do that the merge shader mixes displacement and that this shaders interprets the color information from the blend shader as displacement. But I can't tell for sure.

3) = This small scale and low displacement powerfractal gives all the surface layers some bump to give the surfacing some spice and detail.

4) = The fake stones shader setup: the fake stones are approx. 25cm each. They looked very spiky and displaced upwards so I lowered the stone tallness and increased the pancake effect but it wasn't satisfying enough. Adding a default shader is an easy way to control many aspects of the stones' appearance. The 2 powerfractal give the stones small scale color detail (not visible I think). The powerfractal is hooked into the displacement input. This powerfractal has same scale size as the stones, has very low color contrast and roughness, low displacement factor (0,15) and roughness and spike limit to prevent the forming of spikes.
But sometimes the renderer has problems to  calculate the geometry correctly and displacing the stones then will create very ugly spiky stones.
I found out that adding a TEX coords from XYZ node solves this problem. I think it calculates the normals for the stones (more) correctly and thus make the powerfractal do the work it's supposed to do.

5) = This surface layer gives the rocks its shiny appearance. Unfortunately I've been a little bit too reserved with this effect. I'm thinking about another re-render to make the effect more prominent. The default shader has the same diffuse color as the surface layer. So, the default shader is a child with 100% cover. Adding very little reflectivity and reflectivity roughness in the specularity tab gives the rock-structure a shiny or wet look.

I hope this has been useful for all of you ;D

Martin

Tangled-Universe

#28
Quote from: calico on December 09, 2007, 09:01:25 AM
This is absolutely as close to perfect and realistic and cool I've seen.  Great job.

Thank you Calico, it took a LOT of time to setup and to perform testrenders  :)

Quote from: dhavalmistry on December 09, 2007, 09:32:32 AM
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 09, 2007, 09:00:43 AM
I have an Athlon 3500+ (2,2 GHz) with 2GB RAM. It took 9h16m14s to render  :-\
BUT... ;D This week I'm going to order a quad-core 2,4 GHz with at least 4GB of RAM, my so longing for render monster ;D

I suggest you wait for quad core till TG2 is released and also buying after Christmas might save you some money!.....

Yeah thanks for thinking along with me :) I'm also considering that, but the 'problem' is is that I have 3,5 weeks off within 2 weeks so a lot of time to play and explore, you see ;D

dhavalmistry

a question about the nodes TU....what is the purpose of "Default Shader 01" as a child layer of "Surface Layer 06"
"His blood-terragen level is 99.99%...he is definitely drunk on Terragen!"